Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Directx shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Directx offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Directx at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Directx? Wrong! If the Directx is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Directx then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Directx? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Directx and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Directx wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Directx then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Directx site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Directx, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Directx, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

{{Infobox Software| name = DirectX| screenshot = | caption =| developer = Microsoft [2006| genre = [Application framework| website = DirectX Homepage-->

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of [application programming interfaces 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 Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. DirectX, then, was the generic term for all of these Direct-something APIs, and that term became the name of the collection. Over the intervening years, some of these APIs have been deprecated and replaced, so that this naming convention is no longer absolute. In fact, the X has caught on to the point that it has replaced Direct as the common part in the names of new DirectX technologies, including XAct, XInput, and so forth.

Direct3D (the 3D graphics API within DirectX) is widely used in the development of computer games for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox, and Microsoft Xbox 360. Direct3D is also used by other software applications for visualization and graphics tasks, most notably among the engineering sector for CAD/CAM, because of its ability to quickly Rendering (computer graphics) high-quality 3D graphics using DirectX-compatible graphics card. As Direct3D is the most widely recognized API in DirectX, it is not uncommon to see the name DirectX used in place of Direct3D.

The interfaces that comprise DirectX include components for use by a running application (runtime components) as well as components for use by software developers at design time (the software development kit). The runtimes were originally redistributed by video game developer along with their games, but are now included as built-in parts of Microsoft Windows. 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.

The latest versions of Direct3D, namely, Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 9Ex, are exclusive to Windows Vista. This is because there were extensive changes in the Windows graphics architecture, and in particular the introduction of the Windows Display Driver Model. This redesign of the graphics infrastructure for Windows Vista supports virtualizing graphics hardware to multiple applications and services such as the Desktop Window Manager, in contrast to the exclusive access afforded to DirectX applications on Windows XP. Both Direct3D 9Ex and Direct3D 10 rely on the WDDM infrastructure and WDDM drivers.

Components from DirectX 6.1 (4.06.02.0436) running on
Windows 95 and DirectX 1.0 running in Windows VistaDirectX functionality is provided in the form of Component Object Model interfaces, as well as a set of managed code interfaces.

The components comprising DirectX are

DirectX 10 For the list of games that (will) support DirectX 10, see List of games with DirectX 10 support.

Windows Vista ships with DirectX 10 and is the only version of Windows for which it is offered, and it has a large number of changes: DirectInput will be deprecated in favor of XInput, from the Xbox team. Likewise, DirectSound will also be deprecated in favor of XACT. DirectX 10 has also dropped support for hardware accelerated audio, opting instead to render sound in software on the CPU.

In order to achieve backwards compatibility with previous versions of Direct3D, DirectX 10 contains three versions of Direct3D:



DirectX 10.1 DirectX 10.1 is an incremental update to DirectX 10.0 which will be shipped with, and require, Windows_Vista#Service_Pack_1 in January 2008.{{cite web|url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2177205,00.asp|title=Microsoft Unleashes First Service Pack for Vista|date=[2007-08-29 with DirectX 10.0 hardware, but the new features will not be available until 10.1 compliant hardware is released. The release mainly sets a few more image quality standards for graphics vendors, while giving developers more control over image quality.Features scheduled for DirectX 10.1 include:

History In late 1994 Microsoft was just on the verge of releasing its next operating system, Windows 95. The main factor that would determine the value consumers would place on their new operating system very much rested on what programs would be able to run on it. Three Microsoft employees — Craig Eisler, Alex St. John, and Eric Engstrom — were concerned, because game programmer tended to see Microsoft's previous operating system, DOS, as a better platform for game programming, meaning few games would be developed for Windows 95 and the operating system would not be as much of a success.

DOS allowed direct access to video cards, computer keyboard and computer mouse, sound card, and all other parts of the system, while Windows 95, with its protected memory model, restricted access to all of these, working on a much more standardized model. Microsoft needed a way that would let programmers get what they wanted, and they needed it quickly; the operating system was only months away from being released. Eisler, St. John, and Engstrom conspired together to fix this problem, with a solution that they eventually named DirectX.

The first version of DirectX released was shipped September of 1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It was the Windows API replacement for the DCI and WinG APIs for Windows 3.1. A development team at ATI brought fundamental game graphics technology to the attention of Microsoft. The development of DirectX was led by the team of Eisler (development lead), St. John, and Engstrom (program manager). Simply put, it allowed all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 95, to incorporate high-performance multimedia. Eisler wrote about the frenzy to build DirectX 1 through 5 in his blog.

Prior to DirectX's existence, Microsoft had already included OpenGL on their Windows NT platform. At the time, OpenGL required "high-end" hardware and was limited to engineering and Computer-aided design uses. Direct3D (introduced by Eisler, Engstrom, and St. John as an alternative to SGI's OpenGL) was intended to be a lightweight partner to the back then slower OpenGL for game use. As the power of graphics cards and the computers running them grew, OpenGL became the de-facto standard and a mainstream product. At that point a "battle" began between supporters of the cross-platform OpenGL and the Windows-only Direct3D, which many argued was another example of Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish business tactic (see Fahrenheit graphics API or Direct3D vs. OpenGL). Nevertheless, the other APIs of DirectX are often combined with OpenGL in computer games because OpenGL does not include all of DirectX's functionality (such as sound or joystick support). However, the combination of OpenGL and Simple DirectMedia Layer for this purpose is becoming increasingly popular.

In a console-specific version, DirectX was used as a basis for Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360 video game console API. The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and NVIDIA, who developed the custom graphics hardware used by the original Xbox. The Xbox API is similar to DirectX version 8.1, but is non-updateable like other console technologies. The Xbox was code named DirectXbox, but this was shortened to Xbox for its commercial name.J. Allard, PC Pro Interview, April 2004

In 2002 Microsoft released DirectX 9 with support for the use of much longer shader programs than before with pixel and vertex shader version 2.0. Microsoft has continued to update the DirectX suite since then, introducing shader model 3.0 in DirectX 9.0c, released in August 2004.

As of April 2005, DirectShow was removed from DirectX and moved to the Microsoft Platform SDK instead. DirectX is, however, still required to build the DirectShow samples.

Release history {| class="wikitable"|-! DirectX version! Version number! Operating system! Date released|-|DirectX 1.0||4.02.0095|| ||September 30 1995 OSR2 and NT 4.0||[June 5 1996 [1996 4.0 SP3 (and above)
last supported version of DirectX for Windows NT 4.0||December 1996|-|DirectX 3.0b||4.04.00.0070||This was a very minor update to 3.0a
that fixed a cosmetic problem with the Japanese version of Windows 95||December 1996|-|DirectX 4.0||Never launched|| |||-|DirectX 5.0||4.05.00.0155 (RC55)||Available as a beta for Windows NT 5.0 that would install on Windows NT 4.0||[July 16 1997||[May 5 1998 exclusive||[June 25 1998 for the [Dreamcast [1998 [1999 exclusive||[May 5 1999[1999||[February 17 2000 [2000 exclusive||[September 14 2000 [2000 [2001, [Windows Server 2003 and Xbox exclusive] 2001 [2001 [2002 [2002 [2003 [2003 [2004||[August 6 2004 format to some classes. ||Released bimonthly from October 2004 to August 2007, and quarterly thereafter; Latest version: [August, 2007 exclusive||[November 30 2006|}

Notes:

  • DirectX 4 was never released. Raymond Chen explained in his book, The Old New Thing, that after DirectX 3 was released, Microsoft began developing versions 4 and 5 at the same time. Version 4 was to be a shorter-term release with small features, whereas version 5 would be a more substantial release. The lack of interest from game developers in the features slated for DirectX 4 resulted in its being shelved, and the corpus of documents that already distinguished the two new versions resulted in Microsoft choosing to not re-use version 4 to describe features intended for version 5.{{cite book
    • | title = The Old New Thing| edition = 1st edition| chapter = Etymology and History| pages = pg. 330| last = Chen| first = Raymond| authorlink = Raymond Chen| year = 2006| publisher = Pearson Education| id = ISBN 0-321-44030-7-->
  • The version number as reported by Microsoft's DxDiag tool (version 4.09.0000.0900 and higher) use the x.xx.xxxx.xxxx format for version numbers. However, Microsoft's site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/archive/default.asp?url=/archive/en-us/directx9_c_Dec_2004/directx/directxsdk/dxandxp.asp claims that the registry always has in the x.xx.xx.xxxx format. Put another way, when the above table lists a version as '4.09.00.0904' the registry may have it as '4.09.0000.0904'.


    • History of DirectX logo The X originally resembled a cross between a Hazard symbol#Radioactive sign and a propeller blade. Controversially, the original name for the DirectX project was the "Manhattan Project", a reference to the US nuclear weapons initiative and its ultimate outcome — the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conspiracy theorists have argued that this connotation is intentional, and that DirectX and its sister project, the Xbox (which shares a similar logo), are meant to displace Japanese videogame makers from their dominance of the industry. However, this meaning is publicly denied by Microsoft, who instead claims that it is merely artistic design. Furthermore, no sinister explanation is necessary; the simple (but less sensational) explanation is that the X in DirectX was chosen for its geek chic factor, and the X logo was chosen to accentuate this. Since both the name of the API and the logo were chosen years before Microsoft even considered entering the game console market — much less designed the Xbox — there is no basis for a claim that the X logo anticipated competition with Japanese console makers.

    Image:DirectX 1 logo.png|DirectX 1.0–6.0Image:DirectX 7 logo.png|DirectX 7.0Image:DirectX 8.0 logo.png|DirectX 8.0Image:Directx9.jpg|DirectX 9.0Image:DirectX10 logo.png|DirectX 10.0

    Awards and accolades On January 8th, 2007, DirectX (specifically, Direct3D) earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for Microsoft and partners AMD and NVIDIA Corporation "for pioneering work in near and real-time fully programmable shading via modern graphics processors."

    Compatibility APIs such as Direct3D and DirectSound need to interact with hardware, and they do this through a device driver. Hardware manufacturers have to write these drivers for a particular DirectX version's device driver interface (or DDI), and test each individual piece of hardware to make them DirectX compatible. Some hardware devices only have DirectX compatible drivers (in other words, one must install DirectX in order to use that hardware). Early versions of DirectX included an up-to-date library of all of the DirectX compatible drivers currently available. This practice was stopped however, in favor of the web-based Windows Update driver-update system, which allowed users to download only the drivers relevant to their hardware, rather than the entire library.

    Prior to DirectX 10, DirectX was designed to be backward compatible with older drivers, meaning that newer versions of the APIs were designed to interoperate with older drivers written against a previous version's DDI. For example, a game designed for and running on Direct3D 9 with a graphics adapter driver designed for Direct3D 6 would still work, albeit possibly with gracefully degraded functionality. However, as of Windows Vista, due to the significantly updated DDI for Windows Display Driver Model drivers, Direct3D 10 cannot run on older hardware drivers.

    Various releases of Windows have included and supported various versions of DirectX, allowing newer versions of the operating system to continue running applications designed for earlier versions of DirectX until those versions can be gradually phased out in favor of newer APIs, drivers, and hardware.

    .NET Framework In 2002 Microsoft released a version of DirectX compatible with the Microsoft .NET Framework, thus allowing programmers to take advantage of DirectX functionality from within .NET applications using compatible languages such as managed C++ or the use of the C sharp programming language. This API was known as "Managed DirectX" (or MDX for short), and claimed to operate at 98% of performance of the underlying native DirectX APIs. In December 2005, February 2006, April 2006, and August 2006, Microsoft released successive updates to this library, culminating in a beta version called Managed DirectX 2.0. While Managed DirectX 2.0 consolidated functionality that had previously been scattered over multiple assemblies into a single assembly, thus simplifying dependencies on it for software developers, development on this version has subsequently been discontinued, and it is no longer supported. The Managed DirectX 2.0 library expired on October 5th, 2006.

    During the Game Developers Conference 2006 Microsoft presented the XNA Framework, a new managed version of DirectX (similar but not identical to Managed DirectX) that is intended to assist development of games by making it easier to integrate DirectX, High Level Shader Language (HLSL) and other tools in one package. It also supports the execution of managed code on the Xbox 360. The XNA Game Studio Express RTM was made available on December 11 2006, as a free download for Windows XP.

    Alternatives There are alternatives to the DirectX family of APIs, some more complete than others. While there is no unified solution that will do everything DirectX does, with a combination of libraries — Simple DirectMedia Layer, OpenMAX, OpenML, OpenGL, OpenAL, FMOD, etc. — one can implement a comparable but cross-platform and frequently free/open source solution.

    There are also alternative implementations that aim to provide the same API, such as the one in Wine (software).

    Additionally, because Direct3D 10 is not available on Windows XP, Cody Brocious has started the "Alky Project," which he intends to allow Direct3D 10 games to run on a computer with Windows XP installed. In concept, Alky compatibility libraries for Microsoft Direct3D 10 enabled games would allow them to run on platforms other than Windows Vista and increase hardware compatibility even on Vista, by compiling geometry shaders down to native machine code for execution on the CPU when the GPU is not capable of running it. This would reduce the need for an upgraded graphics card and operating system in order to use Direct3D 10 applications.

    See also DirectX alternatives

    References

    External links

    {{Infobox Software| name = DirectX| screenshot = | caption =| developer = Microsoft [2006| genre = [Application framework| website = DirectX Homepage-->

    Microsoft DirectX is a collection of [application programming interface    s 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 Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. DirectX, then, was the generic term for all of these Direct-something APIs, and that term became the name of the collection. Over the intervening years, some of these APIs have been deprecated and replaced, so that this naming convention is no longer absolute. In fact, the X has caught on to the point that it has replaced Direct as the common part in the names of new DirectX technologies, including XAct, XInput, and so forth.

    Direct3D (the 3D graphics API within DirectX) is widely used in the development of computer games for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox, and Microsoft Xbox 360. Direct3D is also used by other software applications for visualization and graphics tasks, most notably among the engineering sector for CAD/CAM, because of its ability to quickly Rendering (computer graphics) high-quality 3D graphics using DirectX-compatible graphics card. As Direct3D is the most widely recognized API in DirectX, it is not uncommon to see the name DirectX used in place of Direct3D.

    The interfaces that comprise DirectX include components for use by a running application (runtime components) as well as components for use by software developers at design time (the software development kit). The runtimes were originally redistributed by video game developer along with their games, but are now included as built-in parts of Microsoft Windows. 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.

    The latest versions of Direct3D, namely, Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 9Ex, are exclusive to Windows Vista. This is because there were extensive changes in the Windows graphics architecture, and in particular the introduction of the Windows Display Driver Model. This redesign of the graphics infrastructure for Windows Vista supports virtualizing graphics hardware to multiple applications and services such as the Desktop Window Manager, in contrast to the exclusive access afforded to DirectX applications on Windows XP. Both Direct3D 9Ex and Direct3D 10 rely on the WDDM infrastructure and WDDM drivers.

    Components from DirectX 6.1 (4.06.02.0436) running on
    Windows 95 and DirectX 1.0 running in Windows VistaDirectX functionality is provided in the form of Component Object Model interfaces, as well as a set of managed code interfaces.

    The components comprising DirectX are

    DirectX 10 For the list of games that (will) support DirectX 10, see List of games with DirectX 10 support.

    Windows Vista ships with DirectX 10 and is the only version of Windows for which it is offered, and it has a large number of changes: DirectInput will be deprecated in favor of XInput, from the Xbox team. Likewise, DirectSound will also be deprecated in favor of XACT. DirectX 10 has also dropped support for hardware accelerated audio, opting instead to render sound in software on the CPU.

    In order to achieve backwards compatibility with previous versions of Direct3D, DirectX 10 contains three versions of Direct3D:



    DirectX 10.1 DirectX 10.1 is an incremental update to DirectX 10.0 which will be shipped with, and require, Windows_Vista#Service_Pack_1 in January 2008.{{cite web|url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2177205,00.asp|title=Microsoft Unleashes First Service Pack for Vista|date=[2007-08-29 with DirectX 10.0 hardware, but the new features will not be available until 10.1 compliant hardware is released. The release mainly sets a few more image quality standards for graphics vendors, while giving developers more control over image quality.Features scheduled for DirectX 10.1 include:

    History In late 1994 Microsoft was just on the verge of releasing its next operating system, Windows 95. The main factor that would determine the value consumers would place on their new operating system very much rested on what programs would be able to run on it. Three Microsoft employees — Craig Eisler, Alex St. John, and Eric Engstrom — were concerned, because game programmer tended to see Microsoft's previous operating system, DOS, as a better platform for game programming, meaning few games would be developed for Windows 95 and the operating system would not be as much of a success.

    DOS allowed direct access to video cards, computer keyboard and computer mouse, sound card, and all other parts of the system, while Windows 95, with its protected memory model, restricted access to all of these, working on a much more standardized model. Microsoft needed a way that would let programmers get what they wanted, and they needed it quickly; the operating system was only months away from being released. Eisler, St. John, and Engstrom conspired together to fix this problem, with a solution that they eventually named DirectX.

    The first version of DirectX released was shipped September of 1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It was the Windows API replacement for the DCI and WinG APIs for Windows 3.1. A development team at ATI brought fundamental game graphics technology to the attention of Microsoft. The development of DirectX was led by the team of Eisler (development lead), St. John, and Engstrom (program manager). Simply put, it allowed all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 95, to incorporate high-performance multimedia. Eisler wrote about the frenzy to build DirectX 1 through 5 in his blog.

    Prior to DirectX's existence, Microsoft had already included OpenGL on their Windows NT platform. At the time, OpenGL required "high-end" hardware and was limited to engineering and Computer-aided design uses. Direct3D (introduced by Eisler, Engstrom, and St. John as an alternative to SGI's OpenGL) was intended to be a lightweight partner to the back then slower OpenGL for game use. As the power of graphics cards and the computers running them grew, OpenGL became the de-facto standard and a mainstream product. At that point a "battle" began between supporters of the cross-platform OpenGL and the Windows-only Direct3D, which many argued was another example of Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish business tactic (see Fahrenheit graphics API or Direct3D vs. OpenGL). Nevertheless, the other APIs of DirectX are often combined with OpenGL in computer games because OpenGL does not include all of DirectX's functionality (such as sound or joystick support). However, the combination of OpenGL and Simple DirectMedia Layer for this purpose is becoming increasingly popular.

    In a console-specific version, DirectX was used as a basis for Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360 video game console API. The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and NVIDIA, who developed the custom graphics hardware used by the original Xbox. The Xbox API is similar to DirectX version 8.1, but is non-updateable like other console technologies. The Xbox was code named DirectXbox, but this was shortened to Xbox for its commercial name.J. Allard, PC Pro Interview, April 2004

    In 2002 Microsoft released DirectX 9 with support for the use of much longer shader programs than before with pixel and vertex shader version 2.0. Microsoft has continued to update the DirectX suite since then, introducing shader model 3.0 in DirectX 9.0c, released in August 2004.

    As of April 2005, DirectShow was removed from DirectX and moved to the Microsoft Platform SDK instead. DirectX is, however, still required to build the DirectShow samples.

    Release history {| class="wikitable"|-! DirectX version! Version number! Operating system! Date released|-|DirectX 1.0||4.02.0095|| ||September 30 1995 OSR2 and NT 4.0||[June 5 1996 [1996 4.0 SP3 (and above)
    last supported version of DirectX for Windows NT 4.0||December 1996|-|DirectX 3.0b||4.04.00.0070||This was a very minor update to 3.0a
    that fixed a cosmetic problem with the Japanese version of Windows 95    ||December 1996|-|DirectX 4.0||Never launched|| |||-|DirectX 5.0||4.05.00.0155 (RC55)||Available as a beta for Windows NT 5.0 that would install on Windows NT 4.0||[July 16 1997||[May 5 1998 exclusive||[June 25 1998 for the [Dreamcast [1998 [1999 exclusive||[May 5 1999[1999||[February 17 2000 [2000 exclusive||[September 14 2000 [2000 [2001, [Windows Server 2003 and Xbox exclusive] 2001 [2001 [2002 [2002 [2003 [2003 [2004||[August 6 2004 format to some classes. ||Released bimonthly from October 2004 to August 2007, and quarterly thereafter; Latest version: [August, 2007 exclusive||[November 30 2006|}

    Notes:

  • DirectX 4 was never released. Raymond Chen explained in his book, The Old New Thing, that after DirectX 3 was released, Microsoft began developing versions 4 and 5 at the same time. Version 4 was to be a shorter-term release with small features, whereas version 5 would be a more substantial release. The lack of interest from game developers in the features slated for DirectX 4 resulted in its being shelved, and the corpus of documents that already distinguished the two new versions resulted in Microsoft choosing to not re-use version 4 to describe features intended for version 5.{{cite book
    • | title = The Old New Thing| edition = 1st edition| chapter = Etymology and History| pages = pg. 330| last = Chen| first = Raymond| authorlink = Raymond Chen| year = 2006| publisher = Pearson Education| id = ISBN 0-321-44030-7-->
  • The version number as reported by Microsoft's DxDiag tool (version 4.09.0000.0900 and higher) use the x.xx.xxxx.xxxx format for version numbers. However, Microsoft's site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/archive/default.asp?url=/archive/en-us/directx9_c_Dec_2004/directx/directxsdk/dxandxp.asp claims that the registry always has in the x.xx.xx.xxxx format. Put another way, when the above table lists a version as '4.09.00.0904' the registry may have it as '4.09.0000.0904'.


    • History of DirectX logo The X originally resembled a cross between a Hazard symbol#Radioactive sign and a propeller blade. Controversially, the original name for the DirectX project was the "Manhattan Project", a reference to the US nuclear weapons initiative and its ultimate outcome — the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conspiracy theorists have argued that this connotation is intentional, and that DirectX and its sister project, the Xbox (which shares a similar logo), are meant to displace Japanese videogame makers from their dominance of the industry. However, this meaning is publicly denied by Microsoft, who instead claims that it is merely artistic design. Furthermore, no sinister explanation is necessary; the simple (but less sensational) explanation is that the X in DirectX was chosen for its geek chic factor, and the X logo was chosen to accentuate this. Since both the name of the API and the logo were chosen years before Microsoft even considered entering the game console market — much less designed the Xbox — there is no basis for a claim that the X logo anticipated competition with Japanese console makers.

    Image:DirectX 1 logo.png|DirectX 1.0–6.0Image:DirectX 7 logo.png|DirectX 7.0Image:DirectX 8.0 logo.png|DirectX 8.0Image:Directx9.jpg|DirectX 9.0Image:DirectX10 logo.png|DirectX 10.0

    Awards and accolades On January 8th, 2007, DirectX (specifically, Direct3D) earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for Microsoft and partners AMD and NVIDIA Corporation "for pioneering work in near and real-time fully programmable shading via modern graphics processors."

    Compatibility APIs such as Direct3D and DirectSound need to interact with hardware, and they do this through a device driver. Hardware manufacturers have to write these drivers for a particular DirectX version's device driver interface (or DDI), and test each individual piece of hardware to make them DirectX compatible. Some hardware devices only have DirectX compatible drivers (in other words, one must install DirectX in order to use that hardware). Early versions of DirectX included an up-to-date library of all of the DirectX compatible drivers currently available. This practice was stopped however, in favor of the web-based Windows Update driver-update system, which allowed users to download only the drivers relevant to their hardware, rather than the entire library.

    Prior to DirectX 10, DirectX was designed to be backward compatible with older drivers, meaning that newer versions of the APIs were designed to interoperate with older drivers written against a previous version's DDI. For example, a game designed for and running on Direct3D 9 with a graphics adapter driver designed for Direct3D 6 would still work, albeit possibly with gracefully degraded functionality. However, as of Windows Vista, due to the significantly updated DDI for Windows Display Driver Model drivers, Direct3D 10 cannot run on older hardware drivers.

    Various releases of Windows have included and supported various versions of DirectX, allowing newer versions of the operating system to continue running applications designed for earlier versions of DirectX until those versions can be gradually phased out in favor of newer APIs, drivers, and hardware.

    .NET Framework In 2002 Microsoft released a version of DirectX compatible with the Microsoft .NET Framework, thus allowing programmers to take advantage of DirectX functionality from within .NET applications using compatible languages such as managed C++ or the use of the C sharp programming language. This API was known as "Managed DirectX" (or MDX for short), and claimed to operate at 98% of performance of the underlying native DirectX APIs. In December 2005, February 2006, April 2006, and August 2006, Microsoft released successive updates to this library, culminating in a beta version called Managed DirectX 2.0. While Managed DirectX 2.0 consolidated functionality that had previously been scattered over multiple assemblies into a single assembly, thus simplifying dependencies on it for software developers, development on this version has subsequently been discontinued, and it is no longer supported. The Managed DirectX 2.0 library expired on October 5th, 2006.

    During the Game Developers Conference 2006 Microsoft presented the XNA Framework, a new managed version of DirectX (similar but not identical to Managed DirectX) that is intended to assist development of games by making it easier to integrate DirectX, High Level Shader Language (HLSL) and other tools in one package. It also supports the execution of managed code on the Xbox 360. The XNA Game Studio Express RTM was made available on December 11 2006, as a free download for Windows XP.

    Alternatives There are alternatives to the DirectX family of APIs, some more complete than others. While there is no unified solution that will do everything DirectX does, with a combination of libraries — Simple DirectMedia Layer, OpenMAX, OpenML, OpenGL, OpenAL, FMOD, etc. — one can implement a comparable but cross-platform and frequently free/open source solution.

    There are also alternative implementations that aim to provide the same API, such as the one in Wine (software).

    Additionally, because Direct3D 10 is not available on Windows XP, Cody Brocious has started the "Alky Project," which he intends to allow Direct3D 10 games to run on a computer with Windows XP installed. In concept, Alky compatibility libraries for Microsoft Direct3D 10 enabled games would allow them to run on platforms other than Windows Vista and increase hardware compatibility even on Vista, by compiling geometry shaders down to native machine code for execution on the CPU when the GPU is not capable of running it. This would reduce the need for an upgraded graphics card and operating system in order to use Direct3D 10 applications.

    See also DirectX alternatives

    References

    External links



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    DirectX® 10
    One of the most exciting developments in Windows Vista is the groundbreaking graphics technology. Many of the newest Windows games take full advantage of the next-generation ...

    DirectX 9.0c - Computeractive
    The latest update to this driver ... Microsoft DirectX is designed to improve the running and display of applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-colour graphics ...

     

    Directx



     
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