25 years ago today, Microsoft released DirectX 8 and changed PC graphics forever — How programmable shaders laid the groundwork for the future of modern GPU rendering

The games we enjoy today would be unimaginably different without the improvements ushered in by DirectX 8 and its programmable shaders. Shader Model 1.0 introduced per-pixel programmable lighting, letting developers write custom code to control how light interacted with objects, rather than relying solely on the GPU’s built-in fixed-function logic.