Wave Issue 9703 2/17/97 Article 3-01

***Microsoft – Meltdown Rolls Out Direct X 5.0 Alpha
by John Latta

At Meltdown in Redmond, WA this week Microsoft released to attendees an
alpha of the DirectX 5 Software Development Kit (SDK) which is focused
on supporting developers for the 1997 holiday season. Final release is
scheduled for June. Key new features include:

Direct 3D API enhancements. Draw Primitive is a polygon level
service that bypasses the Direct3D execute buffers and passes polygon-
level information directly to the 3-D hardware.

DirectSound 3D HAL. Provides the capability of accelerating 3-D
audio spatialization in hardware.

DirectInput API Force Feedback. Developed specifically to control
the newly available force feedback joysticks, giving realistic feedback
to the user during game play.

Talisman Rendering Feature Support. For developing more realistic
effects, these new services add support for sort-independent
antialiasing (for eliminating ragged edges), anisotropic texture
filtering (for eliminating blurring artifacts) and range-based fog (for
eliminating variable fogging of objects).

www.microsoft.com/msdn