Hello Brendhan,

15 April, 2000, 01:35:35, you wrote:

BH> Ok here is what I believe to be a loaded question in multiple
BH> parts.
BH> 1. What is direct x?

> Brendan-I'm going to take a shot at this,I'm not sure if it is right,maybe
> someone will correct me.
> Directx allows game designers to write software that can communicate
> directly with video and sound hardware,which is necessary for high
> performance gaming...
DirectX provides a standard interface for graphics and audio hardware
of your computer. The interface is the same regardless of the make and
model of your hardware. Moreover, the features that are not
implemented in hardware are emulated by DirectX at the expense of CPU
time.

DirectX is very fast compared to Windows GDI, but still somewhat
slower than the direct access to the card since many calls are
translated from the generic DirectX to implementation-dependent
instructions by the video board driver. At present, there is no
competition to DirectX in the field of high-speed universal graphics
interface on Win9x/2k [X-Box?].

> This type or high-speed communication with hardware was
> previously only available from within DOS which is why so many game
> designers continued to release DOS-based games,even after the release of
> Windows 95.
DOS games had to keep the knowledge on each and every card to call the
correct functions or use one of the general interfaces (like VESA).
There was nothing like DirectX in the area of software-emulation of
missing features, regardless of the actual hardware present.

BH> I know I have it on my computer and I know I have version 7 2.
BH> What does it affect?
It is one of the latest version. The newer the version, the more
features it has; it has a slightly better performance, removes some
old bugs and introduces new ones. Be aware that some games
(especially the newer 3d arcade and simulators) may decline to use
software emulation and thus will only work when hardware 3D
acceleration is available.

BH> I know the games like quake and stuff want you to have the latest
BH> direct x so I assume it has something to do with the video end of
BH> my computer. 3. My computer friends say that linux does not have a
BH> decent version of direct x is this true and why not?
DirectX is (C) by Microsoft, so Linux can't have it. There is no
library that can compare in its features for Linux at present. I think
this has to do with the incredible diversity of Linux distributions
out there.

However, there are some standards for 3d graphics, OpenGL one of them,
but they don't provide emulation of missing features and they don't
support many existing video boards and game controllers.

Yours,

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