This topic pertains only to application development in Visual Basic. See DirectInput C/C++ Tutorials.

To prepare for keyboard input, you first create a DirectInput object. Then you create a DirectInputDevice object representing the keyboard. The DirectInputDevice class methods are used to set the behavior of the device and retrieve data.

The tutorial breaks down the required tasks into the following steps:

• Step 1: Create DirectInput and the Keyboard Device
• Step 2: Set the Keyboard Parameters
• Step 3: Gain Access to the Keyboard
• Step 4: Retrieve Immediate Data from the Keyboard