Windows XP cannot run DirectX 10 applications. DirectX Versions DirectX 10ĭirectX 10 is a major update to DirectX API and ships with Windows Vista and later. To keep DirectX version up-to-date, you may need to know how to download and install DirectX. But then, Microsoft keeps releasing updated versions of DirectX. So if you are using latest Windows OS, chances are that you will never need to install DirectX from scratch.

All latest Windows OS versions include DirectX by default.

Starting with Windows 8 Developer Preview, DirectX SDK has been integrated into Windows SDK. The users had an option to install DirectX if they wanted to.

When DirectX first made its appearance, the runtimes were installed only by games which required it. Wondering what’s DirectX is all about? DirectX Software Development Kit (SDK) consists of runtime libraries in redistributable binary form (remember the famous term “DirectX redistributable”?). When Xbox was developed, Microsoft used DirectX as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate the console was based on DirectX technology. Microsoft later coined DirectX to refer to all these APIs and the terminology has come to be used since then. The names of APIs originally began with Direct – Direct3D, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectDraw and so on. Microsoft DirectX, popularly known as DirectX, is a collection of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video on Microsoft platforms.

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