   real time user input
  Doing some research Ive come into a contradiction. First that I should not use direct input, as stated in msdn and else where, second that numerous tutorials, texts, ect. use direct input. Ive checked through my references and they all refer to / use direct input.  Whats going on, why are so many game programming references using direct input when the author of it says to not use it and instead use windows messaging or better yet raw input? Also, if I go with direct input simply because I have easy access to references that are catered to a game framework will I end up wishing Id gone with raw or windows msgs? Similarly, how about windows msgs, will I regret not going to raw input? Raw input seems like the most efficient solution until I consider that this will likely mean writing my own wrapper, which will likely be slower than using microsoft's. Thanks,   Ryan   
numerous tutorials, texts, ect. use direct inputThe internet is full of bad tutorials, and many text books were written before it was commonly agreed that direct input was a bad idea.It's ok to use someone else's wrapper for Windows input to begin with (even if that wrapper is DirectInput) -- before you can write your own wrapper, it's good to use other people's ones first, so you're familiar with what it is that you're building.The difference between using "standard" windows input messages and raw-input isn't that great. If you made a wrapper for the "standard" messages, it would be fairly easy to switch it over to use raw-input, or vice-versa.   