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Microsoft unveiled DirectX 11 at the Gamefest 08 event in Seattle, with the major scheduled features including GPGPU support (DirectCompute), and Direct3D 11 with tessellation support[29][30] and improved multi-threading support to assist video game developers in developing games that better utilize multi-core processors.[31] Direct3D 11 runs on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Parts of the new API such as multi-threaded resource handling can be supported on Direct3D 9/10/10.1-class hardware. Hardware tessellation and Shader Model 5.0 require Direct3D 11 supporting hardware.[32] Microsoft has since released the Direct3D 11 Technical Preview.[33] Direct3D 11 is a strict superset of Direct3D 10.1 — all hardware and API features of version 10.1 are retained, and new features are added only when necessary for exposing new functionality. This helps to keep backwards compatibility with previous versions of DirectX.

Microsoft released the Final Platform Update for Windows Vista on October 27, 2009, which was 5 days after the initial release of Windows 7 (launched with Direct3D 11 as a base standard).

DirectX 11.1 is included in Windows 8. It supports WDDM 1.2 for increased performance, features improved integration of Direct2D (now at version 1.1), Direct3D, and DirectCompute, and includes DirectXMath, XAudio2, and XInput libraries from the XNA framework. It also features stereoscopic 3D support for gaming and video.[34] DirectX 11.1 was also partially backported to Windows 7, via the Windows 7 platform update.[35][36]

DirectX 11.2 is included in Windows 8.1 (including the RT version) and Windows Server 2012 R2.[37] It added some new features to Direct2D like geometry realizations.[38] It also added swap chain composition, which allows some elements of the scene to be rendered at lower resolutions and then composted via hardware overlay with other parts rendered at higher resolution.[39]

DirectX 11.X is a superset of DirectX 11.2 running on the Xbox One.[40] It actually includes some features, such as draw bundles, that were later announced as part of DirectX 12.[41]

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Games for Windows – Live (trademarked as Games for Windows – LIVE[3]) is an online gaming service used by Games for Windows-branded PC titles. It enables Windows PCs to connect to the Live service, which will eventually[when?] include other devices including Windows Phone and Zune. Users, each with a unique Gamertag, the Microsoft username service for gaming that began with the Xbox Live, are able to play online, keep track of their friends' status, send and receive messages, gain and keep track of Achievements and associated Gamerscore, voice chat across platforms, and much more. Some games allow for cross-platform play, such as Shadowrun, putting Windows players against Xbox 360 players.

The service is open to 3rd-party developers, but they must be able to meet certain Technical Certification Requirements (TCRs), which include (but are not limited to): game ratings, total number of Gamerscore points, content, game profiles, and Live connectivity. Games for Windows – Live games must also meet standard Games for Windows (games that do not have Live support) TCRs. The same developer support infrastructure is available as with the Xbox 360. Assistance to developers is provided through the Microsoft XNA Developer Connection.[4]

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Microsoft Visual C++ (often abbreviated as MSVC or VC++) is a commercial (free version available), integrated development environment (IDE) product from Microsoft for the C, C++, and C++/CLI programming languages. It features tools for developing and debugging C++ code, especially code written for the Microsoft Windows API, the DirectX API, and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Many applications require redistributable Visual C++ packages to function correctly. These packages are often installed independently of applications, allowing multiple applications to make use of the package while only having to install it once. These Visual C++ redistributable and runtime packages are mostly installed for standard libraries that many applications use.[3]

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PhysX is a proprietary realtime physics engine middleware SDK. It was developed by Ageia with the purchase of ETH Zurich spin-off NovodeX in 2004. Ageia was acquired by Nvidia in February 2008.[1]

The term PhysX can also refer to the PPU expansion card designed by Ageia to accelerate PhysX-enabled video games.

Video games supporting hardware acceleration by PhysX can be accelerated by either a PhysX PPU or a CUDA-enabled GeForce GPU (if it has at least 256MB of dedicated VRAM), thus offloading physics calculations from the CPU, allowing it to perform other tasks instead. In theory this should result in a smoother gaming experience and allow additional visual effects.

Middleware physics engines allow game developers to avoid writing their own code to handle the complex physics interactions possible in modern games. PhysX is one of the handful of physics engines used in the large majority of today's games.[2]

The PhysX engine and SDK are available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3,[3][4] Xbox 360[5] and the Wii.[6] The PhysX SDK is provided to developers for free for both commercial and non-commercial use on Windows. For Linux, OSX and Android platforms the PhysX SDK is free for educational and non-commercial use.[7]

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The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework (.NET CF) is a version of the .NET Framework that is designed to run on resource constrained mobile/embedded devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, factory controllers, set-top boxes, etc. The .NET Compact Framework uses some of the same class libraries as the full .NET Framework and also a few libraries designed specifically for mobile devices such as .NET Compact Framework controls. However, the libraries are not exact copies of the .NET Framework; they are scaled down to use less space.

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The .NET Framework (pronounced dot net) is a software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and provides language interoperability (each language can use code written in other languages) across several programming languages. Programs written for the .NET Framework execute in a software environment (as contrasted to hardware environment), known as the Common Language Runtime (CLR), an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. The class library and the CLR together constitute the .NET Framework.

The .NET Framework's Base Class Library provides user interface, data access, database connectivity, cryptography, web application development, numeric algorithms, and network communications. Programmers produce software by combining their own source code with the .NET Framework and other libraries. The .NET Framework is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform. Microsoft also produces an integrated development environment largely for .NET software called Visual Studio.

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Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. The name DirectX was coined as shorthand term for all of these APIs (the X standing in for the particular API names) and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a gaming console, the X was used as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology.[1] The X initial has been carried forward in the naming of APIs designed for the Xbox such as XInput and the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), while the DirectX pattern has been continued for Windows APIs such as Direct2D and DirectWrite.

Direct3D (the 3D graphics API within DirectX) is widely used in the development of video games for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360 and some Sega Dreamcast games. Direct3D is also used by other software applications for visualization and graphics tasks such as CAD/CAM engineering. As Direct3D is the most widely publicized component of DirectX, it is common to see the names "DirectX" and "Direct3D" used interchangeably.

The DirectX software development kit (SDK) consists of runtime libraries in redistributable binary form, along with accompanying documentation and headers for use in coding. Originally, the runtimes were only installed by games or explicitly by the user. Windows 95 did not launch with DirectX, but DirectX was included with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2.[2] Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 both shipped with DirectX, as has every version of Windows released since. The SDK is available as a free download. While the runtimes are proprietary, closed-source software, source code is provided for most of the SDK samples. Starting with the release of Windows 8 Developer Preview, DirectX SDK has been integrated into Windows SDK.[3]

Direct3D 9Ex, Direct3D 10, and Direct3D 11 are only available for Windows Vista and newer because each of these new versions was built to depend upon the new Windows Display Driver Model that was introduced for Windows Vista. The new Vista/WDDM graphics architecture includes a new video memory manager supporting virtualization of graphics hardware for various applications and services like the Desktop Window Manager.