Microsoft DirectX 8.0 (Visual Basic)

What's New in DirectX Graphics

Microsoft® DirectX® 8.0 maintains backward compatibility by exposing and supporting objects and interfaces offered by previous releases of DirectX. However, many new features and performance enhancements have been added as part of the DirectX 8.0 new Microsoft Direct3D® API interfaces.

Complete integration of DirectDraw and Direct3D
Simplifies application initialization and improves data allocation and management performance, which reduces the memory footprint. Also, the integration of the graphics APIs enable parallel vertex input streams for more flexible rendering.
Programmable vertex processing language
Enables you to write custom shaders for morphing and tweening animation, matrix palette skinning, user-defined lighting models, general environment mapping, procedural geometry, or any other developer-defined algorithm.
Programmable pixel processing language
Enables you to write custom hardware shaders for general texture combining expressions, per-pixel lighting (bump mapping), per-pixel environment mapping for photoreal specular effects, or any other developer-defined algorithm.
Multisampling rendering support
Enables full-scene anti-aliasing and multisampling effects, such as motion blur and depth-of-field.
Point sprites
Enables high-performance rendering of particle systems for sparks, explosions, rain, snow, and so on.
3-D volumetric textures
Enables range-attenuation in per-pixel lighting and volumetric atmospheric effects, and can be applied to more intricate geometry.
Higher-order primitive support
Enhances the appearance of 3-D content and facilitates the mapping of content from major 3-D authoring tools.
Higher-level technologies
Includes 3-D content creation tool plug-ins for export to Direct3D of skinned meshes using a variety of Direct3D techniques, multiresolution level-of-detail (LOD) geometry, and higher-order surface data.
Indexed vertex blending
Extends geometry blending support to allow the matrices used for vertex blending to be referred to using a matrix index.
Expansion of the Direct3DX Utility Library
Contains a wealth of new functionality. The Direct3DX utility library is a helper layer that sits on top of Direct3D to simplify common tasks encountered by 3-D graphics developers. Includes a skinning library, support for working with meshes, and functions to assemble vertex and pixel shaders. Note that the functionality supplied by D3D_OVERLOADS, first introduced with Microsoft DirectX® 5.0, has been moved to the Direct3DX utility library.