FEBRUARY, 2004

Havok Rocks the house and 3DConnexion wows the art guys!  - Mark Warner (Nexus)

Well I am sorry this has taken so long.  I was hoping to have the pictures and do the write up with those, but things don't always work the way we want.

First thing is that we need to thank the guys from Havok for showing the capabilites of their physics engine, glad I am not one of those ragdolls!!  Havok showed some incredible demos of what you can do with their product and it has become the standard in physics engines for game development.  At the end of the night, they gave out some T-shirts and those of us that could went out for some drinks....now where is my shirt?...

Waiting patiently for Havok to do their thing, 3DConnexion, a division of Logitech, showed off some of their amazing products.  Among those were the "hockey puck" (I really should figure out the real name of that thing!) and the SpaceBall.  I was at the back of the room at the time where an entire class from the Art Institute showed up to hear and see what they had.  At one point Pratish Shah was showing what you could do with the 'puck' and an appreciative "holly ....." was let out.  The comment was well received and echoed by all the artists in the room.  At the end of the night, they gave out a SpaceBall to one lucky girl..

We also handed several copies of 'Enter the Matrix' in PC, Gamecube, and Xbox formats thanks to Dave Perry of Shiny who dropped in for part of the evening.  Thanks Dave, that was awesome!!  And we also gave out a set of PS2 controllers that was given to us by Ryan Sharpe from the Get Well Gamers Foundation.

Thank you to all that attended the meeting, and special thanks to Havok and 3DConnexion for not only presenting but for the awesome prizes that were given out.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the next one.