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Microsoft’s DirectX sparked a revolution in PC gaming. Since 1995, DirectX technology has given developers a convenient way to develop for Windows, and take advantage of new graphics, sound and CPU hardware. Games were developed quicker, ran faster, and looked better with each successive generation of DirectX. It goes without saying that it was instrumental in kickstarting the PC games industry, cementing the PC as a viable gaming platform.

As we move into the next generation of PC gaming, however, Microsoft is intent to make Vista the chosen PC operation system for games. Traditionally, as long as you could get a DirectX for your version of Windows, you were guaranteed that any games requiring DirctX would be able to run. Now, you’ll have no choice but to upgrade because Microsoft has made the new DirectX 10 strictly for Vista.

Those not interested in upgrading Vista may have a solution, however, thanks to a handful of independent developers who are attempting to create a special ‘compatibility’ tool for Windows XP. I will try to make another post on how it works, and why Microsoft believes it can only run on Vista. As we move into the world of DirectX 10, Microsoft is breaking with tradition and making it exclusively available for Vista - with no intention of releasing it for any previous version of Windows. According to Microsoft, restricting DirectX 10 to Vista is not an arbitrary decision or an attempt to force gamers to upgrade, it’s a technical requirement.

The Direct3D API in DirectX 10 is very different from previous versions, with the most significant change being a unified shader model. Put simply, developers program vertex, pixel or geometry ’shaders’ to describe how objects and scenes appear, animate and transform on the screen. The new unified model means that a game can assign the limited resources of the graphics processor unit (GPU) to any type of shader as needed, rather than being confined by the ‘fixed’ shader pipelines in previous versions.

Furthermore, Direct3D 10 allows the GPU to take on the types of jobs that were traditionally done by the CPU, effectively turning the graphics card into an all-purpose ‘gaming’ processor. This may sound complex, but it all points to one simple idea: greater use of the graphics card’s GPU. This robust use of the GPU, according to Microsoft, is why Direct3D 10 requires Windows Vista. Unlike previous versions of Windows, Vista uses a new type of graphics driver, the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM). The WDDM is designed to offer a range of stability and performance improvements over that used in XP. For example, under Windows XP, only a single application could access the GPU at a time, and because the display driver was so embedded in XP’s core system, a graphical problem could cause a full system crash.

To combat these problems, Vista’s WDDM separates the applications from the core system, preventing a faulty application from bringing the entire operating system to a halt. Furthermore, it streamlines performance when running multiple applications by allowing more than one application or game to access the GPU at the same time.

From the outset, it seems that DirectX 10 and Vista are inextricably linked. Newer games based on DirectX 10 will want to access the full power of new graphics cards, and Vista’s WDDM is the ‘glue’ required to make that happen.

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