Well there are many topics how people complain about the physics of the game and to some point i agree cuz there is an awesome engine call "Euphoria" that can be implemented in any other engine of a game company uses, such as the " Creation Engine" and its pretty awesome so check out this vids below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoES90f-0pk&feature=related - Walktrough of how the engine works

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0yvs6RJVVY&feature=related - A very cool vid that show the engine in action

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBNdjQox0W4&feature=related - Vid showing the euphoria engine in a football game, rly fun to watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2G7JRAH9LU&feature=related - Watch it from 1:05 devs talking about the Euphoria engine

Before commenting please watch all of the videos, they are all really interesting to watch, and they are short.

It's not necessarily the Havok engine that's the issue. It'd be more a case of how it's being implemented. Havok is quite capable from what I've seen.

What would be the performance impact of this engine on console technology, in an open-world game like Skyrim where there are as many as a dozen NPCs with complex AI on the screen at any one time?

GTA 4 uses euphoria engine and its and open world / sandbox game and it has lot of npc much more than in Skyrim so that is not a problem.

Source used Havok as it's baseline.

That should give an idea. :wink_smile:



Trouble is, GTA 4 relies heavily on generic, auto-gen NPCs. that won't work for a game like Skyrim, where nearly every NPC is a meaningful presence in the world.

Euphoria isn't a physics engine. It's an AI engine. You can have Euphoria run on top of Havok.


GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption both use Euphoria. Both are open world console games.

The NPCs in GTA IV had AI that basically amounted to "Stumble over here". Oblivion's far from optimized, but because of Radiant AI it already slowed to a crawl when more than five guys gathered in one place. Skyrim already looks like it's going to push the 360 to its limits, a complex physics system which utilizes the CPU to automatically assign behaviors to NPCs might be too much.

I think Euphoria looks better, but I think Havok is pretty good as well.

I agree with this.

I thought euphoria was for animations not physics

Euphoria is an AI engine, not physics like people are suggesting.


For example, when the player shot the female bandit with an arrow, she just crumbled to the floor. With Euphoria, she would have grabbed where she was shot, stumble back, then collapse.

Do want o.o

Yup its an AI engine that can be used in every engine , in SW:The force unleashed it works together with the Havok engine , that is why i said Skyrim should have , and it doesn't matter if npc are generic or handcrafted it works on all, the engine applied to every know npc generic or main in GTA 4 as well as every other game that uses Euphoria.

Also watch the last video and see how the AI reacts to the environment how they are garbing objects when falling etc very realistic.

The same physics engine that results in craziness in Oblivion/Fallout is the same one that is sublime in any given Valve game since Half Life 2. It's not the physics engine's fault.

Part of the problem is that the physics hulls for Beth games are absurdly huge. The reason all the books and plates and stuff jump around is that the physics hulls probably occupy a significantly larger volume than the object itself (probably 2x+ the volume).

Definitely would have LOVED something like Euphoria, but Bethesda seemed pretty content with slight upgrades to (completely rewriting)Gamebryo for Skyrim. The graphics are improved a bit, and the animation is a huge step forward, but they don't seem to have done anything to the physics other than increased the gravity.

Personally, I am someone who LOVES physics in games, and imo, they are more important the pretty graphics. Although it's far too late to implement something like Euphoria at this stage :confused: Hopefully, they can still tweak them a bit to fix some of the issues with the ragdolls, but that is the best we can hope for now...