Managed DirectX® 9 Kick Start: Graphics and Game Programming

Rendering a Single Triangle Without Using the Fixed-function Pipeline

What exactly is the “fixed-function pipeline” that has been mentioned several times so far in this chapter? The fixed-function pipeline controls exactly how vertices are rendered, how they are transformed, how they are lit, everything. When you set the vertex format property on the device, you are telling the device that you want to render these vertices in a certain way, based on what the vertex format is.

One of the major drawbacks of this design is that for every single feature that a graphics card needs to have exposed, a corresponding fixed-function API must be designed and implemented. With the power of graphics hardware increasing quite rapidly (quicker than CPU chips ...