Blade announces their HydroEngine... so, thirsty?
Well, my invisible girlfriend incessantly reminds me of her fear of drowning, so I had to ask her to wait downstairs as I type this post about Blade's next-gen fluid dynamics HydroEngine -- the engine used to render all the crazy water physics and whatnot in that Hydrophobia game in development.
The HydroEngine proudly boasts effects that have "never been seen in videogames before". Research and development director at Blade, Huw Lloyd, said this about the new engine: "We could have been forgiven if we had merely produced a tech demo...but this new game is a robust next gen game in its own right that pushes the limits of the new consoles. Our HydroEngine is the result of nearly 3 years intensive development work... Water in games has so far been merely a flat plane with ripple effects and other graphical smoke and mirrors applied to it. The HydroEngine is different in one key respect - the water flows. It looks and behaves exactly like real water."
It's interesting to think about -- one of the most simple things in the world, water, turned out to be one of the most complicated things to replicate on computers. Now we may finally have something to do that. Hydrophobia may be worth the price of admission if these boasts bear truth.
