OK, so only one day after I publicly whined “where is the DX SDK?” Microsoft has released the March 2009 version. Go figure. Get it here at DirectX 2009 SDK @ MS Download.
Also, there seems to be some interesting stuff bundled with this version of the SDK, here’s my take on the important stuff:
- Technical Previews
- Direct2D
- DirectWrite
- DXGI 1.1
- PIX works on the Windows 7 beta
- Several updated samples
Check out the details at the link posted above. Also, it doesn’t look like the online MSDN library docs have been updated yet but usually that happens pretty quickly.
I wonder what kind of development is going on at Microsoft as there hasn’t been an update for the DirectX SDK since November of 2008. This is quite out-of-sync with their regular release schedule of a new SDK every 3 months.
My guess would be that with the release date of Windows 7 inching closer, the development for DirectX 11 has to be completed soon. Of course this is 100% speculation.
If anyone has a clue, let me know.
Just released, get it while it’s hot.
It doesn’t look like there are any DirectX 11 previews in there. Is it my imagination or were those supposed to be in it? Thanks Aras for the confirmation that the DirectX 11 preview are actually in there.
EDIT2: The new DirectX redistributable was released today.
Hot off the press, get it now: DirectX SDK August 2008
Following is a list of the major features that have been announced to be included in Direct3D 11, the next generation Graphics API included in the DirectX SDK. In my opinion, the changes (rather, additions) brought into this API are excellent so far. It seems as if the API has finally grown up and is in no way, shape or form comparable with older DX versions and deprecates OpenGL 3.0 at this point.
Major Direct3D 11 Features:
- Compatibility: Ability to run on previous generation hardware (9, 10, 10.1)
- Multithreading: Resources may be created asynchronously on separate threads.
- Tesselation: Allows for subdivision surface operations (Fixed Function, not programmable)
- Compute Shaders: Allows for general programming on the CPU, much like NVIDIA’s CUDA.
- No Overhaul: Direct3D 11 is a superset of Direct3D 10, no learning curve as with 9 → 10.
A DX11 preview should appear in your November 2008 DirectX SDK. Keep your eyes on this page for GDC 2008 DirectX 11 papers.
Notes
1. Although you may use the Direct3D 11 SDK on older hardware features will naturally be limited to the hardware itself.
DirectX 11 is to be presented at NVISION 08, click here for details.
Looking at the few mentioned features on the page (tessellation, multithreaded rendering, compute shaders, Shader Model 5), I’d say OpenGL is in big trouble if they want to catch up.
This weekend I took some time out to reformat my development computer in preparation for Windows Vista. I used Vista before but switched back to XP x64 in less than a week’s time. But heck, after a year and a Service Pack, I was willing to take the chance with Vista.
I wanted to take advantage of the DirectX 10 features Vista exposes since they’re not available on XP but was kind of disappointed with the performance of the API in Vista. It seems to me that the samples provided in the DirectX SDK simply run much slower than on XP.
Granted, I bought the most budget oriented GPU that supports DX10 (Geforce 8500GT 512VRAM) but that was simply because of the reason that I want my projects to be able to run on the lowest budget hardware possible while still being able to access DX10-like features. Dell, in fact, offers the 8400 on their laptops and budget desktop PCs, which is a fair share of the market and should be targeted.
Vista itself seems pretty solid so far; it certainly responds better than a year ago and supports all of my hardware and development tools (VS 2008, AQTime, Intel C++ compiler, etc). The big test will be OpenGL: Will it also have performance drops or stay the same? I’ll see tonight.
Some questions have come up in regards to my last post, The Ghost of OpenGL 3.0, and one of them keeps popping out on top: Why do we need OpenGL 3.0 and What’s wrong with OpenGL 2.1? This post will attempt to take you through the pre-published materials on the OpenGL API, version 3.0 and show you the major changes and differences. Or you could simple jump to the answer and conclusion without reading the features provided by OpenGL 3.0, if you don’t feel like getting informed.
Read the rest of this entry »
Scriptionary 