DirectX is Microsoft’s software system for getting graphics onto the screen. When a game developer is displaying the game on the screen,DirectX is how it gets there. That means that as DirectX gets better and better, game realism increases.

You can see the effect on realism in this video, which shows DirectX 7 through DirectX10 games:

DirectX 11 will make its appearance in Windows 7 (and will be added into Vista). This week AMD demonstrated is new DirectX 11 GPU, which will become available later this year and create even more realism in games:

AMD Demonstrates Worlds First DirectX 11 GPU

At a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan today, AMD publicly demonstrated the world’s first Microsoft DirectX 11 graphics processor. The series of demonstrations shed new light on the significantly improved computing experience set to debut at the end of 2009. The fusion of AMD’s new ground-breaking graphics processors with the forthcoming DirectX 11 programming interface is set to forever change both applications and PC gaming for the better. To illustrate, AMD showed numerous examples of faster application performance and new game features using the world’s first true DirectX 11 graphics processor.

Two important features that will get a lot of press are tessellation and the ability to move processing tasks off the CPU and onto the GPU. This video helps to understand tessellation:

With so many polygons visible, you begin to get “cinematic realism” in real time as demonstrated here:

See also: Tessellation and:

Why we should get excited about DirectX 11

As an admitted gaming technology geek, it’s hard not to get excited about the advancements in game technology. As many of you know, DirectX 11 is just around the corner, offering a dazzling array of new toys for game developers and people like me to play with. But as excited as the developer in me is about DirectX 11, I’m even more excited as a gamer, and you should be too. That’s because DirectX 11, in combination with new graphics hardware, and in some cases Windows 7, brings significant changes to the computing experience, changes that mean upcoming games and other applications are about to get a lot better. Let me explain how…

Going back one level to DirectX 10, here are some of the features that became available:

DirectX 11 takes it to the next level.