From Black Mesa: Wiki

Overview

"Cinematic Physics", introduced in Half Life: EP2, enables scenes of physical destruction that are otherwise not possible for the Source engine to calculate in real-time. This includes things like collapsing bridges, bending metal, exploding buildings and other complex physics simulations.

This is made possible by pre-computing the destruction in an offline physics simulation, where materials and mass are taken into account. The simulation is constrained to the limits of the real-time renderer, and the results are converted to a bone-driven animation and finally able to be used in a real-time setting [1].

Black Mesa makes use of Cinematic Physics in a variety of scenes, allowing us to accurately model physics-intense destruction like explosions, breaking walls, and more. There are already well over 20 scenes where Cinematic Physics are used to enhance and immerse the player.

Scenes With Cinematic Physics

Below a list of scenes which benefit from the use of Cinematic Physics, made known by the developers so far [2]:

• The vent bombing in "We've Got Hostiles".
• The ceiling collapse at the start of "Forget About Freeman".
• The garbage compactor in "Apprehension". [3]
• The Tentacle intro in Blast Pit [4]

This article is a stub. You can help the Black Mesa Wiki by expanding it.