DirectX Developer Blog

Dev Preview of New DirectX 12 Features

October 28, 2019 Oct 28, 2019 10/28/19

Jianye Lu

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

October 22, 2019 Oct 22, 2019 10/22/19

Bill Kristiansen

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

September 11, 2019 Sep 11, 2019 09/11/19

Bill Kristiansen

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

August 30, 2019 Aug 30, 2019 08/30/19

Bill Kristiansen

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

August 21, 2019 Aug 21, 2019 08/21/19

Jianye Lu

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

July 9, 2019 Jul 9, 2019 07/9/19

Randy Tidd

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. ...

Use VHD to Accelerate DirectX 12 Development

July 3, 2019 Jul 3, 2019 07/3/19

Jianye Lu

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

July 1, 2019 Jul 1, 2019 07/1/19

Jacques van Rhyn

Below is a list of links that a DirectX 12 developer would find useful...

We’re upgrading to discord!

June 26, 2019 Jun 26, 2019 06/26/19

Jacques van Rhyn

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 ...

Debugger Extension for DRED

June 26, 2019 Jun 26, 2019 06/26/19

Bill Kristiansen

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 ...