DirectX Developer Blog

Coming to DirectX 12: More control over memory allocation

Jesse NatalieNovember 11, 2019Nov 11, 201911/11/19

In the next update to Windows, D3D12 will be adding two new flags to the D3D12_HEAP_FLAG enumeration. These new flags are “impermanent” properties, which don’t affect the resulting memory itself, but rather the way in which it’s allocated. This gives app developers more control and flexibility.

Coming to DirectX 12— Mesh Shaders and Amplification Shaders: Reinventing the Geometry Pipeline  

Sarah JobaliaNovember 8, 2019Nov 8, 201911/8/19

D3D12 is adding two new shader stages: the Mesh Shader and the Amplification Shader. These additions will streamline the rendering pipeline, while simultaneously boosting flexibility and efficiency.  In this new and improved pre-rasterization pipeline, Mesh and Amplification Shaders will optionally replace the section of the ...

DirectX Raytracing (DXR) Tier 1.1

Amar PatelNovember 6, 2019Nov 6, 201911/6/19

An overview of features in DXR Tier 1.1.

Coming to DirectX 12— Sampler Feedback: some useful once-hidden data, unlocked

Claire AndrewsNovember 4, 2019Nov 4, 201911/4/19

Why Feedback: A Streaming Scenario Suppose you are shading a complicated 3D scene. The camera moves swiftly throughout the scene, causing some objects to be moved into different levels of detail. Since you need to aggressively optimize for memory, you bind resources to cope with the demand for different LODs. Perhaps you use a texture ...

Dev Preview of New DirectX 12 Features

Jianye LuOctober 28, 2019Oct 28, 201910/28/19

In this blog post, we will preview a suite of new DirectX 12 features, including DirectX Raytracing tier 1.1, Mesh Shader, and Sampler Feedback. All these features are currently available in Windows 10 Insider Preview Builds (20H1).

A Look Inside D3D12 Resource State Barriers

Bill KristiansenOctober 22, 2019Oct 22, 201910/22/19

Many D3D12 developers have become accustomed to managing resource state transitions and read/write hazards themselves using the ResourceBarrier API. Prior to D3D12, such details were handled internally by the driver.  However, D3D12 command lists cannot provide the same deterministic state tracking as D3D10 and D3D11 device contexts.  ...

DRED v1.2 supports PIX marker and event strings in Auto-Breadcrumbs

Bill KristiansenSeptember 11, 2019Sep 11, 201909/11/19

In Windows 10 1903, DRED 1.1 provided D3D12 developers with the ability to diagnose device removed events using GPU page fault data and automatic breadcrumbs. As a result, TDR debugging pain has been greatly reduced.  Hooray!  Unfortunately, developers still struggle to pinpoint which specific GPU workloads triggered the error.  So, we've ...

D3DConfig: A new tool to manage DirectX Control Panel settings

Bill KristiansenAugust 30, 2019Aug 30, 201908/30/19

The DirectX Control Panel (DXCpl.exe) has dutifully given developers the ability to configure Direct3D debug settings for nearly two decades.  But what started as a simple utility for controlling D3D debug output and driver type selection has struggled to keep up with modern DX12 debugging options.  In addition, the UI-based DXCpl doesn’t ...

Porting DirectX 12 games to Windows 7

Jianye LuAugust 21, 2019Aug 21, 201908/21/19

We publish documents, header files, binaries, and samples to allow game developers to run their DirectX 12 games on Windows 7.

New in D3D12 – Motion Estimation

Randy TiddJuly 9, 2019Jul 9, 201907/9/19

In the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, codenamed 19H1, D3D12 has added a new Motion Estimation feature to D3D12. Motion estimation is the process of determining motion vectors that describe the transformation from one 2D image to another. Motion estimation is an essential part of video encoding and can be used in frame rate conversion algorithms. ...