DirectX
DirectX is a collection of
APIs for easily handling tasks related to
game programming on the
Microsoft Windows operating system. It is most widely used in the development of
computer games for Microsoft Windows. The DirectX
SDK is available free from
Microsoft. The DirectX runtime was originally redistributed by
computer game developers along with their games, but later it was included in Windows. Game developers still often include an updated version of DirectX that prompts installation automatically after the game installation to ensure proper program functionality. DirectX 9.0c is the latest release version of DirectX. Direct3D 10 Beta is available as of
Windows Vista build 5238. The latest versions of DirectX are still usually included with
PC games because the API is often updated.
The various components of DirectX are in the form of
COM-compliant objects.
The components comprising DirectX are :
*
DirectX Graphics, comprising two APIs (DirectX 8.0 onwards):
**
DirectDraw: for drawing 2D Graphics (
raster graphics) (now mostly deprecated, although still in use by many)
**
Direct3D (D3D): for drawing
3D graphics *
DirectInput: used to process data from a
keyboard,
mouse,
joystick, or other
game controllers
*
DirectPlay: for networked communication of games
*
DirectSound: for the playback and recording of waveform sound
**
DirectSound3D (DS3D): for the playback of
3D sounds.
*
DirectMusic: for playback of soundtracks authored in
DirectMusic Producer*
DirectSetup: for the installation of DirectX components, not really an API
*
DirectX Media: comprising DirectAnimation,
DirectShow, Direct3D Retained Mode and DirectX Transform for animation, media streaming applications, and interactivity respectively
*
DirectX Media Objects: support for streaming objects such as encoders, decoder and effects
For
Windows Vista and DirectX 10, DirectInput will be deprecated in favor of XInput, from the Xbox team. Likewise, DirectSound will also be deprecated in favor of
XACT. As of DirectX 9.0c, however, neither XInput nor XACT have all of the capabilities of DirectInput or DirectSound, and according to
MS documentation on XInput, XInput is
specifically designed for the Xbox 360 controllers.
DirectPlay is deprecated in favor of
Xbox Live whereas
DirectShow will be deprecated in favor of
Media Foundation, a different set of APIs debuting with Windows Vista to handle audio and video playback.
DirectMusic will probably remain the only component intact.
Originally targeted at the
game development industry, DirectX has become more widely used among other software production industries. Most notably, Direct3D is becoming more popular among the engineering sector because of its ability to quickly render high-quality 3D graphics using the latest 3D
graphics hardware.
In
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
programmers 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,
keyboards and
mice,
sound devices 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 release version of DirectX was shipped September of
1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It was the
Win32 replacement for the poorly designed APIs for the
Win16 operating system (DCI and
WinG). 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
CAD 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 or
Direct3D vs. OpenGL). Nevertheless, the other APIs of DirectX are often combined with OpenGL in many
computer games because OpenGL does not include all of DirectX's functionality (such as sound or joystick support).
In a console specific version, DirectX was used as a basis for Microsoft's
Xbox console API. The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and
NVIDIA, who developed the custom graphics hardware used by the console. 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 [
1].
Release history
| DirectX version | Logo | Version number | Operating system! Date released |
|---|
| DirectX 1.0 | | 4.02.0095 | | September 30, 1995 |
| DirectX 2.0 / 2.0a | | 4.03.00.1096 | Windows 95 OSR2 and NT 4.0 | June 5, 1996 |
| DirectX 3.0 / 3.0a | | 4.04.0068 / 70 | Windows NT 4.0 SP3
last supported version of DirectX for Windows NT 4.0 | September 15, 1996 |
| DirectX 4.0 | | Never launched | |
| DirectX 5.0 | | 4.05.00.0155 | Available as a beta for Windows NT 5.0 that would install on Windows NT 4.0 | July 16, 1997 |
| DirectX 5.1 | | | | December 1, 1997 |
| DirectX 5.2 | | 4.05.01.1600 | DirectX 5.2 release for Windows 95 | May 5, 1998 |
| DirectX 5.2 | | 4.05.01.1998 | Windows 98 | May 5, 1998 |
| DirectX 6.0 | | 4.06.00.0318 | last version of DirectX Media for Windows NT 4.0 | August 7, 1998 |
| DirectX 6.1 | | 4.06.02.0436 | Windows 98 SE | February 3, 1999 |
| DirectX 7.0 | | 4.07.00.0700 | Windows 2000 | September 22, 1999 |
| DirectX 7.0a | | 4.07.00.0716 | | ???, 1999 |
| DirectX 7.1 | | 4.07.01.3000 | Windows ME | September 16, 1999 |
| DirectX 8.0 | | 4.08.00.???? (RC0) | | September 30, 2000 |
| 4.08.00.0400 (RC14) | Xbox
| November 3, 2000 |
| 4.08.00.0400 (RC14) + installer fixes | Last supported version
for Windows 95 | November 7, 2000 |
| DirectX 8.1 | | 4.08.01.0810
4.08.01.0881 (RC7) | Windows XP | November 12, 2001 |
| DirectX 9.0 | | 4.09.0000.0900 | Windows Server 2003 | December 24, 2002 |
| DirectX 9.0a | | 4.09.0000.0901 | | March 26, 2003 |
| DirectX 9.0b | | 4.09.0000.0902 (RC2) | | August 13, 2003 |
| DirectX 9.0c | | 4.09.0000.0904 (RC0) | Windows XP SP2 | August 9, 2004 |
| DirectX 9.0c | | 4.09.0000.0904 | Compatible with all Windows OS versions that 9.0c (RC0) was compatible with
First version to include D3DX DLL's | December 9, 2005 |
| DirectX 9.0c - August, December, February, April, June | | 4.09.0000.0904 | Windows XP
August 2005 was the last build to support Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME and Windows 2000.
The updates offered Major Security Fixes, and speed improvements.
The December, and February updates also add the XML format to some classes. These updates are primarily to D3DX and only affected developers and redistributable packages, but not the core runtime. They come bimonthly and should not be downloaded unless a piece of software specifically asks for them.|- | DirectX 9.0L | | unknown | |
| D3D 10 (coming with Windows Vista) | | (?) | New version of Direct3D only for Windows Vista | |
Hardware manufacturers have to write
drivers for and test each individual piece of hardware to make them DirectX compatible. Many modern hardware devices only have DirectX compatible drivers (in other words, you must install DirectX before you will be able 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.
Some drivers only support one version of DirectX. But DirectX is
backward compatible, which means that newer versions support the older versions. For example, if one has DirectX 9 installed on one's system and runs a game that was written for DirectX 6, it should still work. The game will use what is called the DirectX 6 "interface." Every version of DirectX must support every previous version of DirectX. This is a positive consequence of the
COM model used for this API.
Microsoft has several development projects related to DirectX underway.
Microsoft is currently working on a large update to the Direct3D API. Originally called
Windows Graphics Foundation, DirectX 10, and later DirectX Next, but currently referred to as Direct3D 10, it will appear as part of
Windows Vista. Version 10 will represent a departure from the driver model of DirectX Graphics 9.0, with the addition of a scheduler and memory virtualization system. Direct3D 10 will forego the current DirectX practice of using "capability bits" to indicate which features are active on the current hardware. Instead, Direct3D 10 will define a minimum standard of hardware capabilities which must be supported for a display system to be "Direct3D 10 compatible". According to Microsoft, Direct3D 10 will be able to display graphics up to 8 times faster than DirectX Graphics 9.0c. In addition, Direct3D 10 will incorporate Microsoft Shader Model 4.0.
Microsoft is also developing
XNA, which is a framework designed to assist development of games by making it easier to integrate DirectX,
High Level Shader Language (HLSL) and other tools in one package.
Although somewhat in its infancy, during 2002
Microsoft released a version of DirectX compatible with the Microsoft
.NET Framework, thus allowing programmers to take advantage of .NET features (such as the use of the
C# and
Visual Basic programming languages) simultaneously with DirectX development. This API is known as "
Managed DirectX" and performance is claimed to be 98% of that of native DirectX software.
In December 2005, February 2006, and April 2006 Microsoft released a version of DirectX that is designed for the .NET 2.0 framework. In older versions DirectX was split apart into different modules, this has changed with the .NET 2.0 version, it is now a single file and is much easier to use. However, the .NET 2.0 version of DirectX is not a finalized version; it is still a beta. During the GDC 2006 Microsoft presented the XNA Framework, which this 2.0 version will be merged into and which will allow for the execution of managed code on the Xbox 360. There is no announced release date for the XNA framework.
Microsoft will also make the requirements for
GPU manufacturers to claim to be DirectX 10 compatiable much stricter, with only three features optional.
[http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2000442,00.asp]. The intention of this is so that game developers will know all the features that the graphics cards have, and so they will be able to make games more effectively, by utilising all the features of DirectX without worrying about making their games be able to function without certain features.
DirectX 10 is available exclusively to Vista, which means that computers that aren't running Vista will not be able to run later applications which require DirectX 10.
*
Graphics Device Interface (GDI)
*
General Graphics Interface (GGI)
*
Graphics pipeline*
Microsoft's DirectX site*
Canadian Content download site*
Microsoft's MSDN documentation & resource center for DirectX (for programmers)
*
DirectAnimation (MSDN)
*
DirectX Transform (MSDN)
*
GameDev's FAQ on DirectX*
Old DirectX downloads at OldVersion.com*
What is DirectX? A small article on DirectX*
Microsoft Ships DirectX 6.1*
Wikitechia article on missing DirectX dlls due to periodic 9.0c updates.
Programmer resources
*
32Bits - Beginner to advanced tutorials covering 2D and 3D effects
*
Microsoft MVP Robert Dunlop's DirectX Articles section*
Gamedev.net's DirectX Articles section*
Direct3D vs. OpenGL: Which API to Use When, Where, and Why*
Drunken Hyena - tutorials, code, utilities, and games
*
Andy Pike's DirectX8 Tutorials - covering 2D, 3D, sound, music, and input
*
CodeSampler.com - Code samples and tutorials for Direct3D game programming using C++ and C#
*
Managed Direct3D - Craig Andera's C# Direct3D Tutorial
*
NeXe - Archive of NeXe tutorials (Direct3D 8), at archive.org
*
NeXe - NeXe's new site/wiki
*
Managed Direct3D - Pieter Germishuys's C# Direct3D Tutorial
*
MDXInfo - Website dedicated to tutorials and samples for Managed DirectX in C#
*
ZophusX - Direct3D tutorials in C# and C++, geared towards beginners
*
The ZBuffer - News and articles for Managed DirectX and XNA framework
*
Riemer's DirectX Tutorials - Riemer's DirectX Tutorials for C# and C++, including samples for terrain rendering
*
DirectTutorial.com - DirectX 9 Tutorial for game programming
*
TripleBuffer - Archive of TripleBuffer's old dx9 tutorials.
*
TripleBuffer - TripleBuffers's new DirectX9 tutorial site.
*
Just Code It - Site with Managed DirectX 9 tutorials on various issues including terrain rendering.
*
DirectX and MinGW - Peter Puck's Details regarding DirectX and MinGW import library issues
*
MinGW + DirectX - mingw compiling DirectX apps
