As a part of the Windows team, we’re super excited about the Windows 10 Technical Preview that was just released!  The final version of Windows 10 will ship with DirectX 12, and we think it’s going to be awesome.

We especially encourage gamers to help us make this release great for you by becoming Windows Insiders.  Game developers who are part of our DirectX 12 Early Access program have even more incentive to join the Windows Insider program.  These game developers will receive everything they need to kickstart their DX12 development, including: updated runtime, API headers, drivers, documentation, and samples, all of which will work with the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

We have a few more treats for game developers…

Unreal 4 Engine 4.4 Supports DirectX 12!

As we announced in our last blog post, members of our Early Access program who subscribe to Unreal Engine 4 can receive source access to the DX12 port of UE4. We’ve worked with Epic to create a DX12 branch on the UE4 GitHub repository.  This branch supports UE 4.4, the latest publically released version of the Unreal 4 Engine!  Come join our open development project and help make DX12 great!

From Asteroids to Mountains, Intel Rocks!

In the comments section of our last blog post, several of you asked about support for other graphics vendors.  We have great working relationships with all graphics vendors and you can expect to see a continual showcase of their progress.   

In fact, in the same week as the Maxwell event, Max McMullen, our development lead, was also present at the Intel Development Forum where he unveiled the latest details on our new binding model while Michael Apodaca from Intel explained how Intel has optimized their driver for DX12.  These optimizations made it possible for Intel to create the Asteroids demo, which they revealed at Siggraph, showing the performance and power savings of DX12.  You can see more details on the asteroids demo here.

Intel has graciously agreed to make the source for their compelling Asteroids demo available to all developers in the DX12 Early Access program. 

Oh, and the screenshot above?  That was a screenshot from an Intel Haswell graphics DX12 machine running UE4.4’s Landscape Mountains demo.

As always, we’ve got even more in the pipeline that we’ll be sharing in the coming months here, via Early Access Program and via @DirectX12.  If you haven’t signed up for these already, you have no excuse now!