For over two decades we play on Windows, then in 2001 came the Xbox and from that moment Microsoft has established itself increasingly as a solid reality in the world of gaming . However, there was a moment, in the midst of Windows development 95, when the future of the operating system as a platform for gaming seemed shaky at the very least. The story could have been very different if a trio of people – Eric Engstrom, Alex St. John and Craig Eisler – had failed to make Windows attractive to video game developers , who at the time were not inclined to leave the old way (MS-DOS) for the new one.

Engstrom, St. John and Eisler are none other than the proponents of API (Application Programming Interface) DirectX , the key element that allows the hardware to “speak” directly with Windows and vice versa, in order to compose a game scene that is increasingly rich in elements and allow you to interact with them. Unfortunately, as reported by the Wall Street Journal in recent days, Eric Engstrom passed away at the age of 55 years. For him, as explained by his wife Cindy, a foot injury in October was fatal, resulting in an accidental intake of Tylenol which caused liver damage.

Eric Engstrom – Credit: Cindy Engstrom

The “Beastie Boys”, as the three were nicknamed, have thus lost a member of the promoter group of the APIs that to date have marked almost 30 years of evolution of video games. “Disdainful of colleagues who did not share their ideas, were so hateful that Brad Silverberg, head of the Windows business, nicknamed them the Beastie Boys. He had to turn down frequent requests to fire them, “says the WSJ.

Engstrom was called by Alex St. John and Craig Eisler to develop APIs that could convince game developers to switch from MS-DOS, able to ensure direct access to the hardware, to the new environment . Windows did not initially have similar capabilities, but instead provided a little more standard and less direct access to components, and this was not what the developers liked. Furthermore, the solution adopted to favor the porting of DOS titles to Windows, WinG, proved difficult and quite unstable.

Engstrom’s role, among other things, was to talk to the developers and collect their consent to the new API, whose code name was “ Manhattan Project “for obvious reasons of secrecy: you must know that Microsoft was mistrustful, not to mention something more, towards the work of this trio, so much so that they often threatened to leave the company. In short, a nice setting. Fortunately, troubled stories don’t always end badly and today Windows is an attractive and successful gaming platform.

DirectX they allowed Windows to become the gaming platform we know , so much so that Microsoft wisely based the Xbox on it too. We have come to the DirectX 12 Ultimate version, a version of the API that not only gives more and more access directed to the hardware, but now “commands” a series of vast and advanced features: we think that DirectX includes the new DirectStorage API to put video cards in direct communication with the storage, but also DirectX Raytracing (DXR) capable of manage lighting effects differently than in the past.