DirectX provides a key set of tools and commands to enhance games and other multimedia applications allowing the hardware and the software to "talk" to each other with much greater ease. The API gives multimedia applications greater access to the advanced features of high-performance hardware such as three-dimensional (3D) graphics acceleration chips and uber sound cards. They also control many other lower-level functions; this includes two-dimensional (2D) graphics acceleration; support for the wide range of input devices such as joysticks/joy-pads, keyboards, mice, controls sound mixing and sound output on a vast range of audio hardware, controls networking and multiplayer gaming, and control over various multimedia streaming formats.
With each new revision, more feature support is added for emerging technology so that developers can begin to use that new technology as soon as possible, and hopefully, bringing the technology to us sooner. Major Components: The following are the major components (with their related function) that make up DirectX:
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DirectDraw - 2D Graphics
Direct3D - 3D Graphics
DirectSound - 2D Sound
DirectSound3D - 3D Sound
DirectMusic - Music
DirectPlay - Network/Multiplayer
DirectInput - Input Devices
