DirectDraw™ is a DirectX™ 2 SDK component that allows direct manipulation of display memory, hardware blitters, hardware overlays, and page flipping. DirectDraw provides this functionality while maintaining compatibility with existing Microsoft® Windows® 95 applications and device drivers.
The DirectX 2 SDK allows you an unprecedented level of access to display and audio hardware, while it insulates you from the specific details of that hardware. DirectX 2 is built for speed. In keeping with these goals, DirectDraw is not a high-level graphics application programming interface (API).
DirectDraw for Windows 95 is a software interface that provides direct access to display devices while maintaining compatibility with the Windows graphics device interface (GDI). DirectDraw provides a device-independent way for games and Windows subsystem software, such as 3D graphics packages and digital video codecs, to gain access to display device-dependent features.
DirectDraw works with a wide variety of display hardware, ranging from simple SVGAs to advanced hardware implementations that provide clipping, stretching, and non-RGB color format support. The interface is designed so that your applications can request the capabilities of the underlying hardware, then use those capabilities as required.
DirectDraw provides the following display device-dependent benefits:
·Supports double-buffered and page flipping graphics.
·Provides access to, and control of, the display card's blitter.
·Supports 3D z-buffers.
·Supports hardware assisted overlays with z-ordering.
·Improves graphics quality by providing access to image-stretching hardware.
·Provides simultaneous access to standard and enhanced display device memory areas.
DirectDraw's mission is to provide device-dependent access to display memory in a device-independent way. Your application need only recognize some basic device dependencies that are standard across hardware implementations, such as RGB and YUV color formats and the stride between raster lines. You need not worry about the specific calling procedures required to utilize the blitter or manipulate palette registers. Essentially, DirectDraw manages display memory. Using DirectDraw, you can manipulate display memory with ease, taking full advantage of the blitting and color decompression capabilities of different types of display hardware without becoming dependent on a particular piece of hardware.
DirectDraw provides world-class game graphics on computers running Windows 95 and Windows NT®.