HomeLAN: The game takes a lot of its gameplay ideas on the physics engine. What physics engine did you use and how did you modifiy it to work for FlatOut?

Jussi Laakkonen: We felt that the racing games were lagging behind the FPSs of the day, so we set out from the beginning to match or surpass the game technology of the best FPSs. We looked at what games like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 were promising and said to ourselves "that's way cool, let's do it and more =)".

When you set yourself that kind of objectives its pretty clear that a standard physics engine that anybody has access to, just won't set you apart. So, we set out to take our own car physics engine to the next level and incorporated into it all the niceties that we could think of.

The physics engine is inherently tied into to our open, dynamic environment. Each track has several thousand of dynamic objects that you can crash into. Not only do these objects react individually (e.g. each tyre in a tyre wall flying off in their own path), but they and the car deform and react accordingly. So you'll see things like the swingarms of diggers rotating when you hit them, phone cables swinging in the air when you crash on to the poles, streetlights bending and light fittings falling down on you... Even the car is modeled in such a detail, that you can e.g. get pieces of wooden fences stuck on top of your hood or smashed through your side windows.

Our physics engine is of course specifically tailored for car gaming and it is based on our award winning simulator technology, so things like suspension, torque and traction are all realistically calculated. So you can be sure that the cars feel and handle so real, that you'll be sweating when you fight the tight corners =).

The extra-big cherry on top of this huge cake of unbelievable physics is of course the full featured ragdoll physics. The spectacular crashes with drivers flying through their windshields and bouncing of walls, trees and other cars will simply leave you gasping for air.