Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 2538

To configure the Direct3D driver, click the Advanced Direct3D button. This button, which is available only when Direct3D is the active option, opens the Configure Direct3D dialog on page 7802. To switch to a different display driver when Direct3D is the active driver, click the Choose Driver button on the Viewports tab of the Preference Settings dialog to open the Direct3D Driver Setup dialog on page 7800, click Revert From Direct3D, and then choose the new driver from the Graphics Driver Setup dialog. The Microsoft Direct3D API supports both rasterization and 3D scene-level calls. It offers the optimum display performance for large modeling tasks, and pixel and vertex shading. (3ds Max supports only D3D Version 8 or above, which is included in DirectX 8.1.) D3D calls are accelerated if the display hardware supports this. Many inexpensive 3D display cards can use this driver efficiently. This driver supports scene data culling efficiently, accelerates texture display (depending on the specific display card), and performs perspective correction. The driver works with high-color displays, which provide a good trade-off between display quality and memory overhead. Incremental display update works efficiently. The disadvantages of the Direct3D driver are as follows: ■ The driver currently runs only under Windows 98, Windows Millennium, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. (There is no multi-processor Windows NT support.) ■ Dual-plane operations are slow (if available), and there can be some additional overhead in minimizing/maximizing viewports due to the way D3D allocates video memory. You can download D3D drivers from this location: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/. Configure Driver Customize menu > Preferences > Preference Settings dialog > Viewports tab > Display Drivers group > Configure Driver button You configure the current display driver using the Viewports panel of the Preference Settings dialog. Graphics Driver Setup Dialog | 7793