GTA IV has made plenty of headlines in the past 24 hours, most in response to the violent nature of the game play. However, amid the howls of protest from various quarters and the squeals of delight from ecstatic gamers the world over, GTA IV is also quietly debuting an exciting new physics engine that allows game developers to create realistic motion within their games and promises to radically change the way games look and feel.
It’s called euphoria and was developed by a company called Natural Motion with teams working out of Oxford in the UK and San Francisco in the United States. Euphoria is itself based upon a process called Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS) using work originally done by researchers at Oxford University.
A far cry from simple "ragdoll" effects of years gone by, DMS dispenses with the need for either key-framed or motion captured animation recording and instead generates all movements intelligently and on the fly using its own instruction set and a virtual skeletal and muscular system. Game developers implement the euphoria system in parallel to their game physics engines and DMS is only called upon when required. No longer will developers need to spend precious time and resources painstakingly recreating the various animations required anytime an in game character falls over, gets shot or, for example, gets tackled — euphoria and DMS intelligently create all the required animations as the game dictates. Besides being a veritable boon for stressed game developers working to tight deadlines, it also provides gamers with more fluid and realistic game play than ever before and, what’s more, the animations will be different every time.
Take a look at the short video clip found here on the Natural Motion website to truly gain an insight into how euphoria works — it’s quite amazing. The way the characters react to obstacles is thoroughly believable and the illusion of weight almost tangible.
So next time you’re throwing someone off a roof in GTA IV, just take a moment to admire the technology behind those flailing limbs.
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