Reasons for Developing DirectX Windows Applications

DirectX was developed to provide Microsoft Windows applications with high-performance, real-time access to available hardware on current computer systems. DirectX provides a consistent interface between hardware manufacturers and you, the application developer, thereby reducing the complexity of installation and configuration while utilizing the hardware to its best advantage.

One of the primary reasons for creating DirectX was to promote games development on the Windows platform. The majority of games developed for the personal computer today are MS-DOS-based. However, when developing MS-DOS-based games, you must conform to a number of hardware implementations for a variety of cards, which complicates installation. In addition, development of MS-DOS-based games can be much more complex on a personal computer than on a console system, due to the generalized processor, greater RAM size, and persistent storage of the personal computer.

A high-performance Windows-based game will:

·Install successfully.

·Take advantage of hardware accelerator cards designed specifically for improving performance.

·Take advantage of Windows hardware and software standards such as Plug and Play.

·Take advantage of the communications services built into Windows.