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DirectX 10

One of the most exciting developments in Windows Vista is the groundbreaking graphics technology. Many of the newest Windows games will take full advantage of the next-generation graphics technology in Windows Vista called DirectX® 10. DirectX® 10 will provide an incredibly detailed experience for gamers of every type, and will enable game creators to increase a game's level of realism, enhancing details and complexity in gaming worlds, apply effects like dynamic lighting and weather, and much more.

While Windows Vista is fully compatible with games and hardware that use older versions of DirectX®, the new DirectX® 10 features are available with a DirectX® 10 compatible graphics card and games designed to take advantage of this new technology. Adding a DirectX® 10 card to a PC running Windows Vista is like turbocharging your gaming experience. Existing games (most of which were written using DirectX® 9) get world class performance, while unlocking the new generation of gaming graphics with DirectX® 10 optimized games.

The first video cards with DirectX® 10 support are available today with ATI Radeon & NVIDIA GeForce cards: MORE

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The Basics: 101 


Simply put, DirectX® is a Windows technology that enables higher performance in graphics and sound when you're playing games or watching video on your PC.

At the core of DirectX® are its application programming interfaces, or APIs. The APIs act as a kind of bridge for the hardware and the software to "talk" to each other. The DirectX® APIs gives multimedia applications access to the advanced features of high-performance hardware such as three-dimensional (3-D) graphics acceleration chips and sound cards. They control low- level functions, including two- dimensional (2-D) graphics acceleration; support for input devices such as joysticks, keyboards, and mice; and control of sound mixing and sound output.

Because of DirectX®, what you experience with your computer is better 3-D graphics and immersive music and audio effects.

Benefits 
DirectX®10 offers a wide variety of benefits to gamers. Let's dive into the details now:

• More Life-like materials and characters
Picture 1: DirectX®10 (Crysis) 
Picture 2: DirectX®9 (Halo: Combat Evolved) 

You can see the difference for yourself when we compare Picture 2, a screenshot taken from 'Halo: Combat evolved', a PC game which was among the best of its class at release to Picture 1, an image from 'Crysis', a PC game which is slated to release soon. Halo uses DirectX®9.0b to support its graphics while Crysis makes use of DirectX®10.

DX10 adds a new level of realism to games by making characters more life-like. You can see the incredible detail in the screenshot above. The facial expressions, details of the face, the handle-bar moustache and the glazed looking eyes all add to the realism.

For technical details, please visit: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/