What's New in DirectX?
Windows NT 5.0 has been renamed to Windows 2000. The DirectX documentation has been changed to reflect the name change; other documentation may not yet reflect the change.
DirectX 6.0 provides more services — and more avenues for innovation — than did DirectX 5.0. (Note that there is no "DirectX 4" — the numbering jumps from version 3 to version 5.) Although this Programmer's Reference contains additional functions and services, all the applications you wrote with previous DirectX APIs will compile and run successfully without changes.
DirectX 6.1 provides the official release of DirectMusic as an API component of DirectX. This version also has a few minor corrections and improvements to other components.
The purpose of this section is to help those of you who are familiar with previous versions of DirectX quickly identify several important areas of this Programmer's Reference that are significantly different. These differences are listed by component.
- DirectDraw
- DirectDraw for DirectX 6.0 introduces the IDirectDraw4 and IDirectDrawSurface4 interfaces, which include ease-of-use enhancements, as well as private surface data and surface uniqueness values. Primary ease-of-use enhancements include expanded capability reporting for the DirectDraw object and its surfaces. These come in the form of several new capability flags for the DDCAPS structure, and the introduction of the new DDSCAPS2 and DDSURFACEDESC2 surface capability and description structures.
Applications can use the new IDirectDraw4::TestCooperativeLevel method to determine a cooperative level status for DirectDraw. This is helpful when applications need information about when to restore or recreate the surfaces they use. For more information, see Testing Cooperative Levels. In addition, DirectDraw now offers a new cooperative level to improve the performance of Direct3D applications. For more information, see DirectDraw Cooperative Levels and FPU Precision.
A new DirectDraw interface, IDirectDrawGammaControl, enables applications to easily adjust how graphics are displayed without changing the contents of the frame buffer. For more information, see Gamma and Color Controls.
DirectDraw supports multiple monitors on systems running Windows 98 and Windows 2000. For more information, see Multiple Monitor Systems.
- DirectSound
- The DirectSound documentation has been expanded to include new overviews and tutorials.
- DirectMusic
- DirectMusic is an entirely new API available as a developer preview in the DirectX 6.0 SDK and as an official release in the DirectX 6.1 SDK.
- Direct3D Immediate Mode
- Direct3D Immediate Mode now features greatly improved performance, ease-of-use enhancements, and support for new hardware features. Among the most noteworthy are: support for single-pass multiple texture blending, bump mapping, automatic texture cache management, flexible vertex formats and strided vertices, vertex buffers, w-buffering, and stencil buffers (stencil planes).
For much more information about these new features, see Immediate Mode Changes for DirectX 6.0.
- Direct3D Retained Mode
- Direct3D Retained Mode introduces new interface inheritance semantics and several new interfaces. For more information, see What's New in Direct3D Retained Mode?
- DirectInput
- The DirectInput documentation has minor corrections and improvements.
- DirectPlay
- DirectPlay for DirectX 6.0 has a new interface, IDirectPlay4. This interface inherits directly from IDirectPlay3 and by default behaves as IDirectPlay3. All new functionality is enabled through new methods or flags. DirectPlay supports the following new features: guaranteed messaging, asynchronous messaging, message throttling, TCP/IP firewall support, peer-to-peer security, application registration, improved localization support, improved keep-alive support, private service providers, and improved lobby connection features.
For more information about these new features, see What's New in DirectPlay?
- DirectSetup
- No changes for DirectX 6.0.
- AutoPlay
- No changes for DirectX 6.0.