Free .x (DirectX) Viewer Online — Open Legacy Game Assets

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Last updated Mar 2026

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When to Use X (DirectX) Viewer

Recovering Old Game Project Assets

Dug up a game project from 2005-2010 that used DirectX 9? The .x models from your old source tree won't open in any modern tool directly. Preview them here to decide which assets are worth converting to OBJ or GLB for reuse in Unity or Unreal Engine 5.

XNA Game Studio Model Preview

Microsoft's XNA Framework (2006-2013) used .x as its default content pipeline format before switching to FBX. If you have XNA projects or followed XNA tutorials (RB Whitaker, Riemer's), your model files are likely .x format. Preview them here before converting for modern engines.

DirectX Tutorial Sample Models

Classic DirectX programming books (Frank Luna's "Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX", Wendy Jones's "Beginning DirectX") include .x sample models. View these samples in your browser without setting up the legacy DirectX SDK or Visual Studio 2008.

Game Modding: Extracting Legacy Assets

Some older PC games store models as .x files in their data directories. Modding communities for these games need to preview and convert these assets. Check the model before running it through a conversion pipeline to OBJ or FBX.

Archive Migration Assessment

Studios and educational institutions sometimes have archives of .x files from old projects and courses. Preview files to assess which are worth migrating to modern formats and which can be archived as-is.

What You Should Know

The .x Format: Template-Based 3D Data

Unlike most 3D formats that have fixed structures, .x uses a template system: the file header declares data templates (Mesh, MeshNormals, MeshMaterialList, AnimationSet, etc.) and then instantiates them with data. This made the format extensible — developers could define custom templates for game-specific data. Templates can be text (human-readable) or binary (compact). The format identifier is "xof" followed by version (usually 0303), type ("txt" or "bin"), and float size (0032 or 0064).

What .x Files Can Store

Geometry (indexed triangle meshes), per-vertex normals, texture coordinates, material definitions (diffuse, specular, emissive, power), texture filename references, bone hierarchy and skinning weights, keyframe animations, and a frame (transform) hierarchy for scene graph. The animation system supports matrix and quaternion keyframes. However, .x has no PBR material support, no vertex colors (without custom templates), and limited metadata.

Why .x Was Deprecated

Microsoft deprecated the D3DX utility library (which included .x file loading) with DirectX 10 in 2006, though it remained available via the legacy SDK until 2012. The reasons: .x had no standardization body (only Microsoft controlled it), FBX offered better animation support and wider tool adoption, and the rise of glTF/GLB provided a vendor-neutral web-ready alternative. DirectX 11 and 12 do not include any .x file support.

How This Viewer Works

The .x file is parsed and converted to GLB format entirely in your browser using our WebAssembly conversion engine. Geometry, materials, and texture references are mapped to glTF equivalents. The resulting GLB is then rendered with WebGL. This two-step process means you get the same rendering quality as native GLB files.

Frequently Asked Questions

The .x format is a 3D file format created by Microsoft as part of the DirectX SDK. It was the primary 3D format for DirectX applications from 1996 (DirectX 2) through 2009 (DirectX 9). It comes in text (.x with ASCII data) and binary (.x with compressed binary data) variants. The format stores geometry, materials, texture references, skeletal animations, and scene hierarchy using a template-based structure.

The .x format was widely used in DirectX 7-9 era games (roughly 1999-2007): many indie games built with DirectX SDK samples, XNA Framework games (2006-2013), and games using older engines like Torque3D and DarkBASIC. Microsoft's own XNA Game Studio used .x as its default 3D format before switching to .fbx. Many DirectX tutorial books and courses from this era include .x sample models.

Blender does not natively import .x files. You have two options: (1) Use our X to OBJ converter to get an OBJ file that Blender opens directly, or (2) Install a third-party Blender add-on for .x import (available on GitHub, but compatibility varies by Blender version). The converter approach is more reliable.

The viewer displays static geometry and materials from .x files. Skeletal animations stored in .x files (AnimationSet and Animation templates) are not played back. To preview animated .x content, convert to GLB first which preserves animation data.

Microsoft deprecated the .x format when DirectX 10 dropped the D3DX utility library in 2006. The format was replaced by FBX (for DCC/game engine interchange) and later glTF/GLB (for web). Most modern 3D software (Maya 2020+, Cinema 4D, Unreal Engine 5) no longer include .x importers. Converting to OBJ or GLB is the recommended migration path.

Text .x files are human-readable (similar to OBJ format) and start with "xof 0303txt". Binary .x files start with "xof 0303bin" and are significantly smaller. Both store the same data structures. The text format is useful for debugging and manual editing, while binary is better for distribution. Our viewer handles both variants.

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