Feature levels allow developers to unify the rendering pipeline under Direct3D 11 API and make use of API improvements such as better resource management and multithreading even on entry-level cards, though advanced features such as new shader models and rendering stages will only be exposed on up-level hardware.

Unreal Engine 1 provided an advanced software rasterizer and a hardware-accelerated rendering path using the Glide API, specifically developed for 3dfx GPUs, and was updated for OpenGL and Direct3D.

Other additions include better support for networked multiplayer commands, BSP level support, bump, sphere, and light mapping, pixel shader and vertex shaders, commands for physics control, multiple camera viewpoints, better interfaces to external DLLs, advanced sprite commands using Direct3D rendering for hardware acceleration, a particle system, and built-in queue and stack manipulation.

SwiftShader is an advanced software renderer with Direct3D 8 / 9 class features, including shaders.

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.

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.

* Direct3D for access to 3D hardware accelerated graphics.

As of DirectX 8, this component has been deprecated in favor of Direct3D, which provides more general high-performance graphics functionality ( as 2D rendering is a subset of 3D rendering ).

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.

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

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

Direct3D uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the graphics card, allowing for hardware acceleration of the entire 3D rendering pipeline or even only partial acceleration.

Integration with other DirectX technologies enables Direct3D to deliver such features as video mapping, hardware 3D rendering in 2D overlay planes, and even sprites, providing the use of 2D and 3D graphics in interactive media titles.

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 strives to continually update Direct3D to support the latest technology available on 3D graphics cards.

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 contained many powerful 3D graphics features, such as vertex shaders, pixel shaders, fog, bump mapping and texture mapping.

Direct3D 9Ex, in conjunction with DirectX 9 class WDDM drivers allows graphics memory to be virtualized and paged out to system memory, allows graphics operations to be interrupted and scheduled and allow DirectX surfaces to be shared across processes.

Unlike prior versions of the API, Direct3D 10 no longer uses " capability bits " ( or " caps ") to indicate which features are supported on a given graphics device.

Because Direct3D 10 hardware was comparatively rare after the initial release of Windows Vista and because of the massive installed base of non-Direct3D 10 compatible graphics cards, the first Direct3D 10-compatible games still provide Direct3D 9 render paths.

Direct3D 10. 1 sets a few more image quality standards for graphics vendors, and gives developers more control over image quality.

In 2011, Intel chipsets started supporting Direct3D 10. 1 with the introduction of HD graphics 2000 ( GMA HD ).

The aim of Direct3D is to abstract the communication between a graphics application and the graphics hardware drivers.

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.

Instead, it defines a minimum standard of hardware capabilities which must be supported for a display system to be " Direct3D 10 compatible ".

* The 3D capabilities in WPF are a subset of the full-feature set provided by Direct3D.

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.

Direct3D is a 3D API.

For example, if software programmed using Direct3D requires pixel shaders and the video card on the user's computer does not support that feature, Direct3D will not emulate it, although it will compute and render the polygons and textures of the 3D models, albeit at a usually degraded quality and performance compared to the hardware equivalent.

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 initially implemented " retained mode " and " immediate mode " 3D APIs.

Direct3D comes with D3DX, a library of tools designed to perform common mathematical calculations on vectors, matrices and colors, calculating look-at and projection matrices, spline interpolations, and several more complicated tasks, such as compiling or assembling shaders used for 3D graphic programming, compressed skeletal animation storage and matrix stacks.

It offered a notably large leap in 3D gaming performance and was the first fully Direct3D 7-compliant 3D accelerator.

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

It is one of the early games to adopt the use of 3D graphics hardware acceleration using Microsoft Direct3D.

Most often, 3D engines or the rendering systems in game engines are built upon a graphics application programming interface ( API ) such as Direct3D or OpenGL which provides a software abstraction of the graphics processing unit ( GPU ) or video card.

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.

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.

Direct3D offers full vertex software emulation but no pixel software emulation for features not available in hardware.

The first version of Direct3D immediate mode was based on an " execute buffer " programming model that Microsoft hoped hardware vendors would support directly.

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

Direct3D 10. 1 level hardware must support the following features:

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.