DirectX Developer Blog

Announcing DirectX Developer Day

Claire Andrews March 17, 2020 Mar 17, 2020 03/17/20

GDC may have been postponed, but we aren't going to let that prevent us from bringing the next generation of graphics innovation to the world.  Join us this Thursday, March 19, for a virtual DirectX Developer Day on Mixer! The Microsoft DirectX team, along with partners from AMD and NVIDIA, will be streaming a series of talks covering how we...

D3D12 Translation Layer and D3D11On12 are now open source

Angela Jiang January 14, 2020 Jan 14, 2020 01/14/20

If you’re a developer looking to port your game to DX12, we have good news: The D3D12 Translation Layer, a helper library for translating graphics concepts and commands from a D3D11-style domain to a D3D12-style domain, is now open source.

As an example of how to use the library, we have also opened sourced the D3D11On12 mapping layer.

Demystifying Fullscreen Optimizations

Hannah Fisher December 17, 2019 Dec 17, 2019 12/17/19

We wrote this article to explain the difference between Fullscreen Exclusive and Fullscreen Optimizations. This article goes details the roll out and the benefits that come with Fullscreen Optimizations.

DirectX 12 and Fortnite

Jacques van Rhyn November 20, 2019 Nov 20, 2019 11/20/19

On Monday, Epic Games announced that DirectX 12 support is coming to Fortnite. And today, the wait is over: anyone updating to the v11.20 patch has the option to try out Fortnite’s beta DX12 path! What does this all mean? Let's see if we can help!   What’s wrong with DX11? Nothing! We at the DirectX team designed ...

CPU- and GPU-boundedness

Jacques van Rhyn November 20, 2019 Nov 20, 2019 11/20/19

We wrote this article to explain two key terms: CPU-bound and GPU-bound. There's some misinformation about this terms, and we're hoping this article can help fix this problem. Even though applications run on the CPU, many modern-day applications require a lot of GPU support. These apps generate a list of rendering instructions (i.e. the ...

Coming to DirectX 12: D3D9On12 and D3D11On12 Resource Interop APIs

Randy Tidd November 13, 2019 Nov 13, 2019 11/13/19

D3D is introducing D3D9on12 with resource interop APIs and adding similar resource interop APIs to D3D11on12.  With this new support, callers can now retrieve the underlying D3D12 resource from the D3D11 or D3D9 resource object even when the resource was created with D3D11 or D3D9 API.   The new D3D9On12 API can be found in the insider SDK...

Coming to DirectX 12: More control over memory allocation

Jesse Natalie November 11, 2019 Nov 11, 2019 11/11/19

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 Jobalia November 8, 2019 Nov 8, 2019 11/8/19

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 Patel November 6, 2019 Nov 6, 2019 11/6/19

An overview of features in DXR Tier 1.1.

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

Claire Andrews November 4, 2019 Nov 4, 2019 11/4/19

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 ...