[GDC '08] Phyre Engine


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Attended a session on the Phyre Engine thursday while @ GDC. This seems like a fantastic idea, and now Sony developers have no excuse for multiplatform crap (**** you, EA).

The Phyre Engine is a fully optimized multi-platform engine. Yes, that's right -- multiplatform. PC titles can be built using this engine (which could then be easily ported to 360).

Devs don't even need to use all of the engine. Not only are tools provided, but also the source code as well. This means that bits and chunks of code can be taken out an incorporated into other engines to help optimize for the Cell's SPU's, in sort of a #if PS3 {do this code from Phyre}. But that might not even be needed.

DiRt is an example of a solid title that makes use of this engine in a multiplatform state.

This engine handles all graphical rendering, including LOD, particles, lighting, etc. Currently the engine supports Havok and Physix, but come April will also support Bullet. Supports not only typical PS3 tools, but also Visual Studio 2003 and 2005, with 2008 support coming in May or so. Also supports GCM, OpenGL, and Direct X.

The engine is free for any licensed PS3 developer, and also included something like 70 audio, textural, and gameplay examples that devs can use in their own games.

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Apart from the free bit ... the DiRT engine had some serious issues and the Unreal Engine 2.0 is also multi-platform afaik.

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Unreal was only recently optimized for the PS3. However, parts of this can be incorporated into other engines like Unreal, Source, or something proprietary (see also, Madden).

DiRt scored an 84 on metacritic. I'd say that's pretty good since that game was released months ago, and the code is still being further optimized overall (currently on version 1.2, 1.3 will bring in Bullet).

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What is Bullet exactly? Ive heard of Havok and other (physics)engines before but never that one..

Bullet is a free open-source physics engine developed by a guy at SCEA, Erwin Coumans, but it as well is multi-platform.

http://www.bulletphysics.com/Bullet/wordpress/bullet

I honestly had no idea what it was, except one of the (literally) day-long sessions I went to was on "Physics For Game Programmers", and he was part of it.

Random funny: every time he would say "sweep and prune" (a collision detection technique), it sounded like "sweep and poon". I lol'd.

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