"Commandos Directx 5 Not Found" is something I remember 😀
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DirectX_2-7_games has a lot of DX2 games

more about early DX http://craig.theeislers.com/2006/02/20/direct … and-now-part-1/ from one of the engineers behind whole thing at MS

DirectX 4

😜

More info about DX history https://books.google.pl/books?id=ULfp5GcVTukC … PA147&lpg=PA147
DX 1 and 2 had Retained mode. I remember something about it, it was high level ready to use game engine where you just plopped your game asset. As big of a flop as subsequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Talisman

Yup. D3D Retained Mode wasn't very popular indeed. It's still working, though, if an older Directx API is used.
I got it to work in a few games, on Windows XP with DirectX 9.0c installed.

Edit: DirectX 7.1 was an oddball release, too, as it was an Windows Me exclusive..
What makes it special are compatibility issues with some games
and that it was the last "classic" DirectX, before the pixel/vertex shaders were introduced.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-10-25, 02:18:

More info about DX history https://books.google.pl/books?id=ULfp5GcVTukC … PA147&lpg=PA147
DX 1 and 2 had Retained mode. I remember something about it, it was high level ready to use game engine where you just plopped your game asset. As big of a flop as subsequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Talisman

That Talisman WIKIpedia article confuses bits and bytes, among other issues. 😉

darry wrote on 2022-11-01, 03:24:

That Talisman WIKIpedia article confuses bits and bytes, among other issues. 😉

That reminds me of DCI vs WinG..
Afaik, some articles about WinG say that WinG was made as technology to fix Windows 3.1x graphics drivers.
However, that description fits much better to DCI, the Display Control Interface, I think.
Because, DCI is implemented in the graphics drivers by the manufacturer rather than being part of the Windows installation.
WinG is much more like a proto DirectDraw..
(DCI is useful for direct framebuffer access, video overlay. Like used for playing MPEG video. Xing MPEG Player does DCI.
DCI32 for Win95 was scrapped, afaik.)

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-10-24, 23:42:

DirectX 4

😜

4 doesn't count, there is no DX4 😜

candle_86 wrote on 2022-11-02, 00:38:

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-10-24, 23:42:

DirectX 4

😜

4 doesn't count, there is no DX4 😜

Because of Microsoft Japan, maybe?
- AFAIK, 4 ("shi") equals ⚰️ in Japan, at least phonetically..

DirectX 3 had a lot of graphics drivers for Japanese PC platforms.
That's why it comes to mind.

Edit: I forgot to mention.. The drivers! Before DirectX 5, someone had to install DirectX-capable graphics drivers, which shipped with DirectX Runtime Redistributable.

So the original, say, S3 Trio32/64 drivers of a Windows 95 installation had to be replaced by those that shipped with DirectX 3.

Quite a few games from '97 and '98 used DirectX 5 and included it on their installation CD.

It wasn't underutilized by any means.