DirectX is a suite of application programming interfaces API and programming functions used to develop, manipulate and manage graphic and multimedia components in Windows-based software.
It is a proprietary Microsoft framework for its suite of Windows operating systems OS , starting with Windows 95 and through subsequent versions. DirectX serves as the bridge between the underlying hardware and development platform and helps developers access the underlying hardware's audio and visual capabilities through pre-developed APIs. DirectX is mainly used to develop video games and multimedia applications that require enhanced interaction and automation from system hardware.
By: Justin Stoltzfus Contributor, Reviewer. By: Satish Balakrishnan. Dictionary Dictionary Term of the Day. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website.
These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. In the past, with earlier versions of DirectX on older Windows systems, you would have to install DirectX manually. Most of the time, a given game would bundle the minimum version of DirectX it needed. If that installer detected a newer version of that DirectX generation on the system it would simply install nothing.
Each DirectX version e. Your older games will run just fine on your shiny new Windows 10 computer. Sydney Butler is a social scientist and technology fanatic who tries to understand how people and technology coexist.
He has two decades of experience as a freelance computer technician and more than a decade as a technologies researcher and instructor. Sydney has been a professional technology writer for more than five years and covers topics such as VR, Gaming, Cyber security and Transhumanism.
Read Sydney's Full Bio. We hate spam too, unsubscribe at any time. For the PC, however, game developers face an infinite number of hardware configurations. Getting games to work correctly over a vast universe of graphics cards, motherboards and so on seems like pulling a rabbit out of a magician's hat.
This is why, based on what's been whispered over the last decade, developers have swarmed around the consoles: they have decent hardware on the cheap, piracy is low and developers virtually have direct access to the hardware components when programming their software.
This latter feature is key, as developers can squeeze every ounce of performance out of hardware as well as take advantage of built-in component features.
DirectX, simply put, is software developed by Microsoft that talks to a PC's hardware components. Specifically, it's a collection of application programming interfaces, or APIs, designed to handle tasks related to rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics, rendering video and playing audio on the Windows platform. It rivals OpenGL, another graphics-oriented API suite introduced in , that's open source and in continuous development by the Khronos Group technology consortium.
DirectX first appeared in Windows At the time, most PC games ran on the old DOS platform, which allowed developers to "talk" directly to PC components such as the audio card, video card, mouse and more. Many veteran PC gamers should remember the old days of editing the Config.
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