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.

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

The NVidia Island demo uses Direct3D 11 to create lifelike water and land, with varying levels of detail.

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 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The architecture features 3D acceleration based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8. 1 and OpenGL 1. 3, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R100 design.

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.

The game supports software or Direct3D rendering, but requires 16-bit color ( the game will not launch if the Windows desktop is set to 32-bit color ).

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.

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 ).

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.

Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface ( API ).

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.

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.

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. 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.

An extension only available in Windows Vista, called Direct3D 9Ex ( previously versioned 9. 0L ), allows the use of the advantages offered by Windows Vista's Windows Display Driver Model ( WDDM ) and is used for Windows Aero.

The Direct3D 11 runtime is able to run on Direct3D 9 and 10. x-class hardware and drivers, expanding the functionality first introduced in Direct3D 10. 1 runtime.

Feature levels 9_1, 9_2 and 9_3 encapsulate various features of popular Direct3D 9 cards, and feature levels 10_0 and 10_1 refer to Direct3D 10 and 10. 1 respectively ; each upper level is a strict superset of a lower level.

Direct3D 11. 1 is an update to the API that will initially ship with Windows 8.