DirectX Developer Blog
The latest news on Microsoft's Graphics and Display technology
Latest posts
DirectX at Game Stack Live 2021
At Game Stack Live 2021, DirectX team shared how they continue evolving DirectX with the latest features across hardware and providing the greatest tools and support. Hardware partners also shared their updates on DirectX support.
Announcing HLSL Shader Model 6.6
After months of development and refinement in collaboration with hardware vendors and software developers, we are pleased to announce the availability of Shader Model 6.6! Shader Model 6.6 empowers shader authors with new tools for greater flexibility to make existing shaders faster and more versatile as well as to devise all new techniques. To give Shader Model 6.6 a try, developers will need a few tools. To compile shaders using Shader Model 6.6, you need the latest DirectX Shader Compiler release. To run those compiled shaders, you'll need the DirectX 12 Agility SDK and the corresponding graphics driver....
Announcing the DirectX 12 Agility SDK!
We’re excited to unveil the DirectX 12 Agility SDK, an update that will allow devs to adopt the newest DirectX 12 graphics features faster than ever before. With the Agility SDK, developers can now add the newest DirectX 12 features to their games, and gamers can play games with these features without having to upgrade their OS. Games can use the Agility SDK to light up the latest features on any device with the Windows 10 November 2019 Update or newer. As of this writing of this blog, this already means close to every gamer machine today can run games which use the Agility SDK! Developers excited about...
Getting Started with the Agility SDK
This guide is intended for developers who want to get started developing games that use the Agility SDK. It covers: Be sure to also see our Announcement blog, Downloads Page, Game Stack Live talk and spec. Visit the DirectX Landing Page for more resources for DirectX developers. What is the Agility SDK and how does it work? The DirectX team used to rely solely on Windows 10 OS Updates to get DirectX feature updates onto gamer machines. Even though shipping with the OS means that all DirectX 12 features eventually reach a large audience of gamers, this also meant that DirectX features...
Windows Graphics News – 2021 Q1
With the first quarter of 2021 behind us, we here at the Windows Graphics team would like to share what we've been up to in the last three months.
Auto HDR Preview for PC Available Today
Today we’re excited to bring you a preview of Auto HDR for your PC gaming experience and we’re looking for your help to test it out. When enabled on your HDR capable gaming PC, you will automatically get awesome HDR visuals on an additional 1000+ DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games!
Moving Gears to Tier 2 Variable Rate Shading
The team at The Coalition haven't stopped innovating since bringing Tier 1 VRS to Gears Tactics, and have brought Tier 2 VRS support to both Gears 5 and Gears Tactics. The team saw similarly large perf gains from VRS Tier 2 - up to 14%! - this time with no noticeable visual impact. See for yourself if you can tell which side of the first image in the blog has VRS enabled to get a perf boost, and which side doesn't. Because of the unprecedented alignment between PC and Xbox with DirectX 12 Ultimate, The Coalition could bring their implementation to both console and PC with ease. That's right: their VRS Tier...
In the works: HLSL Shader Model 6.6
Microsoft and its partners are happy to announce the development of Shader Model 6.6, the latest advancement in HLSL capability. Shader Model 6.6 will grant shader developers increased flexibility to enhance and expand existing rendering approaches and devise all new ones. New features include expanded atomic operations, dynamic resource binding, derivatives and samples in compute shaders, packed 8-bit computations, and wave size. Feature Details 64-bit Integer Atomic Operations Shader Model 6.6 will introduce the ability to perform atomic arithmetic, bitwise, and exchange/store operations on...
Announcing the OpenCL™ and OpenGL® Compatibility Pack for Windows 10 on ARM
The OpenCL and OpenGL to DirectX 12 mapping layers are now available in the Microsoft Store as the OpenCL™ and OpenGL® Compatibility Pack. We’re excited to talk more about the project and share one specific use case: Photoshop on Windows 10 on ARM.