About Retained Mode

This section describes Microsoft® Direct3D® Retained Mode, the Microsoft solution for real-time 3-D graphics on the personal computer. If you need to create a 3-D environment and manipulate it in real time, you should use the Direct3D Retained Mode API.

Direct3D is tightly integrated with Microsoft DirectDraw®. A DirectDraw object encapsulates both the DirectDraw and Direct3D Retained Mode states—your application can use the IDirectDraw::QueryInterface method to retrieve an IDirect3D interface to a DirectDraw object.

If you have written code before that uses 3-D graphics, many of the concepts underlying Direct3D Retained Mode will be familiar to you. If, however, you are new to 3-D programming, you should pay close attention to Direct3D Retained Mode Architecture, and you should read Getting Started. Whether you are an experienced 3-D programmer or just beginning, you should look carefully at the sample code included with this Software Development Kit; it illustrates how to put Direct3D Retained Mode to work in real-world applications.

For an introduction to programming with Direct3D Retained Mode, see Direct3D Retained Mode Tutorial.

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