DirectX's history

Computer Store DirectX is not a pure graphics API. It is a widely used API developed by Microsoft Corporation. It includes Direct Graphics (Direct 3D+Direct Draw), Direct Input, Direct Play. Multiple components such as Direct Sound, Direct Show, Direct Setup, and Direct Media Objects provide a complete set of multimedia interface solutions. It's just an excellent performance in 3D graphics, making it bleak in other aspects. DirectX was originally developed to compensate for the lack of graphics and sound processing capabilities of the Windows 3.1 system, and has evolved into an interface that has a decisive influence on all aspects of the entire multimedia system. DirectX 1.0 The first generation of DirectX was unsuccessful. Many hardware were not supported at the time of launch. At that time, the professional graphics API-OpenGL was basically adopted. The lack of hardware support became the biggest obstacle to its popularity. DirectX 1.0 is the first program that can read hardware information directly. It provides more direct read graphics hardware performance (such as block movement on the display card) and basic sound and input device functions (functions), enabling the development of games to achieve two-dimensional (2D) images. accelerate. At this time, DirectX does not include all the 3D functions now, and it is still in its infancy. DirectX 2.0 DirectX 2.0 has made some improvements in 2D graphics, adding some dynamic effects, using Direct 3D technology. This way DirectX 2.0 is quite different from DirectX 1.0. In DirectX 2.0, three-dimensional (3D) images were accelerated using the “simple simulation and RGB simulation”. DirectX 2.0 also uses a more user-friendly user setup program and corrects many of the problems with the application interface. Starting with DirectX 2.0, the entire DirectX design architecture has been largely completed. DirectX 3.0 DirectX 3.0 was introduced shortly after the release of Windows 95 in the last version of 1997. At this time, 3D games began to gain popularity, and DirectX gradually gained recognition from hardware and software vendors. In 1997, there were three application interface standards, namely the professional OpenGL interface, Microsoft's DirectX D interface and 3DFX's Glide interface. At that time, 3DFX was the most powerful graphics card manufacturer, and its Glide interface was naturally the most widely used. However, with the decline of 3DFX and the decline of Voodoo graphics, the Glide interface gradually disappeared. DirectX 3.0 is a simple upgrade to DirectX 2.0 that does not have a lot of changes to DirectX 2.0. Includes some modifications and upgrades to DirectSound (for 3D sound features) and DirectPlay (for games/network). DirectX 3.0 integrates simpler 3D effects and is not very mature. DirectX 5.0 Microsoft did not introduce DirectX 4.0, but directly introduced DirectX 5.0. This version has made a big change to Direct3D, adding 3D effects such as atomization effect and Alpha blending to enhance the sense of space and realism in 3D games, and also added S3 texture compression technology. At the same time, DirectX 5.0 has been enhanced in other components, and has been improved in sound cards and game controllers to support more devices. Therefore, the development of DirectX to DirectX 5.0 has really matured. At this point, the DirectX performance is not inferior to other 3D APIs, and it has a tendency to stay behind. When DirectX 6.0 DirectX 6.0 was introduced, Glide, one of its biggest competitors, has gradually gone down, and DirectX has been recognized by most manufacturers. In DirectX 6.0, technologies such as bilinear filtering and trilinear filtering to optimize 3D image quality have been added, and the 3D technology in the game has gradually entered a mature stage. The biggest feature of DirectX 7.0 DirectX 7.0 is support for T&L, the Chinese name is "Coordinate transformation and light source”. Any object in a 3D game has a coordinate. When the object moves, its coordinates change. This refers to the coordinate transformation. In addition to the scene + object, the 3D game needs light. Without the light, there is no 3D object performance. Whether it is real-time 3D games or 3D image rendering, plus 3D rendering of lights is the most resource-intensive. Although there are related technologies in OpenGL, they have never appeared in civilian-grade hardware before. Before T&L was introduced, the position conversion and lighting required the CPU to calculate. The faster the CPU speed, the smoother the game performance. After using the T&L function, the calculation of these two effects is calculated by the GPU of the display card, so that the CPU can be freed from the busy work. In other words, with a T&L graphics card, using DirectX 7.0, even without a high-speed CPU, you can run 3D games smoothly. The introduction of DirectX 8.0 DirectX 8.0 triggered a graphics card revolution. It introduced the concept of “pixel rendering” for the first time. It also has a Pixel Shader and a Vertex Shader, which is reflected in the effects of dynamic lighting. effect. Compared to the fixed light and shadow conversion that hardware T&L only implements, the VS and PS units are more flexible, making the GPU truly a programmable processor. This means that programmers can greatly reduce the difficulty of building 3D scenes through them. Through the rendering of VS and PS, it is easy to create a real surface dynamic ripple effect. At this point, the authority of DirectX was finally built. DirectX 9.0 At the end of 2002, Microsoft released DirectX 9.0. The rendering accuracy of the PS unit in DirectX 9 has reached floating point precision, and the traditional hardware T&L unit has also been eliminated. The new VertexShader programming is much more complicated than before. The new VertexShader standard adds process control, more constants, and the number of coloring instructions per program has increased to 1024. PS 2.0 has a fully programmable architecture, real-time calculus of texture effects, dynamic texture mapping, and does not occupy memory. In theory, the resolution of texture mapping is improved by an unlimited amount. In addition, PS1.4 can only support 28 hardware instructions. At the same time, 6 materials are operated, while PS2.0 can support 160 hardware instructions, and 16 material quantities can be operated at the same time. The new high-precision floating-point data specification can use multiple texture maps, and the number of operable instructions can be arbitrarily long. The level of display is easy to implement. VS 2.0 significantly improves the VS performance of the old version (DirectX8) by adding the flexibility of the Vertex program. The new control instructions can replace the previously dedicated separate coloring program with a common program, which is many times more efficient; Reduce work time and improve processing efficiency; increase the number of shaded instructions from 128 to 256. Adding the processing function of floating point data, previously only integers can be processed, which improves the rendering precision and makes the final processed color format reach the movie level. Breaking through the mathematical limitations of the previous limitations on PC graphics quality, its rendering pipeline has been upgraded to 128-bit floating point color, making it easier for game programmers to create more beautiful effects. Programmer programming is easier. The DirectX version supported by the graphics card has become the standard for evaluating the performance of the graphics card. From the version of DirectX supported by the graphics card, the user can distinguish the performance of the graphics card and select the graphics card product suitable for him.