tjosborne :
consoles do use directx, xbox at least. how do you think it got its name? microsoft's directx box. look it up if you dont believe me.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox
😗Hi, firstly DirectX is Microsofts ONLY proprietory hardware based instruction set API. Here is what I can remember...
Meaning it is their only hand in the cookie jar with regards to hardware accelerated math- and geometry functions and fancy stuff like shaders that, ultimately created a widely used ,accepted and standardised interface for hardware vendors to be licenced by MS to synthesize silicon wavers with preloaded instruction set into their sound cards, graphic accelerators and HID devices.
Hence a DX -9 ,-10 ,-10.1 ,11 and all earlier versions know as the DDI version. Which basically means Direct Draw Interface, the grand father of DirectX. Direct Draw is only simple 2 dimensional shapes, lines and circles. Later MS added simple 3D- ,network- and input functions which was christened Direct3D, DirectPlay, DirectInput respectivelty and packaged together as DirectX.
Lol, I remember back in 95-96 when Windows 95 was launched on CD, and included a demo bumpcar game with very low resolution graphics,which used DirectX 6 or 7 ,cant remember, with a simple 3D world and sprite based enemies. Earlier versions until 5.5 was barely know and still in infancy.(I wonder if they never considered to drop the API) Damn, where have these days gone... ^^ Installing Windows 95 from 30 odd stiffy's 1.44mb at a time with a terrible read-rate of around 100-300kbs. Ghrrrr gruu...shuuk skoook gghruuuoooooouuu.
But anyway as time progressed so had DirectX's influence, with versions 8 and 8.1 coming during Windows 98 and before Windows 2000 and -ME.(B.T.W.~ Windows Mellenium Edition, was like Vista's failure but back then...lol) A DirectX boom came to life with game titles like Dungeon Keeper and Age of Empires hitting the shelves.And I think This was the cut-of-the-lint-barrier for DirectX's future road with Windows XP on the horizon and DirectX 9 and 9b released and shipped with "Designed for Windows XP" OEM PC's, DirectX 9c was released a few months later and new developments became stagnent for a year or two after PixelShader2.0 aka PS2.0.
Microsoft Announced Windows codename Longhorn,which I still have a install copy off
♥, with support for DirectX 10 and and PS3.0 .Later released onto shelves the world full and every notebook and new PC was preloaded with the now dreaded Windows Vista.
After many ,many ,many updates Microsoft finally released SP1 for Vista and DirectX 10.1 came to light with PS4.0 support. And new specular-, bump- and other materials was added to create beautiful scenes and virtual worlds.
Alas ,2-3 years later the cheeky, fast, 'trimmed-all-the-fat-off-of'..' Windows 7, was released without the aging GDI released with previous versions and a brand new ui natively supporting DirectX 10.1 and eventually DirectX 11 with PS4.1 and 5.0 and key feature Tessalation, which literaly makes a simple polygon(triangle) split itself into even smaller triangles fitting into the original simple triangle. Creating stunning realism in uneven surfaces like cobble-stones and grassy scenes, mountains and more detailed shapes rendered on the fly inside a game world, greatly reducing sizes of 3D world nurbs-curves and pygons.
And oh yes, the first DirectXbox console released 2001 used a trimmed DirectX 8.1 version and a custom OS believed to be a custmised Windows 2000 kernel, and was later shortened to only XBox.
In 2005 the Xbox360 was unleashed, with better custom OS and which is derived from the XNA Framework created especially to be cross platform compatle with Windows XP and up, Windows Phone and Xbox360,using MS .Net Framework 2.0 and -2.0 Compact. These 2 frameworks were build on the CLR, Common Language Runtime. CLR is basically a multi language code compiler that is part of the .Net Framework. A new Public API named XNA Game Studio was released for developers up to version 4.0. XNA also gave new popularity,but not as widely as expected, a market place where XNA studio subscribers could then sell or freeware custom apps on marketplace for Xbox360.
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