tl;dr; In the next update to Windows, codenamed 19H1, D3D12 will allow drivers to use idle priority background CPU threads to dynamically recompile shader programs. This can improve GPU performance by specializing shader code to better match details of the hardware it is running on and/or the context in which it is being used. Developers don’t hav...
Engineering specs for a number of DirectX features, including DirectX Raytracing, Variable Rate Shading, and all of D3D11, are now available at https://microsoft.github.io/DirectX-Specs. This supplements the official API documentation with an extra level of detail that can be useful to expert developers. The specs are licensed under Creative Com...
In the next update to Windows, codenamed 19H1, the DirectX12 debug layer adds support for GPU-based validation (GBV) of shader model 6.x (DXIL) as well as the previously supported shader model 5.x (DXBC). GBV is a GPU timeline validation that modifies and injects validation instructions directly into application shaders. It can provide more deta...
In the next update to Windows, codenamed 19H1, developers can specify DXR state subobjects inside a DXIL library. This provides an easier, flexible, and modular way of defining raytracing state, removing the need for repetitive boilerplate C++ code. This usability improvement was driven by feedback from early adopters of the API, so thanks to all t...
Introduction Last year at GDC, we shared our excitement about the many possibilities for using machine learning in game development. If you’re unfamiliar with machine learning or neural networks, I strongly encourage you to check out our blog post from last year, which is a primer for many of the topics discussed in this post. This year, we’re ...
One of the sides in the picture below is 14% faster when rendered on the same hardware, thanks to a new graphics feature available only on DirectX 12. Can you spot a difference in rendering quality? Neither can we. Which is why we’re very excited to announce that DirectX 12 is the first graphics API to offer broad hardware support for Varia...
Today, with game patch 8.1.5 for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard becomes the first game developer to use DirectX 12 for Windows 7! Now, Windows 7 WoW gamers can run the game using DirectX 12 and enjoy a framerate boost.
It’s been quite a while since we last talked about D3D11On12, which enables incremental porting of an application from D3D11 to D3D12 by allowing developers to use D3D11 interfaces and objects to drive the D3D12 API. Since that time, there’s been quite a few changes, and I’d like to touch upon some things that you can expect when you use D3D11On12 ...
DRED stands for Device Removed Extended Data. DRED is an evolving set of diagnostic features designed to help identify the cause of unexpected device removal errors, delivering automatic breadcrumbs and GPU-page fault reporting on hardware that supports the necessary features (more about that later). DRED version 1.1 is available today in the la...
When you are the team behind something like Direct3D, you need many different graphics cards to test on. And when you’ve been doing this for as long as we have, you’ll inevitably accumulate a LOT of cards left over from years gone by. What to do with them all? One option would be to store boxes in someone’s office: But it occurred t...
