Direct3D is a high-performance, COM-based API for accessing graphics hardware (GPUs) in a device-independent way on Microsoft platforms.
Direct3D is a high-performance, COM-based API for accessing graphics hardware (GPUs) in a device-independent way on Microsoft platforms.
It is typically used for video game development, in contrast to the OpenGL API, which is more often used in data visualization tasks.
There are several versions of the Direct3D API, each of which corresponding to a different generation of graphics hardware.
- Direct3D 7 incorporated hardware-accelerated transformation and lighting (NVidia Geforce, ATi Radeon).
- Direct3D 8 added limited support for programmable graphics hardware (pixel and vertex shaders) using a specially-designed shader assembler syntax (NVidia Geforce 3, ATi Radeon 8500).
- Direct3D 9 greatly improved support for programmable shader hardware, allowing for fairly complex shader programs (NVidia Geforce FX, ATi Radeon 9500), as well as incorporating a high-level language for writing shader programs (HLSL, basically identical to NVidia Cg).
- Direct3D 10 featured a completely restructured API while removing support for fixed-function hardware and assembler shader programs (NVidia Geforce 8). While previous versions of Direct3D were backwards-compatible, Direct3D 10 works only on capable hardware.
- Direct3D 11 added support for different levels of graphics hardware functionality, unifying support for "modern" (fully-programmable) as well as "legacy" (fixed-function or partially-programmable) GPUs.
Microsoft's XBox game consoles' GPUs are programmed using a variant of Direct3D (a Direct3D 8 variant on the original XBox, and an improved Direct3D 9 variant on the XBox 360, with added support for some Direct3D 10 features such as tesselation).
More information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D
