Niet echt gamenieuws, maar aangezien alle spellen er tegenwoordig onder werken mi chien toch aardig om te lezen. GameSpot heeft een Feature gedaan over die aankomende versie, DirectX 8, die een paar veelbelovende dingen in zich heeft.Multiplayer technologies in DirectX 8.0 encompa networking, speech, and voice-communication technologies. The biggest addition on the networking side comes on the heels of a realization that more homes have multiple networked PCs, and users want all of them to have the capability to play games. I ues like firewalls, routing, and other complications must be accounted for. Also, speech will become a key part of the gameplaying experience. Speech is divided into two parts: recognition and text-to-speech. That's right, the talking computer isn't far off, though it will probably still sound vaguely Scandinavian for a while. Speech recognition, which Microsoft dubs "command and control," can offer substantial benefits, particularly for games that are keyboard-command heavy. The other new multiplayer facet is voice communication. Microsoft is leveraging its recent purchase of ShadowFactor Software to create DirectPlay voice, which is e entially Battlecom technology integrated into DirectX. (Battlecom is the voice-over-IP communication package developed by ShadowFactor.) The API will be integrated into DirectX, letting game programmers directly incorporate multiplayer voice comms into their titles in a standard way.