Meant to be Seen

False alarm: Microsoft isn't backing away from DirectX, despite an email message the company sent to some of its Most Valuable Professionals to the contrary earlier this week.

On January 30, Microsoft apparently sent an email message to its XNA and DirectX MVPs notifying them that as of April 1, 2014 "XNA/DirectX will be fully retired from the MVP Award Program." An excerpt from this email was posted on the "Promit Ventspace" blog.

See http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-false-al ... 000010647/

Maybe they're trying to extend the dates and occasions for usage of april 1'st jokes...

Actually, the term is largely a misnormer as of now, since almost every API that once was under DirectX umbrella has been long deprecated - DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectInput, DirectPlay, DirectMusic, and even the DirectX SDK itself all have gone the way of the dodo.

In general use, DirectX is now largely synonymous to Direct3D. Even in the Windows SDK, the DirectX name only survives as DirectX Graphics, which is an umbrella term of Direct3D 9, Direct3D 10/11 and its companion APIs Direct2D, DirectWrite and DirectCompute. (And DirectX Graphics once was the umbrella name for DirectDraw 8 and Direct3D 8).

In the near future, Direct3D 11 will be marketed as the unified 2D and 3D graphics API for both traditional desktop gaming and the next-generation Xbox, and mobile ARM devices such as Windows tablets and Windows Phone 8.