DirectX 5 is the fourth version of the DirectX application programming interfaces (APIs) that allows developers of games and other interactive content to access specialized hardware features without having to write hardware specific code. Before DirectX, developers creating multimedia applications for Windows machines had to customize their products so that they would work well on the wide variety of hardware devices and configurations available on Windows machines.
While continuing to expand support for performance games, DirectX 5 lays the foundation for extending DirectX media services to multimedia, Internet, and other performance applications.
Microsoft objective with DirectX technology was to provide developers with a common set of instructions and components that would insure their products would work on any windows based pc regardless of the hardware and would make it easier for integrating a wide range of multimedia elements. Respectively, these technologies are called DirectX Foundation Layer and the DirectX Media Layer.
