VGA's DirectX History

Why DirectX was born?

    Every game needs to perform a certain task repeatedly. He needs to see the input from the mouse, joystick, or keyboard, and he needs to display screen images and play sounds or music. That is what every game at the simplest level. Imagine how this complex for programmers in the early architecture of the PC before Windows. Every programmer needs to make their own way of reading the keyboard or detecting whether a joystick is connected, and only used for gaming. Even required a special routine to display the most simple images on screen or play a simple sound.Basically, the game programmers talking directly to the PC hardware at a fundamental level. At the time Microsoft introduced Windows, it is very important for the stability and success of the PC where things easier for both developers and players. After all, who wants to write games for a machine if they have to reinvent the wheel every time they make a new game? Microsoft's idea is simple: stop programmers talking directly to hardware, and instead create a common toolkit which they can use. From here was born DirectX. 

• The technology is first introduced in 1995 and became the standard for multimedia application development on Windows platform. 
• At the end of 1994 Microsoft will release the next operating system, Windows 95. The main factors that determine the value consumers will depend on the new operating system they created, so much rests on what programs will be able to run on those operating systems. Three Microsoft employees - Craig Eisler, Alex St. John, and Eric Engstrom - concerned because programmers tend to see Microsoft's previous operating system, MS-DOS, as a better platform for game programming, meaning few games would be developed for Windows 95 and the operating system This will not be too successful. 
• DOS allowed direct access to the video card, keyboard and mouse, sound device, and all other parts of the system. But Windows 95, with a protected memory model, will be limited access to all devices, working on standards that are much more complex. Microsoft needed a way that would let programmers get what they want, and they need it quickly; operating system is only a few more months to be released into the market. Eisler (leadership development), St. John, and Engstrom (program manager) to work together to resolve these problems, with solutions that they eventually named DirectX. 
• The first version of DirectX was released in September 1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It is a replacement for the DCI and Wing Win32 API for Windows 3.1. Simply put, DirectX allows all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 95, to combine high-performance multimedia. Eisler wrote about the frenzy to build DirectX 1 through 5 in his blog. 
• DirectX 2.0 to be a component of Windows itself with the release of Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows NT 4.0 in mid-1996. As Windows 95 was still new and still at least a game released for it, Microsoft is heavily involved in the promotion of DirectX to developers who generally believe in the ability of Microsoft to build a gaming platform on Windows. Alex St. John, worked as an "evangelist" for DirectX, which held the event in 1996 Computer Game Developers Conference a game developer, Jay Barnson, described as a Roman theme, including real lions, togas, and something that resembles an indoor carnival. In this event, Microsoft first introduced the Direct3D and DirectPlay, and demonstrate multi-player MechWarrior 2, which is being played over the Internet. 
• DirectX team faces a challenging task to test each DirectX release of an array of hardware and software. Various kinds of graphics cards, audio cards, motherboards, CPUs, input devices, games and other multimedia applications are tested with a series of beta and final release. DirectX team also builds and distributes a test that allows the hardware industry to ensure that the design of new hardware and newly released drivers that will be compatible with DirectX.