Microsoft ships DirectX 5.0

Microsoft today released the final version of the Microsoft DirectX version5.0 set of APIs, the company's first unified multimedia system services forWindows 95 and Windows NT. DirectX 5.0 is a set of application programminginterfaces (APIs) that allows games and interactive content developers of to access specialized hardware features without having to write hardware-specific code. DirectX 5.0 consists of two levels of media services, DirectX foundation (for low-level hardware acceleration), and DirectX media(for high-level media integration).

"DirectX 5.0 provides a new generation of multimedia capabilities and performance for Windows," said Jay Torborg, director of multimedia at Microsoft. "The host of new features in DirectX 5.0 demonstrates Microsoft's commitment to delivering the richest multimedia services, providing the foundation for next-generation games, multimedia tools and Internet-ready content."

To download DirectX 5.0 and learn more about the new version, please visit the DirectX Web site.The English language version is approximately 5.6 MB