The PlayBasic programming language is built on top of the Windows DirectX libraries. Unfortunately, DirectX today comes in all shapes and sizes. So to help users work out if they need to install DirectX on their computer or not, we've release a simple compatibility tester. To give the broadest possible compatibility PlayBasic was built upon one of the older editions of DirectX (pre DX9), so the tester simply check if your system has this version installed.

     Ironically, the systems that are most likely to not have older DirectX libraries installed, are machines with either Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems installed. Which by default, use a version of DirectX that doesn't have fall back support. So in order to run old DirectX programs Vista/Win7 users will have to install the DirectX9 runtimes from Microsoft. Which includes support for not only Dx9, but Dx8 , Dx7 etc etc.. all the way back to Dx1..

    The System Compatibility Tester is currently available on our PlayBasic Downloads page.