DirectX Developer Blog
The latest news on Microsoft's Graphics and Display technology
Latest posts
Use VHD to Accelerate DirectX 12 Development
In case game developers are limited on how frequently they can upgrade Windows 10 on their dev machines, they can use VHD files to quickly set up a new Windows 10 OS partition and to access new or preview features from DirectX 12.
Useful Links
Below is a list of links that a DirectX 12 developer would find useful:
We’re upgrading to discord!
We’re upgrading the directxtech.com forum to a Discord channel - go to https://discord.gg/directx to join today! We’re going to use our Discord channel in the same way as our directxtech.com forums, which means that game developers will still have a great resource to get their DirectX12 questions answered, file bug reports, and to give us feedback about the things they’d like to see us add to our API. Why the move? Developers are increasingly using team chat software, and we've gotten consistent feedback from our developer partners that they prefer a more direct, low-latency way to communicate with us. ...
Debugger Extension for DRED
Microsoft recently announced the release of DRED (Device Removed Extended Data) for D3D12 in the Windows 10 May 2019 Update (previously referred to as the Windows 10 19H1 Preview). Buried in that post is a mention that Microsoft is working on a debugger extension to help simplify post-mortem analysis of DRED. Good news, that debugger extension is now available on GitHub. D3DDred.js is a JavaScript debugger extension for WinDbg (available here). This extension makes it possible to examine the DRED output with clear context and a human-readable layout. Why WinDbg? Besides being a powerful, lightweight debugge...
OS Variable Refresh Rate
[Updated June 13th to clarify support for FreeSync] With Windows Version 1903, we have added a new toggle in Graphics Settings for variable refresh rate. Variable refresh rate (VRR) is similar to NVIDIA’s G-SYNC, AMD's FreeSync, and VESA DisplayPort Adaptive-Sync. This new OS support is only to augment these experiences and does not replace them. You should continue to use G-SYNC / FreeSync / Adaptive-Sync normally. This toggle doesn’t override any of the settings you’ve already configured in the G-SYNC, FreeSync, or Adaptive-Sync control panels. This new toggle enables VRR support for DX11 full-screen g...
DirectX 12 boosts performance of HITMAN 2
Our partners at IO Interactive, the developers of the award-winning HITMAN franchise, recently added DirectX 12 support to HITMAN 2, with impressive results. IO Interactive was so excited that they wanted to share a bit about how their innovative use of DirectX 12 benefits HITMAN gamers everywhere. The guest post below is from IO Interactive: DirectX 12 boosts performance of HITMAN 2 by Brian Rasmussen, Technical Producer, IO Interactive With the latest update HITMAN 2 is available for DirectX 12 and users report improved performance in many cases. HITMAN 2 is a great candidate for taking advantage of Di...
New in D3D12 – background shader optimizations
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 have to do anything to benefit from this feature – as drivers start to use it, existing shaders will automatically be tuned more efficiently. But developers who are profiling their code may wish to use the new SetBackgroundProcessingMode API to control how and when these o...
DirectX engineering specs published
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 Commons. We welcome contributions to clarify, add missing detail, or better organize the material.
New in D3D12 – GPU-Based Validation (GBV) is now available for Shader Model 6.x
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 detailed validation than is possible using CPU validation alone. In previous Windows releases, GBV modified DXBC shaders to provide validations such as resource state tracking, out-of-bound buffer accesses, uninitialized resource and descriptor bindings, and resource promot...