This is probably a VERY stupid question, but I’ve heard great things about DirectX, including the competition. What exactly does it do? Does it only come with pro? What cool graphical features does it include? Sorry if it’s stupid, I’m confused :P.
Thanks for that. On my phone, however, can’t use LMGTFY ;). Like I said, it’s probably stupid.
DirectX is a rendering library. It is updated with every release of Windows.
…not… really. That’s a dramatic oversimplification.
DirectX is a series of primarily game development APIs including rendering systems, audio, and various input methods.
You’re thinking of Direct3D. That’s part of DirectX, but DirectX != Direct3D.
–Eric
DirectSound DirectInput :)) that brings me years back and I think it updates whenever microsoft wants…it has almost nothing to do with windows
but you could say that whenever it updated it means next gen graphics and there’s new technology to be used in 3D environments and all game engines including unity need to upgrade to use the new gen graphics because the game engine is the one who “talks” with directx
But that does nothing to my post count!
Usually the updates are carp though, like IIRC most everything went from Dx9 - Dx11(like Crysis) skipping Dx10.
No, D3D10 was a special case. They threw out the device capabilities system, meaning that D3D10 apps would only run on D3D10 hardware and couldn’t scale down; they also required Vista for it. Two decisions, combined with Vista’s general failure as a product, meant that implementing D3D10 had to be done as well as D3D9, and there wasn’t much benefit in it unless you were being paid off by MS/NVidia/ATI.
D3D11 fixed it by introducing the feature levels system, so you can now write for the D3D11 API but in a way that runs on D3D9 cards. It’s still Win7/Win8-only, but Win7 succeeded where Vista failed, to the extent that over 50% of Steam users are now on Win7 x64.
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DirectX solved a serious need for the Windows 3.x era at the time when games were switching from being all DOS based.
When Windows v3 took off (anything before v3 was pretty much crap), folks interested in bringing games to the Windows platform realized that there weren’t any decent APIs available that gave decent performance or any low level access to the video hardware to allow them to do the kinds of things they were used to under DOS.
The goal of Windows was to virtualize the hardware resources so you didn’t have to worry about writing your own drivers for everything (video, printer, etc.)
The performance just wasn’t there. So initially Microsoft came out with a small library called WinG which allowed the kinds of access required to the video hardware for game applications.
They later expanded on WinG and came out with DirectX which also included DirectInput, DirectSound and even DirectMusic.
Then as mentioned, Direct3D later was introduced.
DirectX pretty made it possible for the Windows platform to provide the kinds of access game developers needed (direct access to video memory, page flipping, palette manipulation, sound cards, etc.)
-Will
Wow that explains a lot, the DirectX name now makes perfect sense.
Ah okay.
That also explains the name of Microsoft’s console 
Microsoft did one thing very well early on: realize that computers are first and foremost entertainment devices. Video games more than anything made Windows successful, and many of these video games existed thanks to DirectX (sure there was OpenGL but for many years it was a mess as there was no solid leadership behind it’s development.)
BTW the first version of DirectX was actually introduced with Windows 95 R2, some reading WillBellJr’s post may think DirectX started with Win3.x but that was WinG. WinG was (from my understanding) not something that morphed into DirectX but a similar project in it’s own path that got discontinued with Windows 98 Second Edition. This means that throughout Win95R2 and Win98 (first edition) developers had a choice between DirectX and WinG.
Not a meaningful choice. WinG was like… three functions, for doing accelerated GDI blits. That was pretty much it.
GDI, lol, that brings back some memories…