Microsoft has announced the details of its new DirectX version - to ensure
full support one need not only to install Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista but
may also need to replace a graphics card. Contemporary graphics accelerators
from Nvidia GeForce 8800 and AMD/ATI Radeon 2900 may not support all the new
features added to Direct3D 10.1. The features of DirectX 10.1 include
incremental improvements to 3D rendering quality. As for the innovations, among
them are 32-bit floating-point operations (instead of 16-bit ones, used today by
default) and obligatory support of 4x FSAA.
Microsoft's Sam Glassenberg did however note that "DirectX 10.1 fully supports
DirectX 10 hardware. No hardware support is being removed. It's strictly a
superset. It's basically an update to DirectX 10 that extends the hardware
functionality slightly." Glassenberg says DirectX 10.1 will be fully compatible
with all graphics cards supporting DirectX 10. All the company wants to do now
is to increase the API life cycle. Sam confirmed that
existing graphics cards may still not be able to use all the new features of
DirectX 10.1 but also stressed that applications designed specifically for
DirectX 10.1 are very unlikely to appear, because overall, the updates aren't
that critical.