Support for High Resolutions and True Color Bit Depths

DirectDraw supports all of the screen resolutions and depths supported by the display device driver. DirectDraw allows an application to change the mode to any one supported by the computer's display driver, including all supported 24- and 32-bpp modes.

DirectDraw also supports hardware emulation layer (HEL) blitting of 24- and 32-bpp surfaces. If the display device driver supports blitting at these resolutions, the hardware blitter will be used for display memory to display memory blits. Otherwise, the HEL will be used to perform the blits.

Windows 95 allows a user to specify the type of monitor that is being used. DirectDraw checks the display modes that it knows about against the display restrictions of the installed monitor. If it is determined that the requested mode is not compatible with the monitor, the IDirectDraw2::SetDisplayMode method call will fail. Only modes that are supported on the installed monitor will be enumerated with the IDirectDraw2::EnumDisplayModes method.