Yes it runs without hardware, but obviously slower (I don’t have a ppu card). As far as license goes, you simply register as a developer, and you can use the sdk for free on the pc platform. You don’t even need the whole driver stuff if you don’t have the hardware, just drop PhysXCore.dll and PhysXCooking.dll into you dir and you’re sorted, however I don’t think you should be distributing those dll’s without the installer.