A new real-time software rasterizer, WARP, designed to emulate complete feature set of Direct3D 10. 1, is included with Windows 7 ; its performance is said to be on par with lower-end 3D cards on multi-core CPUs.

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 11 was released as part of Windows 7.

First seen in the Release Candidate version, Windows 7 integrates the first released Direct3D 11 support.

Windows Vista Platform Update includes full-featured Direct3D 11 runtime and DXGI 1. 1 update, as well as other related components from Windows 7 like WARP, Direct2D, DirectWrite, and WIC.

Work on implementing Direct3D 10 began in Wine 1. 1. 7, using OpenGL via WGL.

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

The Radeon VE had the advantage of somewhat better dual-monitor display software, but it did not offer hardware T & L, an emerging 3D rendering feature of the day that was the major attraction of Direct3D 7.

Direct3D 7. 0 introduced support for hardware-accelerated transform and lighting ( T & L ) for Direct3D, while OpenGL already had this capability already exposed from its inception.

* Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform, a Direct3D 10. 1 software rasterizer to be included in Windows 7 and Windows Vista

The D3DX library was introduced in Direct3D 7, and subsequently was improved in Direct3D 9.

However, S3TL shipped completely non-functional, primarily because initial drivers were Direct3D 6-based ( Direct3D 7 was the first release with HW T & L support ).

It has 2 vertex shaders and a legacy Direct3D 7 TCL unit, marketed as Charisma Engine II.

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 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!

Direct3D 6. 0 also included support for features that had been licensed by Microsoft from specific hardware vendors for inclusion in the API, in exchange for the time-to-market advantage to the licensing vendor.

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.