By: Eugene Reyes

Windows 2000, released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, has some great features that did not exist in previous versions of Windows NT.  The Active Directory is by far the greatest enhancement to this network operating system--but it's definitely not the coolest.  How about Plug and Play (PnP) and power management capabilities that make it easier to connect new peripherals and manage power consumption on laptops?  Well, neither of those hit 10 on the cool-o-meter.  The cleaner user interface and the hip menus that fade in and out?  Nope, not even close.

Without a doubt, the coolest enhancement to Windows 2000 compared to previous versions of Windows NT is broad support for games.  Yes--games!  Whether you believe it or not, the best benchmarks for hardware and software these days are games that push the limits of PC technology.  For those of us who are gamers at heart, we know why this is such a significant movement forward.  For those of you who are not, here's a little bit of background.

Games have historically been a weak spot for Windows NT in the past.  When Windows NT was first released in 1993, most popular games were DOS-based.  This meant that for sound card and video card support, the game had to access those hardware devices directly through DOS.  This type of operation is not allowed in Windows NT for security and stability reasons, so these games would either not run, or would crash.  As technology evolved, games moved to a Windows-based platform.  This allowed game developers to use existing drivers for sound and video cards, as well as Microsoft's DirectX programming interface.  Unfortunately, Windows NT had poor support for a wide variety of these devices.  While Microsoft added support for DirectX 3.0 with Service Pack 4 for Windows NT 4.0, it was just too little too late.  DirectX became extremely popular with gaming companies.  However, Microsoft decided not to update these libraries for Windows NT.  This left for a very frustrated Windows NT user base, who were doomed to run Windows 98 alongside NT for adequate gaming support.

DirectX is a suite of programming interfaces that Microsoft has developed to make life easier for gaming companies and users.  With broad support for DirectX in Windows operating systems, gaming companies are assured that their game will run on the Windows platform.  DirectX contains three elements that affect games.  Direct3D provides advanced graphics features.  Direct Input provides features for game controllers.  Direct Sound gives you features such as surround sound, so you can hear your opponent walk up from behind you just before he obliterates you.

We can feel pretty sure about the continuing success of DirectX in Windows 2000 and beyond.  All video card manufacturers that want to put the "Compatible with Windows 2000" logo on their devices must support Direct3D, and ship with those drivers in the box.  This will further encourage gaming companies to continue to support DirectX features in their games.

While DirectX enjoys much success, Microsoft has competitors out there.  This mostly applies to the graphics side of things.  OpenGL and Glide are two other graphics solutions that pose a challenge to DirectX.  There is much debate as to which solution is technically superior, but that does not always make a product successful--widespread support does.  OpenGL, for example, is only supported in Windows 2000 if you obtain OpenGL drivers for your video card.  Glide isn't supported in Windows 2000.  However, most game titles that support OpenGL or Glide, support Direct3D.

With Windows 2000, gamers will no longer have to run Windows 98 and Windows NT.  They can reclaim the disk space that Windows 98 took hostage on computers, and go Windows 2000 all the way.  First, it was file servers, then database servers, now high-end super servers, embedded printers, and video games.

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