Microsoft DirectX 9 End-User Redistributable is a collection of APIs or interfaces that run on multimedia tasks, in particular game and video programming on the Microsoft platform. In essence, all these “APIs” start entirely with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, and DirectSound.
DirectX was then the general term for all these Direct APIs. After the introduction of Xbox, Microsoft released application interfaces for designing multi-base games, such as XInput, designed to complement or replace DirectX components.Microsoft DirectX has been updated regularly for more than 10 years, and new features are being added to it.
Microsoft encourages the use of these DirectX components:
- Direct3D (D3D): for drawing 3D graphics.
- DXGI: for enumerating adapters and monitors and managing swap chains for Direct3D 10 and up.
- Direct2D: for 2D graphics.
- DirectWrite: for fonts.
- DirectCompute: for GPU Computing.
- DirectSound3D (DS3D): for the playback of 3D sounds.
- DirectX Media: includes DirectAnimation for 2D / 3D web animation, DirectShow for multimedia playback and streaming media, DirectX Transform for web interactivity, and Direct3D Retained Mode for higher level 3D graphics. DirectShow contains DirectX plugins for audio signal processing and DirectX Video Acceleration for accelerated video playback.
- DirectX Diagnostics (DxDiag): A tool for diagnosing and generating reports on components that are related to DirectX, such as audio, video, and input drivers.
- DirectX Media Objects: Support for streaming objects such as encoders, decoders, and effects.
- DirectSetup: for the installation of DirectX components, and the detection of the current DirectX version.
Microsoft has deprecated, but still supports, these DirectX components:
- DirectDraw: for drawing 2D Graphics (raster graphics). Deprecated in favor of Direct2D, though still in use by a number of games and as a video renderer in media applications.
- DirectInput: for interfacing with input devices including keyboards, mice, joysticks, or other game controllers. Deprecated after version 8 in favor of XInput for Xbox 360 controllers or standard WM_INPUT window message processing for keyboard and mouse input.
- DirectPlay: for communication over a local-area or wide-area network. Deprecated after version 8 in favor of Games for Windows Live and Xbox Live.
- DirectSound: for the playback and recording of waveform sounds. Deprecated in favor of the current audio libraries, including XAudio2 (a low-level audio library) and XACT3 (a higher-level audio API).
- DirectMusic: for playback of soundtracks authored in DirectMusic Producer. Deprecated since DirectX 8 in favor of XAudio2 and XACT3.
DirectX functionality is provided in the form of COM-style objects and interfaces. Additionally, while not DirectX components themselves, managed objects have been built on top of some parts of DirectX, such as Managed Direct3D and the XNA graphics library on top of Direct3D 9.
System Requirement
- Microsoft Windows 98SE
- Microsoft Windows ME
- Microsoft Windows 2000
- Microsoft Windows XP
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003
- Microsoft Windows Vista
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008
- Microsoft Windows 7
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2
- Microsoft Windows 8
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012
- Microsoft Windows 8.1
- Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
Download
Microsoft DirectX End-User Redistributable v9.0c + SDK
