Hardware acceleration for physics is still in its infancy, but Microsoft appears to be wasting no time getting in on the action. According to an article on ExtremeTech, Microsoft is actively developing a Direct Physics application programming interface to complement the DirectX toolkit.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. The job posting dates back to August 2005, so a Direct Physics API could be well underway by now.

The Windows Graphics and Gaming Technology group is looking for a software design engineer to join a growing team responsible for developing Direct Physics. This team is responsible for delivering a great leap forwards in the way game developers think about integrating Physics into their engines... 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.

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."