Editing WinG (section)

==Background==
WinG fixed two problems. The first problem that WinG fixed was that Windows 3.x did not support creating Device Contexts (DCs) based on device independent bitmaps, only actual display devices. One major limitation of the [[Graphics Device Interface]] (GDI) DCs was that they were write-only. Data, once written, could not be retrieved. The second problem was that all GDI drawing was implemented in the Windows 3.x video drivers. This included the drawing of bitmaps. Obviously performance of such routines varied across drivers.

[[Alex St. John]], one of the creators of [[DirectX]], said in a 2000 interview that,
{{cquote|WinG was a technology being built by [[Chris Hecker]] in the research group, and at the time it was one of the small Microsoft [[Skunkworks project]]s, very low profile and off-the-wall. Basically it was fixing broken Windows drivers to make them run faster and more acceptably. Using it, we were actually able to create a video API that could run DOOM almost as fast under Windows as it did in DOS.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://www.firingsquad.com/features/alexstjohn/
|title=Alex St. John Interview
|last=Colayco
|first=Bob
|date=7 March 2000
|publisher=firingsquad.com
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091006022255/http://www.firingsquad.com/features/alexstjohn/
|archive-date=6 October 2009
}}</ref>}}

Microsoft announced WinG at the 1994 [[Game Developers Conference]], demonstrating it with a port by [[id Software]] of ''[[Doom (1993 video game)|Doom]]''.<ref name="cgw199407">{{Cite magazine |last1=Wilson |first1=Johnny L. |last2=Brown |first2=Ken |last3=Lombardi |first3=Chris |last4=Weksler |first4=Mike |last5=Coleman |first5=Terry |date=July 1994 |title=The Designer's Dilemma: The Eighth Computer Game Developers Conference |url=http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/index.php?year=1994&pub=2&id=120 |magazine=Computer Gaming World |pages=26–31}}</ref> WinG was shipped on September 21, 1994.<ref>{{cite web
|url=http://craig.theeislers.com/2006/02/directx_then_and_now_part_1.php
|title=DirectX Then and Now (Part 1)
|last=Eisler
|first=Craig
|date=February 20, 2006
|access-date=2008-01-19
|work=Craig's Musings
|archive-date=2012-07-11
|archive-url=https://archive.today/20120711181236/http://craig.theeislers.com/2006/02/directx_then_and_now_part_1.php
|url-status=dead
}}</ref> WinG, while interesting, was still fundamentally based on drawing bitmaps in memory and outputting frames after the drawing was done. As a result, WinG was deprecated and [[DirectX]] was built. However, Windows NT 3.5 and Windows 95 introduced CreateDIBSection to provide support for creating DCs based on DIBs and video drivers also eventually improved.