What is DirectX

DirectX is a part of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is a collection of application programming interfaces (API) that enable programmers to more easily make use of modern computers' multimedia capabilities. By standardizing applications' interfacing with the computers sound, video and other multimedia subsytems, DirectX reduces the amount of code required for these applications to do their thing. DirectX is the primary interface used by modern PC games to access the multimedia subsystems in the PC. A collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. DirectX, then, was the generic term for all of these Direct-something APIs, and that term became the name of the collection.