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DirectX8 Preview
Written: 9/3/2000
Written by: Tron
Introduction
Roughly
every year, Microsoft sees fit to "up the ante" in the
graphics API war with a new release of it's DirectX API. This year
is no exception of course, with DirectX8 being the newest
incarnation. In this article I'm going to briefly focus on the new
features of the API, what they bring new to the table, and what
you can expect out of DX8 as an end user.
This
time around two parts of the previous API have combined, and a new
application manager has been implemented. Here are the main
components of DirectX8, and a simple overview of the changes that
have occured.
DirectX
Graphics.
This
is a combination of the formerly separate DirectDraw and Direct3D
API's. A lot of applications have to make use of both of these
API's, so combining them was a good idea. It drastically reduced
the complexity in initializing the API, and lowers the overall
memory footprint. A new programmable vertex processing language is
now implemented allowing morphing/tweening animation, matrix
palette skinning, user-defined lighting models, general
environment mapping, procedural geometry and any other
developer-defined algorithm.
This addition adds a great deal of flexibility for the
developer when dealing with vertex arrays. Programmable Pixel
processing language enables programmers to write hardware shaders
for per-pixel lighting/bump mapping, per-pixel environment mapping
and to write their own shader routines. Multisample rendering and
effects are now supported directly in the API (full scene
antialiasing, motion-blur, depth of field ect). Sprite points are
available, which enable high performance particle system
rendering. 3-D Volume textures enable effects such as
range-attenuation in per-pixel lighting, volume atmospheric
effects and easy texturing of very complex geometry.
It's clear that the above feature implementations allow the
API to strongly leverage the texturing and transform power of
todays hottest hardware. This is not suprising however. More on
that later....
Next
page: DirectX Audio
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