Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

just a quick question why did the coders of dolphin skip DX 10 and go straight to 11?

Because all DirectX 10 cards can run DirectX 11 programs, probably...

Because the d3d11 plugin is backwards compatible and includes three different api paths, d3d10, d3d10.1, and d3d11. This is possible since the newer d3d versions have "paths" available that work like extensions do in opengl and unlock or lock the newer functions to allow backwards compatibility. So really they never skipped it. The opengl plugin works the same way, only allowing certain extensions if your hardware supports it in order to maintain backwards compatibility.