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 11. 1 is an update to the API that will initially ship with Windows 8.

* DirectX – Collection of API's in which Direct3D is implemented

Game developers clamored for more direct control of the hardware's activities than the Direct3D retained mode could provide.

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.

After a short time on the market, RenderMorphics was purchased by Microsoft in February 1995 and Reality Lab formed the basis for Direct3D ( splitting into separate immediate mode and retained mode APIs ).

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

A team in Redmond took over development of the Direct3D Immediate mode, while Servan's RenderMorphics team continued work on the Retained mode.

Direct3D is an Immediate mode graphics API.

Direct3D immediate mode presents three main abstractions: devices, resources and swap chains ( see attached diagram ).

* Fullscreen mode: The Direct3D application generates all of the graphical output for a display device.

In this mode Direct3D automatically captures Alt-Tab and sets / restores screen resolution and pixel format without the programmer intervention.

Like the competing ATI Rage Pro, RIVA 128 was never able to accelerate the popular Unreal Engine in Direct3D mode due to missing hardware features.

Although no games released after 1999 depend on Glide for 3D acceleration ( Direct3D and OpenGL are used instead ), Glide emulation is still needed to run older games in hardware accelerated mode.

However, modern computers can run the game in accelerated mode with the wrappers nGlide, dgVoodoo, OpenGlide or zeckensack's Glide wrapper, which translate Glide calls respectively into Direct3D or OpenGL calls.

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.

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 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.

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.

Direct3D exposes the advanced graphics capabilities of 3D graphics hardware, including z-buffering, spatial anti-aliasing, alpha blending, mipmapping, atmospheric effects, and perspective-correct texture mapping.

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.

Direct3D is a 3D API.

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.

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

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.

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

Rather than adopt OpenGL as a gaming API, Microsoft chose to continue improving Direct3D, not only to be competitive with OpenGL, but to compete more effectively with proprietary APIs such as 3dfx's Glide.

The Wine project has working implementations of the Direct3D 8, 9 and 10 APIs ( they are, as of 23 July 2012, 100 %, 78 % and 79 % complete respectively ).

This sparked off a massive debate, both in Microsoft and out, about the merits of the two APIs and whether or not Direct3D should be promoted.

This strategy differed from that of other 3D APIs of the era ( Direct3D, OpenGL, and QuickDraw 3D ), which hid low-level hardware details behind an " abstraction layer ", with the goal of providing application developers a standard, hardware-neutral interface.

By 2000, the improved performance of Direct3D and OpenGL on the average personal computer, coupled with the huge variety of new 3D cards on the market, the widespread support of these standard APIs by the game developer community and the closure of 3dfx, would make Glide obsolete.

QD3D provided a high-level API with a rich set of 3D primitives that was generally much more full-featured and easier to develop than low-level APIs such as OpenGL or Direct3D.

Direct3D and OpenGL are competing application programming interfaces ( APIs ) which can be used in applications to render 2D and 3D computer graphics, taking advantage of hardware acceleration when available.

* Drivers for major operating systems and APIs: Windows 95, Windows 3. 1x, Windows NT, IBM OS / 2 2. 1 and 3. 0 ( Warp ), ADI 4. 2, Direct3D, BRender, RenderWare and OpenGL

In 1999 – 2000, a number of companies created stereoscopic LC shutter glasses kits for the Windows PCs which worked with application and games written for Direct3D and OpenGL 3D graphics APIs.

:* Direct3D and BRender APIs supported

The stencil buffer and its modifiers can be accessed in computer graphics APIs like OpenGL and Direct3D.