Microsoft Planning To Add Physics Support To DirectX

Microsoft is currently advertising for a software design engineer to join Microsoft's "Direct Physics" team, "responsible for delivering a great leap forwards in the way game developers think about integrating Physics into their engines," according to the posting.

Physics simulation, according to Microsoft, "is a key part of the next generation gaming experience, bringing increased realism, greater immersion and more interesting experiences."

Two independent physics SDKs are currently competing for developers: a solution from Havok, which has won hardware support from ATI and Nvidia, as well as Ageia, whose PhysX chip directly accelerates games.

Although Microsoft does not specifically call out Ageia's technology in its posting, the company has licensed the Ageia SDK, as evidenced in an unrelated press release Tuesday announcing its robotics development kit: "Developers can also simulate robotic applications using realistic 3-D models; Microsoft has licensed the PhysX engine from Ageia, a pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics, enabling real-world physics simulations with robot models," according to the release. "The PhysX simulations can also be accelerated using Ageia hardware."

On the other hand, Havok has optimized its solution to run on graphics chips, which appears to be the direction that Direct Physics will take. "You will be a member of the core engine team who will be primarily responsible for working closely with our Direct3D team, helping to define, develop and map optimized simulation and collision algorithms onto data structures that are optimized for the GPU," the job posting reads. "Extensive experience with graphics shading languages such as HLSL is expected as well as a good understanding of modern graphics hardware and associated algorithms.