Well, DirectX is pretty good, version 7 has the benefit of having 6 prior releases to help iron out bugs.
I have one issue with this thread subject, it's about programming tools. It's all well and good that one can get free SDK's from Microsoft, but there is no free compiler from Microsoft. There should be.
For C, one can use LCC, for DOS DJGPP which is the GNU C/C++ compiler, DJGPP can utilize RSXNTDJ to program for Windows on Win32. Also, there is mingw32.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Station/1177/index.html http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/ http://www.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/~rainer/ http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~janjaap/mingw32/index.html http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
My point here is that there is probably no free compiler that can build DirectX 7. There are examples seen of using DirectX from, for example, LCC or RSXNTDJ, but this is close to a Herculean effort in itself.
Industrial Java compilers are free.
Ross Finlayson
my inner geek wrote:
> Today Microsoft released their DirectX 7.0 SDK.
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1999/Sept99/DirectX7pr.htm
>
> While the download is rather large at 129Mb, I expect it'll be worth
> the wait.
>
> Finally, for those of us mere mortals who are frustrated with C++ but
> can manage to program in Visual Basic, VB can now access the API for
> 3D graphics and sound.
>
> The SDK includes VB examples.
>
> I'm gonna experiment with 3D positioning of wavetable music
> synthesis, and maybe play with hardware-accelerated 3D graphics.
>
> I expect my CD should be ready for commercial release around the year
> 2025, when nanomedicine is able to provide self-discipline and a long-
> sought cure to writer's block.
>
> -------------------
> geek@ifeden.com