What's New in DirectX Foundation?

The following are some of the new features in DirectX 7.0:

• A new Visual Basic type library makes key DirectX features available to applications developed in that environment.
• Microsoft® Direct3D® Immediate Mode API offers many new features, including: device-state blocks, geometry blending, cubic environment mapping, user-defined clipping planes, and more. For details, see Immediate Mode Changes for DirectX 7.0.
• A new Direct3DX Utility Library is available now as a helper layer that sits on top of Direct3D and Microsoft® DirectDraw® to simplify common tasks encountered by 3-D graphics developers.
• Microsoft® DirectMusic® supports the Downloadable Sounds level 2 standard.
• Microsoft® DirectInput® now supports up to eight mouse buttons, exclusive access to the keyboard, and delayed start for force-feedback effects. New methods allow reading and writing of force-feedback effect files, and a Force Editor application is provided for creating effects.
• Improved hardware voice management is provided in Microsoft® DirectSound®.
• New 3-D audio processing algorithms result in better CPU utilization in DirectSound.
• DirectDraw stereo support has been added for active devices.
• Ripple launching is provided for Microsoft® DirectPlay® lobbied applications.
• Improved documentation includes dynamic filtering for language-specific information.
• More sample applications are provided.

If you need to refer to information provided with a previous release of DirectX, the legacy documentation is available for download from http://www.microsoft.com/directx.