DirectDraw
Old API of Microsoft's DirectX API
DirectDraw (ddraw.dll) is an API that used to be a part of Microsoft's DirectX API. DirectDraw is used to accelerate rendering of 2D graphics in applications. DirectDraw also allows applications to run fullscreen or embedded in a window such as most other MS Windows applications. DirectDraw uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the client's computer. DirectDraw allows direct access to video memory, hardware overlays, hardware blitters, and page flipping. Its video memory manager can manipulate video memory with ease, taking full advantage of the blitting and color decompression capabilities of different types of display adapters.
Because DirectDraw is a 2D API, it contains commands for 2D rendering and although it does not support 3D hardware acceleration, versions through to 7.0 of DirectDraw are tightly coupled to their respective version of Direct3D. In order to utilize 3D acceleration in Direct3D 7.0 and below, DirectDraw must be used in order to create an IDirect3D interface with the help of IDirectDraw7->QueryInterface, from which comes an IDirect3DDevice, and from there the remainder of the Direct3D API can be accessed and utilized. DirectDraw provides Textures (through Surfaces), Clippers, Palettes and Pixel Formats to Direct3D as well as the final presentation pass to display rendered images to the screen.
DirectDraw was introduced for Windows Mobile in Windows Mobile 5.0, replacing the graphics component of GAPI, which was then deprecated.
With the release of DirectX version 8.0, DirectDraw was merged into a new package called DirectX Graphics, which extended Direct3D with a few DirectDraw API additions. DirectDraw can still be used by programmers, and it can be compiled in 64-bit, but they must use older DirectX interfaces (DirectX 7 and below).
“DirectDraw” enters the record as old API of Microsoft's DirectX API. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what DirectDraw, Microsoft's and DirectX can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “DirectDraw” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.