Why Use DirectDraw?

  • Article

The DirectDraw component brings many powerful features to you, the Windows graphics programmer:

  • The hardware abstraction layer of DirectDraw provides a consistent interface through which to work directly with the display hardware, getting maximum performance.
  • DirectDraw assesses the video hardware's capabilities, making use of special hardware features whenever possible. For example, if your video card supports hardware blitting, DirectDraw delegates blits to the video card, greatly increasing performance. Additionally, DirectDraw provides a hardware emulation layer (HEL) to support features when the hardware does not.
  • DirectDraw makes it easy for you to implement page flipping with multiple back buffers in full-screen applications. For more information, see Page Flipping and Back Buffering.
  • Support for clipping in windowed or full-screen applications.
  • Support for hardware-assisted overlays with z-ordering.
  • Access to image-stretching hardware.
  • Simultaneous access to standard and enhanced display-device memory areas.
  • Other features include custom and dynamic palettes, exclusive hardware access.

These features combine to make it possible for you to write applications that easily outperform standard Windows GDI-based applications.

 Last updated on Thursday, April 08, 2004

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