Microsoft denies physics API rumours

IT SEEMS the easiest way to find out if Microsoft is producing a DirectX physics API is to ask them. And that's exactly what the guys at Maximum PC did.

A leaked issue of the upcoming September edition of the magazine directly quotes Rich Wickham, Director of Windows Gaming Business, as saying Microsoft has "no plans for a physics API", but is merely trying to "be on top of the situation" in the general areas of gaming interest.

This may come as a surprise to readers after our previous report that Ageia was in bed with Microsoft, attempting to coerce the DirectX team into developing a physics API with them. But Wickham's confirmation merely reinforces what was previously said - Microsoft is helping to develop other company's physics products and APIs, but does not (currently) wish to entirely reinvent the wheel itself.

As Beyond3D correctly points out, there may not be any need for a specific Direct X implementation of a physics API to be directly available for hardware-based physics accelerators. In Direct3D 10, there is nothing that requires a device to be capable of output to a display, similar to the functionality of the PPU-based Ageia card. This is coupled with other improvements in the Vista-only games API, such as improved context switching and virtual memory support, all pointing to increased support for general-purpose computation on a GPU or a similar vector coprocessor.

Getting further active support from Microsoft, and ensuring its D3D10 API offers further functionality for utilisation with its PhysX PPUs, even via generic high-level API implementations, is a significant step in the right direction for Ageia. However, heavyweights ATi and NVidia are expected to demonstrate their own physics-on-GPU technologies in the next coming months, which should also tie-in nicely with the future delivery of Direct3D. It may be a case of too little too late for Ageia. µ

See Also
Ageia waiting on Microsoft for physics support
Ageia suffers in benchmarks
Microsoft set to produce its own Physics API