DirectX Developer Blog

DirectX 12 Ultimate for Holiday 2020

Jianye LuOctober 29, 2020Oct 29, 202010/29/20

DirectX 12 Ultimate is the new gold standard for gaming graphics on both PC and the next generation of Xbox consoles. In this blog post, we will show PC gamers which hardware fully support DX12 Ultimate, how to use Xbox Game Bar to check for DX12 Ultimate support, and where to find games utilizing DX12 Ultimate features.

D3D12 Debug Layer Message Callback

Alex GongOctober 19, 2020Oct 19, 202010/19/20

Finally, D3D12 messages that you can easily integrate with your own application logs! The D3D12 InfoQueue Message Callback feature allows developers to capture debug messages, with stack context, providing yet another essential debugging tool for error analysis. To date, D3D12 has had ID3D12InfoQueue API. However, developers always wants there...

D3D12 Debug Object Auto-Naming

Bill KristiansenOctober 16, 2020Oct 16, 202010/16/20

As of Windows 10 Release Preview 20236, there is now an option to enable automatic naming of D3D12 objects. Debug Object Auto-Names are unique, and descriptive, and are easy to enable programmatically or using d3dconfig.

DirectStorage is coming to PC

Andrew Yeung - MSFTSeptember 1, 2020Sep 1, 202009/1/20

Earlier this year, Microsoft showed the world how the Xbox Series X, with its portfolio of technology innovations, will introduce a new era of no-compromise gameplay. Alongside the actual console announcements, we unveiled the Xbox Velocity Architecture, a key part of how the Xbox Series X will deliver next generation gaming experiences. We...

New in DirectX— Feature Level 12_2

Claire AndrewsAugust 27, 2020Aug 27, 202008/27/20

What’s a feature level? If you’re a game developer who has spent any amount of time with computer hardware, or perhaps a computer game which simulates working with it, you will know that graphics cards are not all the same. There’s differentiation. Differentiation not only of overall performance characteristics, but the kinds of ...

Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling

Steve PronovostJune 30, 2020Jun 30, 202006/30/20

Abstract You may have noticed a mysterious new optional feature called Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling appear in the advanced graphics settings page with the Windows 10 May 2020 update. The purpose of this blog is to give some background on this new feature and how we are introducing it. It is intended for folks curious about Windows ...

Iterating on Variable Rate Shading in Gears Tactics

Jacques van RhynMay 26, 2020May 26, 202005/26/20

Gears Tactics is the very first game to ship with support for DirectX 12 Variable Rate Shading (VRS), one of the major features in DirectX 12 Ultimate. VRS let Gears Tactics achieve large performance gains – up to 18.9% (!) – on a wide range of hardware with a minimal impact on visual quality. Check out this guest post where Jacob ...

DirectX ❤ Linux

Steve PronovostMay 19, 2020May 19, 202005/19/20

Overview of the upcoming support for DX12, NVIDIA CUDA, OpenGL and OpenCL acceleration in the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

In the works: OpenCL™ and OpenGL® mapping layers to DirectX

Angela JiangMarch 24, 2020Mar 24, 202003/24/20

Building on our previous work with the D3D12 Translation Layer library as well as the D3D11On12 and D3D9On12 mapping layers, we’re happy to share that we are working on two new projects: OpenCL and OpenGL mapping layers to D3D12.

DirectX 12 Ultimate Getting Started Guide

Jacques van RhynMarch 19, 2020Mar 19, 202003/19/20

So, you’re a developer sold on the next-gen features in DirectX 12 Ultimate? Look no further than this little guide! 1) OS The complete set of DirectX 12 Ultimate features is be available in the next retail version of Windows 10, version 2004 (also called the Windows 10 May 2020 Update). As of 5/27, you can get this version of ...