Direct. X - Wikipedia. Microsoft Direct. X is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct. D, Direct. Draw, Direct. Music, Direct. Play, Direct.

Sound, and so forth. The name Direct. X was coined as a shorthand term for all of these APIs (the X standing in for the particular API names) and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a gaming console, the X was used as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate that the console was based on Direct.

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame. The rest of this page is dedicated to providing information related to the book's contents: new techniques, worthwhile websites, etc. After coverage of books and.

X technology. Direct. D is also used by other software applications for visualization and graphics tasks such as CAD/CAM engineering. As Direct. 3D is the most widely publicized component of Direct. X, it is common to see the names . Originally, the runtimes were only installed by games or explicitly by the user. Windows 9. 5 did not launch with Direct. X, but Direct. X was included with Windows 9.

OEM Service Release 2. The SDK is available as a free download.

While the runtimes are proprietary, closed- source software, source code is provided for most of the SDK samples. Starting with the release of Windows 8 Developer Preview, Direct. X SDK has been integrated into Windows SDK. An important factor in the value consumers would place on it was the programs that would be able to run on it.

See how easy it is to create a 3D scene with DirectX 9.0 API. Fantaisie Software Official WebSite. PureBasic - Feel The Pure Power. PureBasic is a programming language based on established BASIC rules. Windows Multimedia System In Win16 and Win32, Microsoft created a partially unified system for handling multimedia. This system consists of the high level Media.

Three Microsoft employees—Craig Eisler, Alex St. John, and Eric Engstrom—were concerned because programmers tended to see Microsoft's previous operating system, MS- DOS, as a better platform for game programming, meaning few games would be developed for Windows 9. This was compounded by negative reception surrounding the Windows port of The Lion King. The game used Win. G, which crashed on Compaq Presarios that came shipped with it following a partnership between Compaq and Disney, as the Cirrus Logic display drivers used by the Presarios were not thoroughly tested with the API. Microsoft needed a quick solution for programmers; the operating system was only months away from being released.

Eisler (development lead), St. John, and Engstrom (program manager) worked together to fix this problem, with a solution that they eventually named Direct. X. The first version of Direct. X was released in September 1. Windows Games SDK. It was the Win. 32 replacement for the DCI. Direct. X allowed all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 9.

Eisler wrote about the frenzy to build Direct. X 1 through 5 in his blog.

Since Windows 9. 5 was itself still new and few games had been released for it, Microsoft engaged in heavy promotion of Direct. X to developers who were generally distrustful of Microsoft's ability to build a gaming platform in Windows. John, the evangelist for Direct. X, staged an elaborate event at the 1.

Computer Game Developers Conference which game developer Jay Barnson described as a Roman theme, including real lions, togas, and something resembling an indoor carnival. A variety of different graphics cards, audio cards, motherboards, CPUs, input devices, games, and other multimedia applications were tested with each beta and final release. The Direct. X team also built and distributed tests that allowed the hardware industry to confirm that new hardware designs and driver releases would be compatible with Direct. X. Prior to Direct. X, Microsoft had included Open. GL on their Windows NT platform. As 3. D gaming grew, Open.

GL developed to include better support for programming techniques for interactive multimedia applications like games, giving developers choice between using Open. GL or Direct. 3D as the 3. D graphics API for their applications. At that point a .

Incidentally, Open. GL was supported at Microsoft by the Direct. X team. If a developer chose to use Open. GL 3. D graphics API, the other APIs of Direct. X are often combined with Open. GL in computer games because Open. GL does not include all of Direct.

X's functionality (such as sound or joystick support). In a console- specific version, Direct. X was used as a basis for Microsoft's Xbox, Xbox 3. Xbox Oneconsole API. The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and Nvidia, which developed the custom graphics hardware used by the original Xbox. The Xbox API was similar to Direct. X version 8. 1, but is non- updateable like other console technologies.

The Xbox was code named Direct. Xbox, but this was shortened to Xbox for its commercial name. Microsoft has continued to update the Direct. X suite since then, introducing Shader Model 3. Direct. X 9. 0c, released in August 2. As of April 2. 00.

Direct. Show was removed from Direct. X and moved to the Microsoft Platform SDK instead. Direct. X has been confirmed to be present in Microsoft's Windows Phone 8.

Controversially, the original name for the Direct. X project was the . John, head of Microsoft Direct. X evangelism at the time, claims. Additionally, while not Direct. X components themselves, managed objects have been built on top of some parts of Direct. X, such as Managed Direct.

D. Rather, programs that are run on a Windows XP system with Direct. X 1. 0 hardware simply resort to the Direct.

X 9. 0c code path, the latest available for Windows XP computers. Many former parts of Direct. X API were deprecated in the latest Direct. X SDK and are preserved for compatibility only: Direct. Input was deprecated in favor of XInput, Direct. How To Update Clamav Engine Remover. Sound was deprecated in favor of the Cross- platform Audio Creation Tool system (XACT) and additionally lost support for hardware accelerated audio, since the Vista audio stack renders sound in software on the CPU.

The Direct. Play DPLAY. DLL was also removed and was replaced with dplayx. DLL must duplicate it and rename it to dplay.

In order to achieve backwards compatibility, Direct. X in Windows Vista contains several versions of Direct. D. Details and advantages of Vista's Windows Display Driver Model are hidden from the application if WDDM drivers are installed. This is the only API available if there are only XP graphic drivers (XDDM) installed, after an upgrade to Vista for example.

Direct. 3D 9. Ex (known internally during Windows Vista development as 9. L or 9. L): allows full access to the new capabilities of WDDM (if WDDM drivers are installed) while maintaining compatibility for existing Direct. D applications. The Windows Aero user interface relies on D3. D 9. Ex. Direct. 3D 1. Broken Steel Dlc By Gort. Designed around the new driver model in Windows Vista and featuring a number of improvements to rendering capabilities and flexibility, including Shader Model 4. Direct. 3D 1. 0. 1 is an incremental update of Direct. D 1. 0. 0 which shipped with, and required, Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

Direct. 3D 1. 0. 1 still fully supports Direct. D 1. 0 hardware, but in order to utilize all of the new features, updated hardware is required. Parts of the new API such as multi- threaded resource handling can be supported on Direct.

D 9/1. 0/1. 0. 1- class hardware. Hardware tessellation and Shader Model 5. Direct. 3D 1. 1 supporting hardware.

This helps to keep backwards compatibility with previous versions of Direct. X. Microsoft released the Final Platform Update for Windows Vista on October 2. Windows 7 (launched with Direct.

D 1. 1 as a base standard). Direct. X 1. 1. 1 is included in Windows 8. It supports WDDM 1. Direct. 2D (now at version 1. Direct. 3D, and Direct. Compute, and includes Direct. XMath, XAudio. 2, and XInput libraries from the XNA framework.

It also features stereoscopic 3. D support for gaming and video. It is meant to complement Direct.

X 1. 2 as a higher- level alternative. Direct. X 1. 2 APIs are also expected to feature on the Xbox One and Windows Phone.

Developers are now able to implement their own command lists and buffers to the GPU, allowing for more efficient resource utilization through parallel computation. Lead developer Max Mc.

Mullen, stated that the main goal of Direct. D 1. 2 is to achieve . Linked GPUs will allow Direct.