At the beginning of DirectX, there are many standards in the industry, including two important standards: OpenGL and Glide, especially very mature OpenGL, which is used for graphics, video servers, production movies, subjects, etc., with technology Gradually mature, more popular, such as the famous quakeiii game is based on this standard, while DirectX, a lot of hardware, mainstream games do not support it, no games, no hardware, even if there is a good standard, it is meaningless. DirectX's charm has not been behaved, but it has Microsoft's support promotion, it has a hope.
DirectX 1.0: born for the game
After the Windows released, Windows3.1 sound processing can only play a sound at a time, the ability of graphics processing is also weak, plus the entire Windows3.1 operating system is still very fragile, this time it is more exclusive, plus The DirectX standard has just been launched, many hardware does not support, many mainstream games do not support, no games, no hardware, even if there is a good standard, it is meaningless, DirectX's charm has not been behaved. However, with the release of Windows 95, a stable window operating system, there is a change in the epoch-making, and DirectX's fate is also changed.
Direct X 2.0: 2D Rise 3D Total
Finally, DirectX was upgraded to 2.0. At this time, the iconic product was born. 2.0 The biggest improvement is in Direct Draw, and the classic game in this era has also appeared, very meaningful "red alert" and "Diablo Diablo) ", the red police Windows version and DIABLE are developed on DirectX standards. It is a pity that many old graphics cards have not fully supported DirectX2.0, and cannot play Diablo. Except for 2D, the prototype of D3D portion of DirectX2.0 is basically completed, and because there are fewer 3D games, many are developed based on DOS. The PC version of Sega's VR warrior is based on DirectX2.0 development, although the effect is rough, but Direct 3D is still able to feel.
Direct X3.0: D3D development
In 1997, Microsoft released the last version of Windows95, released DirectX 3.0 in the same year. At this time, DirectX is optimistic by many hardware and software vendors, let D3D have the courage to fight with OpenGL and Glide. From this version, many players know that DirectX exists, and this time starts with 3D acceleration cards, such as 3DFX Voodoo, NVIDIA Riva128, Intel's I740.
There are more and more 3D games, but the application interface standards at the time, the main three are professional OpenGL interfaces, Microsoft D3D interfaces, and 3DFX GLIDE interfaces. Among them, the greatest influence is 3DFX Glide, 3DFX, such as day, glide is of course a big tree, and the game programmer uses it to easily complicate, vivid 3D effect, optimistic about 3DFX, of course, Glide. However, 3DFX self-enclosed, no open policy, resulting in the later bankruptcy acquisition of NVIDIA, no 3DFX support GLIDE influence, it is weak, which is later.
DirectX 5.0: D3D is growing
Microsoft does not seem to have released a 4.0 version of DirectX, and DirectX5.0 did not release after DirectX3.0 released. Although the 5.0 and 3.0 intervals are not long, its meaning is not simple. The D3D effect of DirectX5.0 can be used in autumn autumn with OpenGL at the time. Introducing atomization support for the first time, let the 3D games are more spaceful, making players experience the real three-dimensional game environment; there is a great improvement in the compatibility of the game system. DirectX 6: D3D Authority
In short-generation 3D acceleration cards in DirectX5.0, this generation of 3D acceleration cards will not be available with DirectX6.0 technology. Mainly representing the graphics card is NVIDIA Riva TNT, and VOODOO2, VOODOO3. At this time, the market pattern is already very clear, it is the struggle of NVIDIA and 3DFX.
The 3D effect of DirectX 6 is more, and the powerful performance of hardware can render the 32-bit color 3D effect at high resolution. This uses the Voodoo series of PCI bus technology to defeat, it can only support 800x600 The 16-bit color rendering, while NVIDIA uses advanced AGP bus structure, high-standard, new technology, each time the new product gives users higher performance, each successfully lays the foundation of the graphics boss.
DirectX 7: D3D authority established
The release of DirectX7 once again reintegrates the graphics market. The biggest feature of DirectX7 is to support T & L, the Chinese name is "coordinate conversion and light source". Any object in the 3D game has a coordinate. When this object moves, its coordinates change, which refers to coordinate conversion; in addition to scene objects in 3D games, there is no lighting, there is no 3D object. Whether it is a real-time 3D game or a 3D image rendering, the 3D rendering of the light is the most resource.
Prior to T & L came, location conversion and lighting need CPU to calculate, the faster CPU speed, the more smooth game performance. After using the T & L function, the two effects calculate the GPU of the display card (which can be understood as the CPU of the display card), so that the CPU will be freed from busy labor, let CPU do what he should do. For example, logical operations, data calculations, etc. In other words, there is a T & L display card, using DirectX7, even if there is no high-speed CPU, you can also run 3D games smoothly.
T & L became the focus of concern at the time. At this time, the first piece of support T & L function is NVIDIA's GeForce 256. The obtained GeForce 2 can basically be said to be a speed version of GeForce 256, except for a lot of speed, other no technical improvement, The Radeon7500 released at ATI is once the best display card that supports T & L function. The release of DirectX7 has become a voodoo series of graphics cards, at this time, 3DFX has also come to the end, and is acquired by NVIDIA, becoming the history of the display card, bringing regrets and sigh.
DirectX 8.0: D3D crazy
In 2001, Microsoft released DirectX8, and a graphics revolution began. It introduced the "pixel rendering" concept for the first time, with a pixel shader and a vertex rendering engine (Pixel Shader), which reflects the dynamic light and shadow effect. It has not been released, and Madonion (Today's Futuremark) released DirectX8 3DMark2001 graphics test software that supports all special effects of DirectX8.
However, the gorgeous scenes at that time, only a very small number of graphics cards can experience, and most of the graphics cards cannot complete all the tests of this software, and 4 scenes are running out. The reason is that DirectX8 integrates two major trick -VS (Vertex Shader) and PS (Pixel Shader). Through the rendering of VS and PS, it is easy to nourish the real water-surface dynamic corrugated light. The main representative graphics card is NVIDIA's GeForce 3, and the Radeon8500 of the ATI of ATI is. DirectX8 released a symbol of the true fourth generation 3D acceleration card era.
DirectX 9.0: Refers of a new
At the end of 2002, Microsoft released DirectX9.0. If you look at the parameters, DirectX9 is only a version of the PS and VS, which is currently version 2.0, which seems to have no quality changes, in fact, the following respectively Compare with Vertex Shader.
First, the PS 2.0 has a fully programmable architecture that can be calculated, dynamic texture maps, and the dynamic texture map is not occupied. It is theoretically in theory, the accuracy of the resolution of the material map is not limited; the additional PS1.4 can only support 28 Hardware instructions, while operating 6 material, and PS2.0 can support 160 hardware instructions, while operating 16 material quantities, new high-precision floating point data specifications can use multiple texture maps, operable instructions can be arbitrarily The display effect of the movie level is easy to implement.
Second, VS 2.0 has improved the flexibility of the Vertex program, which significantly improves the VS performance of the old version (DirectX8), new control instructions, can be used in a common separate coloring program, efficiency is increased, and the cycle is increased; Operation instructions, reduce working hours, improve processing efficiency; extend the number of colored instructions, from 128 to 256.
In addition, the processing function of floating-point data can only be processed, so that the rendering accuracy can be improved, so that the final processing color format reaches the movie level. Breaking through the quality of the PC graphic image quality in mathematics, each rendering line is upgraded to 128-bit floating point colors, allowing the game program designer easier to create more beautiful effects, let Programmer programming is easier.
DirectX10: Microsoft 1 3D specification
DirectX10 will completely abandon the fixed rendering mode in the GPU, and support the full liberalization of GPU behavior, that is, GPUs are not clearly divided into pixel coloring and vertex coloring units, and support multiple tasks, such as the freedom of tasks such as 2D / 3D / video acceleration. distribution. DirectX10 will join Shader4.0 technology and first implement Raytracing light tracking, and the bit moving diagram Displacement is one of the standards. It is expected to be launched in 2005.
