Star Wars: The Force Unleashed sports new tech

For the past few years, video games have been all about the graphics. Now, with high-definition game consoles and ever-increasingly powerful PC video cards, some have started turning their attention to a more subtle aspect of gameplay – physics.

With nVidia’s recent acquisition of AGEIA and ATI’s partnership with Havok, PC games are going to be seeing more emphasis on physics processing in the months to come. With a dedicated physics processor, things like particle effects (good for explosions), collision detection (handy if you don’t want to walk through walls and floors) and the way things physically react when interacted with are no longer being handled by the CPU or GPU. Not only does this give you a performance boost, but you get a much more realistic representation of the physical world around us.

Digital Molecular Matter from Pixelux Entertainment, or DMM, is the physics engine used in the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game. Unlike previous physics models, DMM simulates flexible, deforming, and rigid objects all at once. The programmer can set parameters for different materials, such as glass, wood, or steel. One impressive demo I saw involved a wooden beam inside a glass box. As the beam was twisted, you could see here it was being stressed. When it finally broke, it splintered as a real piece of wood should. The splinters ejected outward and shattered the glass, not just anywhere, but where the glass was impacted.

I had the chance to play the PlayStation 3 demo version of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and even in the demo’s limited scope there is a chance to see some DMM in action. There is a training room where your character uses the Force to throw some heavy objects though a few glass panels. The glass is tempered, so the entire pane shatters and falls to the floor when you hit it. However, depending on where and how hard you hit it, it will break in countless ways. There are steel beams to bend, doors to break through, wires and conduits hanging from the ceiling and plenty of objects (including droids and stormtroopers) to toss about.

The other new engine in SW:TFU is called Euphoria, by Naturalmotion. Euphoria’s tagline is “unique game moments,” and that is exactly what Naturalmotion intends to create here. Character animation has traditionally been done by a series of preset poses, or information gathered from a motion-capture session. With Euphoria’s Dynamic Motion Synthesis, or DMS, animations are generated on the fly. Every character has not only a skeletal structure, but muscles and a motor system that gives him a range of possible movements rather than a few predetermined poses. This means that although a squad of stormtroopers may all come at you with blasters blazing, some may react differently when knocked down. Some may even be afraid to get back up. Yes, Euphoria’s AI can give the NPCs a sense of self-preservation. I have noticed that some stormtroopers even seem to be afraid of heights!

Since Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will be the first game to use both of these exciting physics engines, I’ll be eagerly anticipating the release of the full game on September 16th.

 -Jubal Burkhart