Direct3D 6. 0 introduced numerous features to cover contemporary hardware ( such as multitexture and stencil buffers ) as well as optimized geometry pipelines for x87, SSE and 3DNow!

Support of the full Direct3D 7 API also assured the card of a strong future, unlike its initial Direct3D 6 based competition.

The graphics controller had Direct3D 6. 0 and OpenGL support, although it was a very low-performance product for 3D acceleration.

Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth.

Direct3D ( the 3D graphics API within DirectX ) is widely used in the development of video games for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360 and some Sega Dreamcast games.

Direct3D is also used by other software applications for visualization and graphics tasks such as CAD / CAM engineering.

As Direct3D is the most widely publicized component of DirectX, it is common to see the names " DirectX " and " Direct3D " used interchangeably.

Microsoft released Direct3D in 1995, which eventually became the main competitor of OpenGL.

Its main competitor ( Direct3D from Microsoft ) runs only on Microsoft Windows-based machines including the Dreamcast and Xbox consoles.

Further examples include some of the early versions of the pixel shader languages embedded in Direct3D and OpenGL extensions, or a series of mathematical formulae in a spreadsheet with no cycles.

It was, in fact, disabled in the Direct3D renderer by default ( but could be re-enabled in the Unreal. ini file ) due to performance and quality issues caused by the driver and present even on hardware many times more powerful than the original 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics.

When Unreal was finally released, Microsoft's Direct3D API was growing almost exponentially in popularity and Epic was fairly quick to develop a renderer for their game engine.

However, the Direct3D renderer, released initially to support the new Matrox G200, was less capable and slower than the Glide support, especially in the beginning when it was unstable, slow, and had many graphics quality issues.

Microsoft's Direct3D 9. 0 now chooses at runtime processor-specific implementations of its own math operations, including the use of SIMD-capable instructions.

GPLs lack of inbuilt support for 3D accelerator cards other than those produced by 3dfx and Rendition contributed to a decrease in sales when those cards became obsolete, since at the time there was no Direct3D support.

An out-of-the-box copy of GPL lacks several features that one might expect from a modern driving simulation, and so most people add as a matter of course several patches: the official version 1. 2 patch that adds force feedback ; a second patch to add Direct3D and / or OpenGL support ; and a third patch that gets around a problem that prevents the original game from working on computers with CPUs faster than 1. 4 GHz.

* Direct3D for access to 3D hardware accelerated graphics.

A programmer could use DirectDraw to draw 3D graphics, but the rendering would be slow compared to an API such as Direct3D which does support 3D hardware acceleration.

As of DirectX version 8. 0, DirectDraw was merged into a new package called DirectX Graphics, which is really just Direct3D with a few DirectDraw API additions.

Developers have been instructed to use textured quads in Direct3D for 2D graphics.

Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems ( Windows 95 and above ), and for other platforms through the open source software Wine.

Direct3D is used to render three dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games.

This resulted in the first version of Direct3D that shipped in DirectX 2. 0 and DirectX 3. 0.

Only two games that sold a significant volume, Lego Island and Lego Rock Raiders, were based on the Direct3D retained mode, so Microsoft did not update the retained mode after DirectX 3. 0.

Direct3D 5. 0 introduced the DrawPrimitive API that eliminated the need for applications to construct execute buffers.

Direct3D 7. 0 introduced the. dds texture format and support for transform and lighting hardware acceleration ( first available on PC hardware with NVIDIA's GeForce ), as well as the ability to allocate vertex buffers in hardware memory.

Direct3D 7. 0 also augmented DirectX support for multitexturing hardware, and represents the pinnacle of fixed-function multitexture pipeline features: although powerful, it was so complicated to program that a new programming model was needed to expose the shading capabilities of graphics hardware.

Direct3D 8. 0 introduced programmability in the form of vertex and pixel shaders, enabling developers to write code without worrying about superfluous hardware state.

Direct3D 8. 0 and its programmable shading capabilities were the first major departure from an OpenGL-style fixed-function architecture, where drawing is controlled by a complicated state machine.

Direct3D 8. 0 also eliminated DirectDraw as a separate API.

Direct3D 9. 0 added a new version of the High Level Shader Language, support for floating-point texture formats, Multiple Render Targets, and texture lookups in the vertex shader.

Direct3D 9. 0Ex was previously known as version 1. 0 of Windows Graphics Foundation ( WGF ).

Originally called WGF 2. 0 ( Windows Graphics Foundation 2. 0 ), then DirectX 10 and DirectX Next, Direct3D 10 features an updated shader model 4. 0 and optional interruptibility for shader programs ..

Unlike Direct3D 10 which strictly required Direct3D 10-class hardware and driver interfaces, Direct3D 10. 1 runtime can run on Direct3D 10. 0 hardware using a concept of " feature levels ", but new features will be supported exclusively by new hardware.

It uses a more powerful game engine that supports 3D acceleration using Direct3D 5. 0.

After renaming it as Direct3D 3. 0, Microsoft released it as the primary 3D API for Windows 95 and game programming.

Direct3D 5. 0 was the first version of the burgeoning API to gain widespread adoption in the gaming market, and it competed directly with many more hardware specific, often proprietary graphics libraries, while OpenGL maintained a strong following.

Direct3D also allows applications to run fullscreen instead of embedded in a window, though they can still run in a window if programmed for that feature.

That is, it contains many commands for 3D rendering ; however, since version 8, Direct3D has superseded the old DirectDraw framework and also taken responsibility for the rendering of 2D graphics.

Microsoft has also hinted at other features such as order independent transparency, which was never exposed by the Direct3D API but supported almost transparently by early Direct3D hardware such as Videologic's PowerVR line of chips.

Direct3D 11. 1 also features minor updates to the shader language, such as larger constant buffers and optional double-precision instructions, as well as improved blending modes and mandatory support for 16-bit color formats to improve the performance of entry-level GPUs such as Intel HD Graphics.

DXUT ( also called the sample framework ) is a layer built on top of the Direct3D API.

MPlayer also supports a variety of different output drivers for displaying video, including VDPAU, the X video extension, OpenGL, DirectX, Direct3D, Quartz Compositor, VESA, Framebuffer, SDL and rarer ones such as ASCII art and Blinkenlights.

By October 2002, with the introduction of the ATI Radeon 9700 ( also known as R300 ), the world's first Direct3D 9. 0 accelerator, pixel and vertex shaders could implement looping and lengthy floating point math, and in general were quickly becoming as flexible as CPUs, and orders of magnitude faster for image-array operations.

The engine used Direct3D to take advantage of hardware acceleration, but also had a software 3D engine for those computers without 3D cards.

GoldSrc, the engine derived from the Quake engine by Valve Corporation for Half-Life ( 1998 ), added Direct3D support, and a skeletal framework to better render the NPCs, and also greatly improved the NPCs artificial intelligence ( AI ) compared to the Quake engine.

Optionally, an application using a Direct3D 10 interface and Direct3D 10 hardware may also specify a geometry shader.