The following explains how this article came about. ... it all begins with me sitting at work minding my own business. when i overhear a coworker explain to my boss about how he should check out this program called WorldWind (WW). the key words i picked up were : NASA, C#, FREE, and SOURCE CODE. that caught my interest so i took a note to check it out later. that night i downloaded it and was absolutely blown away. it was one of the coolest applications i had played with in a long while. plus it had source! so i shut down the installer version and grabbed the code. built both the solutions, moved the data over, and it ran ... way too easy. looked around the code for a bit and saw that it was using Managed DirectX (MDX). i did not know anything about 3D programming, let alone MDX ... but i did know that the next version of the Compact Framework (CF) was getting Managed Direct3D Mobile (MD3DM). then it clicked ... make WorldWind (WW) run on a Pocket PC (PPC). "the world in the palm of your hand" ... if you will. NOTE this is just the 1st of many cheesy jokes. shot off an email to my MVP lead, and Microsoft got me hooked up with a Pocket PC that had the newer OS bits i would need to start developing. also got a hold of an early version of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. i seriously did not know anything about DirectX ... so i had to write the /cfMDX article ... to get warmed up. that helped me to understand the basics about Direct3D (D3D), and what would be involved when porting an MDX app to MD3DM.