Introduction
After being tasked with writing this DirectX 10 piece, I was asked, "what does DirectX 10 mean to me as a PC consumer, right now? Explain that in the piece, I think that's what people want to know". The questioner asks brilliantly.
So off I set to conceptualise what I know about DirectX 10 as a part-time DX10-using developer, in order to better explain what Microsoft's latest media-processing technologies for Windows will eventually mean to you, the end-user.
DX10, available only on the forthcoming Windows Vista, offers up a plethora of improvements, especially inside the Direct3D 10 component (D3D10), for developers to get their hands on, which will eventually end up as improvements to media applications that you use, be they games or something else.
This article seeks to split off D3D10 and explain how its API and runtime improvements and changes, tied to Windows Vista, seeks to benefit the developer. I'll then turn that into something for the end-user to understand and look forward to.
If you're not too bothered about the inner bits of D3D10 from a development perspective, don't worry. It's all summed up nicely on the final page.
So we start our Vista explorations with a look at the highlights of the changes to the D3D10 component of DX10, to see what it means for application developers (primarily games programmers) writing SM4.0 shaders for D3D10 render systems.
