[Arelius]

While I generally agree that "just use havok" is a bad approach, havoc, along with most physics engines, are able to be used for just collision detection, and not response. In many cases, it may prove useful to use an existing engine even for very unrealistic things.

[neumann_alfred]

That's a great point. I probably wouldn't do it with a HTML5 shooter with hundreds of projectiles though... what I mean is, those engines still have to check "what shape is it, oh, it's a circle, so now check what I am colliding with..", while you e.g. know the projectiles are circles and the walls are orthogonal planes. This may not always apply, of course, and I agree that as soon as you enter more complex territory you can save yourself a lot of pain by using a "proper physics engine".

[Arelius]

> what shape is it, oh, it's a circle, so now check what I am colliding with

While this is true, consider that the huge library of built-up optimizations in a well used collision library like Havok very likely makes up for these checks.

Alternatively, they generally offer a lower level API such that you could just always call: `Havok::CheckCircleAAPlane` and then not have to worry about Havok doing it's dispatch. But then again if you don't use Havok's spatial culling you're likely missing out on a whole lot of optimizations, and advantages to using Havok.