DirectX

DirectX, a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) designed to handle multimedia tasks on Microsoft Corporation’s Windows OS (operating system). Developed in 1995, DirectX represented Microsoft’s effort to make Windows a more game-friendly platform.

In the early 1990s, game designers preferred the accessibility of the MS-DOS operating system to the more complicated Windows platform, and, as Microsoft prepared for the release of the Windows 95 OS, the company sought to attract more game developers. In 1994, Microsoft employees Craig Eisler, Alex St. John, and Eric Engstrum set to work developing what would become DirectX. The new technology acted as an intermediary between computer hardware and the operating system, freeing software developers from having to write code for specific hardware devices. Through a standard development platform, software developers could create software to work with DirectX, and hardware manufacturers could include drivers that would make their products compatible with the new product.

First released in 1995 under the name Windows Game SDK (later versions were named DirectX), the product improved Window’s capability in two- and three-dimensional graphics, music control, gaming, and multimedia streaming control. Microsoft released numerous versions of DirectX to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated software and hardware. The name of the Xbox game console, which it introduced in 2001, is a contraction of “DirectX box.”

Although DirectX is best known for advancing game development on the Windows system and improving multimedia performance, it is also used for other purposes. For example, Direct3D is commonly used by engineers to take advantage of its superior three-dimensional graphics.