DIAMOND and the Key Technologies DirectX and ActiveX

Which DIAMOND Hardware Supports Microsoft's New Technologies?

Release July 1997

1. DirectX

DirectX is a low-level API designed specifically for high-performance applications like games. DirectX is a thin layer providing direct access to hardware services (hence the name). The technology takes advantage of available hardware accelerators and emulates accelerator services when accelerators are not present.

DirectX is continuesly enhanced and improved, so now there are the following versions:
DirectX 1, which has been replaced by DirectX 2 in the summer of 1996.

DirectX 2 includes the following components:

Note:
DirectX 2 is part of the Windows® 95 OEM Service Release 2.
DirectX 2 for Windows NT® 4.0 is available, but without Direct3D.

DirectX 3 was released beginning of October 96. This release contains additionally:

• Improved DirectPlay feature
• Direct3D: includes bugfixes, Intel MMX support
• DirectDraw: only minor bugfixes
• DirectSound: supports now DirectSound3D

DirectX 3a was released beginning of December 96. This release contains additionally:

• Some MMX bugfixes for Direct3D
• Better installation
• Bugfix for SB16 installation

DirectX 3a for Windows NT 4.0 (with service pack 3) includes only a Direct3D software emulation, there is no hardware acceleration.

DirectX 4 was never released. The next version is DirectX5

DirectX 5 was released July 1997. It includes:

• New source code base
• Better installation
• Bugfixes
• DirectInput includes now joystick support (inclusive Force Feedback)
• DirectDraw MMX optimization
• AGP support via special Intel Vxd (needs OSR 2.1)

DirectX 5 should be 100 % compatibel to older versions, but should be faster.

1.1 DirectDraw

DirectDraw is Microsoft's composition engine for 2-D, 3-D, video and animation. It was designed specifically for games and other applications that require high-performance graphics. DirectDraw provides the following 2-D graphics services:

• Accelerated page flipping and blts.
• Hardware overlays with stretching.
• Color keying for blts and overlays.
• Accelerated bitmap stretching.
• Color and format conversion.

DirectDraw achieves its high performance by providing a thin layer just above the video hardware, enabling device-independent access to graphics-accelerator hardware. DirectDraw works with other graphics technologies, allowing you to quickly integrate images generated by GDI, ActiveMovie, and Direct3D.

Hardware support for DirectDraw:

• Diamond Fire GL Series
• Diamond Stealth 3D Series
• Diamond Stealth Video 2500
• Diamond Stealth 64 Video 2xx1
• Diamond Video Crunch It Series
  (works with a graphics card via DirectDraw)
• SPEA Mercury P-64 V
• SPEA Mirage P-64 V
• SPEA Mirage Video (TV)

Benefits:

• Support for all Windows® 95 DirectX games
• Faster applications, because of direct hardware access

1.2 Direct3D

Direct3D is Microsoft's rendering engine for real-time 3-D graphics. Like DirectDraw, Direct3D enables device-independent access to graphics-accelerator hardware for services such as geometry transformations, lighting, and rasterization.
Direct3D provides an integrated two-level API:

• Retained mode, a high-level API for manipulating 3-D objects and managing 3-D scenes.
  Retained mode makes it easy to add 3-D capabilities to existing Windows applications and to create new 3-D applications without creating an object- and scene-management engine.
• Immediate mode, a low-level API for polygon- and vertex-based rendering.
  Immediate mode allows you to port your existing high-performance 3D games to the Windows platform and continue to maintain your investment in your proprietary object-and scene-management technology. Immediate mode provides a thin polygon and vertex-based layer with direct access to 3D hardware services.

Note: The Reality Lab software acquired from RenderMorphics has been incorporated into Direct3D.

Hardware support for Direct3D:

• Diamond Fire GL Series
• Diamond Stealth 3D Series
• Diamond Monster 3D

Benefits:

• Support for all Windows® 95 DirectX games
• Software has not to calculate the 3D functions, available in the hardware. You have better quality and more frames per second displayed.

1.3 DirectPlay

Microsoft's DirectPlay technology provides connectivity services for games and other applications. Games designed with DirectPlay allow players to connect over a local network or via a modem. When you develop a game for using DirectPlay, you need only concern yourself with the performance of the communications medium, not with the network protocol or transport providing the communications.

At the 1996 Computer Game Developers Conference, Microsoft announced the DirectPlay Internet Gaming Architecture. This architecture consists of a set of technologies extending the capabilities of DirectX 2 with additional features to support online gaming. The DirectPlay Internet Gaming Architecture extends DirectX 2 with new components to facilitate the creation of online gaming environments.

Hardware support for DirectPlay:

• Diamond SupraExpress Series
• Diamond NetCommander ISDN/EC

Benefits:

• Support for all Windows® 95 DirectX games with DirectX multiplayer support, more fun while gaming

1.4 DirectInput

DirectInput provides access to analog and digital joysticks and to other input devices that track positions in an absolute coordinate system. Examples of such input devices include touch screens, digitizing tablets, and light pens. In addition, the extended capabilities of DirectInput provide support for rudder pedals, flight yokes, and virtual-reality headgear. Each input device can have up to six axes of movement, a point-of-view hat, and 32 buttons.

Support for DirectInput:

• Diamond Edge® 3D Series

1.5 DirectSound

DirectSound
DirectSound provides device-independent access to audio accelerator hardware. It gives you features like real-time mixing of audio streams and control over effects like volume and panning during playback. Like its DirectX cousins DirectDraw and Direct3D, DirectSound is a thin layer of code that provides direct access to accelerator hardware. DirectSound emulates accelerator services when accelerators are not present. Probably the most important feature of DirectSound for games developers is its ability to play multiple audio streams simultaneously. (WaveMix technology could do this only not nearly as well.) The hardware itself establishes the limit to the number of simultaneous audio streams. DirectSound also provides low-latency playback (on the order of 20 milliseconds) so that you can better synchronize sounds with other events.

Direct3DSound
Like other DirectX technologies, Direct3DSound intended to provide device-independent access to accelerator hardware. Direct3DSound offers 3-D sound capabilities: using only two speakers or a pair of headphones, you can localize and move sounds in a three-dimensional space.
Direct3DSound is included with the release of DirectX 3.

DirectMusic
DirectMusic is an extension to DirectX that provides software-synthesizer services with support for downloadable instruments. DirectMusic is designed to take advantage of synthesizer hardware such as the Soundblaster AWE32 when such hardware is present. DirectMusic technology will make possible a high-quality, low-bandwidth solution for playing music over the Internet as well as provide for some really interesting musical interactivity on web pages. DirectMusic is targeted for release by the end of 1996.

Support for Direct3DSound:

• Monster Sound

Benefits:

• Support for all Windows® 95 DirectX games
• Easiear installation, almost no configuration problems

2. ActiveX

"What is this ActiveX stuff?" In short, ActiveX is a brand name for Microsoft's Internet and multimedia technologies. ActiveX doesn't refer to a single technology or SDK--you'll see the term used in conjunction with many different developer technologies.

OLE controls are now known as ActiveX controls, and the Internet Development Kit (formerly known as Sweeper) is now the Microsoft® ActiveX SDK. New multimedia technologies will be released under the ActiveX moniker as well. One of these new technologies is ActiveMovie, formerly code named Quartz. ActiveMovie is poised to become the framework for next-generation media-streaming technology. Pay attention to this ActiveX stuff--it's important!

Parts of ActiveX are now called DirectShow.

2.1 ActiveMovie

ActiveMovie is Microsoft's new media-streaming architecture for audio and video. It's designed from the ground up to be cross-platform and to allow streaming on the desktop or over the Internet. ActiveMovie utilizes DirectDraw to take advantage of graphics accelerator hardware for optimum performance and it's extensible to allow easy integration of new technologies and third-party enhancements. In addition to AVI and QuickTime® media streams, ActiveMovie supports software-based playback MPEG video and audio with the integrated Mediamatics Decoder. If you develop tools, games, or interactive media using video or audio, you'll want to be sure to keep up with what's going on with ActiveMovie.
ActiveMovie is slated to replace both Video for Windows and MCI (Media Control Interface). Of course these legacy services will be available and supported in future platforms.
ActiveMovie runtime components is built into Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0. This will allow users to download and play video and audio in all major formats on the Internet.
Note:
Active Movie is part of the Windows® 95 OEM Service Release 2 and available for Windows NT 4.0.

Support for ActiveMovie:

• Available for all graphics cards with DirectX support

2.2 Video for Windows

ActiveMovie replaces the digital video technology provided by Video for Windows. Libraries will continue to be available and supported for applications using the old Video for Windows technology. For new development, you should use ActiveMovie. ActiveMovie will play AVI files as well as MPEG and QuickTime.

Hardware support for Video for Windows:

• Diamond Fire GL Series
• Diamond Stealth 3D Series
• Diamond Stealth Video 2500
• Diamond Stealth 64 Video 3xx0
• Diamond Stealth 64 Video 2xx1
• Diamond Video Crunch It Series
• SPEA Mercury P-64 V
• SPEA Mirage P-64 V
• SPEA Mirage Video (TV)
• SPEA Showtime Plus (TV)
• SPEA Vega Video
• SPEA Crunch It

Benefits:

• You are able to play video files (avi format), more fun while computing

Media Control Interface (MCI)
The Media Control Interface (MCI) debuted with the initial release of the Multimedia Extensions to Windows 3.0. It is intended to provide a high-level scripting interface to control all sorts of media devices. Since then, numerous VB and OLE controls have been constructed based on MCI. These controls will continue to be supported, but you should consider using ActiveMovie to provide your high-level media-streaming services. ActiveMovie services replace those in MCI to take advantage of the high performance of DirectX technologies. In fact, ActiveMovie supports a subset of the MCI command set for backward compatibility with Microsoft Video for Windows. You can also easily drop an ActiveX control for ActiveMovie into your application for instant support of popular media types such as MPEG audio and video, AVI video, WAV audio, and QuickTime video.

MCI support for MPEG (using Software MPEG decoders like XING, Compcore or Mediamatics) and AVI playback:

• Diamond Fire GL Series
• Diamond Stealth 3D Series
• Diamond Stealth Video 2500
• Diamond Stealth 64 Video 3xx0
• Diamond Stealth 64 Video 2xx1
• Diamond Video Crunch It Series
• SPEA Mercury P-64 V
• SPEA Mirage P-64 V
• SPEA Mirage Video (TV)
• SPEA ShowTime Plus (TV)
• SPEA Vega Video
• SPEA Crunch It

Benefits:

• With this interface you are compatible to a lot of applications, using the multimedia capabilities of your graphics cards

3. Win32 Graphics Technologies

The drawing is simplified for clarity and does not reflect all of the relationships between components. For example, DirectDraw, Direct3D, and ActiveMovie all depend on GDI® for some basic graphic services.

GDI
GDI is still the standard workhorse 2-D graphics API for Win32. GDI provides graphics primitives for lines and curves, filled shapes, fonts, text, bitmaps, and printing. GDI is interoperable with DirectDraw. For example, you can use GDI to draw text on a DirectDraw surface.

Hardware support for GDI:

• All Diamond and SPEA graphics accelerator boards

Benefits:

• Without this interface you would see nothing...

4. Technologies Used within Win 3.1x / Windows® 95

5. Other API's

5.1. OpenGL
OpenGL® is an industry-standard 3-D graphics command set originally developed by Silicon Graphics®, Inc. It is available for both Windows 95 and Windows NT. OpenGL is often used in high-end CAD/CAM, modeling, simulation, scientific visualization, and other detailed 3-D rendering. Microsoft will continue to support OpenGL; future releases will take advantage of graphics-accelerator hardware by using DirectX technology. OpenGL is designed for professional applications requiring high levels of accuracy; Direct3D is the technology of choice for consumer game and interactive-media development.

Hardware support for OpenGL®:

• Diamond Fire GL Series

Software support for OpenGL®:

• Diamond Stealth 3D Series

Benefits:

• All programs like Pro/Engineer, MicroStation 95 or Sense8 are able to use the hardware features of our OpenGL® compliant hardware
• The best performance while moving, rendering and displaying while using our professional line graphics cards from the Fire series

5.2 Surround Video
Microsoft's Surround Video is some really amazing technology. With it you can use 360-degree background images created with a special panoramic camera. In titles created with Surround Video, users can interact with objects, images, and live-action video within a 360-degree photorealistic environment. The user can turn in any direction to see more of the virtual world you create. Surround Video backgrounds can easily be captured with a 360-degree panoramic camera or can be assembled with traditional 35mm photography and digitally composited with standard image-processing tools. Foreground video images can be added using the same "blue screen" techniques used by TV weather forecasters.

5.3 WinG (old API, not supported in the future)
WinG is a graphics technology that was introduced on the Windows 3.1 platform to allow games developers to use some DOS graphics techniques under Windows. Essentially, WinG allows you to use GDI to draw on a device-independent bitmap (DIB).
DirectDraw should be used for new development: it provides a more comprehensive and higher performance solution for high-performance graphics than does WinG.

5.4 WinToon (old API, not supported in the future)
WinToon is a frame-based animation toolkit built on WinG and Video for Windows. It allows you to create cartoon-like animations by "blue screening" images from an AVI movie with a background image. WinToon provides the mechanics of delivering the cartoon to the screen and leaves the interactive and graphic design to the developer. Like WaveMix, WinToon is unsupported and provided "as is" by Microsoft.

[] Based on information from the Microsoft WWW sites
HR July,24 1997