DirectX Developer Blog
The latest news on Microsoft's Graphics and Display technology
Latest posts
Navigating the Redesigned Graphics Settings page
In the settings app, the graphics page lets you adjust settings related to ‘GPU Preference,’ ‘Auto HDR,’ ‘Optimizations for windowed games’, and more to get the most out of your graphics experience on your PC. Aligning with the new Windows 11 UI design, we’ve redesigned the graphics settings page to help you get to the settings you want faster. These UI changes are now available to Windows Insiders in Build 25281 or above. Click here to learn more about the Windows Insider Program. In this article, we will walk through the new design and explain what each setting can do to help you get the best experience f...
Updates in d3dx12.h: Nuget Packaging, Header Bloat Reduction, and D3DX12GetCopyableFootprints
Hey everyone, we recently updated our file! Previously, users were required to head to DirectX-Headers repo to grab the nice helper files. The recent Agility SDK 1.608.2 release bundles this repo with the Nuget packages! There are no differences between the two packages. Header Bloat Reduction Next, users of the DirectX-Headers repo may notice that no longer contains 5500 lines of code (hooray)! Previously, users would include all 5500 lines of code despite being only interested in one function provides. Today, developers can potentially reduce compile times by choosing to include from a...
DirectStorage GDeflate Reference Implementation Now Available
The GDeflate reference implementation is now available from the DirectStorage repo on GitHub. Developers can use this to easily integrate GDeflate into their asset compression tool chains and build compatible compressors. The compression and decompression algorithms are open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license. How to Build: The GDeflate directory contains the codec source and sample code. The repo uses submodules, so be sure to pass to the git clone command. If you already cloned this repo, then you can run . Once cloned: Note: This code can be built using Linux as long as you have CM...
Agility SDK 1.608.0: Enhanced Barriers and more
We’ve published another Agility SDK, version 1.608.0. This Agility SDK has support for Enhanced Barriers, and a few minor DX12 features. That’s right: these features no longer require developer mode to run on your machine! Head to Agility SDK Downloads to grab it. Enhanced Barriers For an overview of Enhanced Barriers, please see here for our Enhanced Barriers preview announcement describing EBs in more detail. Minor Features This release contains support for Independent Front/Back Stencil Refs and Masks and Triangle fan primitives (see here for more) Dynamic Pipeline State: Depth Bias and the Index Bu...
DirectStorage 1.1 Now Available
The DirectStorage team is pleased to share that GPU decompression with DirectStorage 1.1 is available now. This new version of DirectStorage contains everything a developer needs to get started with GPU decompression. For more information on this feature and how it benefits gamers, check out our previous blog post: DirectStorage 1.1 Coming Soon. Getting Started with DirectStorage 1.1 For all the necessary resources to get started, please check out aka.ms/directstorage. This includes the NuGet repository with the redistributable package, the GitHub repo with samples and documentation, as well as links ...
Opening HLSL Planning
Since early 2017, the DirectX Shader Compiler (DXC) has been open source and available on GitHub. DXC is based on the LLVM 3.7 release of Clang, which enables compiler-driven IDE integrations, powerful language tooling, and has empowered HLSL to grow as a language to include highly requested features like C++ templates and operator overloading. In the years since DXC's release on GitHub the HLSL compiler team has valued and appreciated many contributions from contributors across the industry. Earlier this year, the HLSL compiler team announced the start of an effort to bring HLSL support to Clang. This ongoing...
DirectStorage 1.1 Coming Soon
When we shared our first public release of DirectStorage on Windows to reduce CPU overhead and increase IO throughput, we also shared that GPU decompression was next on our roadmap. We are now in the final stretch of development and plan to release DirectStorage 1.1 with GPU Decompression to developers by the end of 2022. This is one of our most highly requested features, so in the meantime, we want to share a sneak peek at what we’ve been up to and what developers can look forward to later this year! For Gamers: What is asset compression and how does GPU decompression change games? Games require massive amo...
Advancing the State of Color Management in Windows
If you're an app developer who cares about color accuracy, this is the right place to learn about some changes we made in the Windows 11 2022 Update! Let’s start by talking about color management – it is the technology and practice of ensuring accurate and consistent color reproduction across devices. If you're a creative professional/enthusiast or digital content creator, it is crucial to have fully accurate and calibrated colors all the time, and for the colors in your visual content to appear consistently and at its best quality on both your own display and on your audience's wide variety of displays. Wi...
Announcing WARP preview with Shader Model 6.7 support
The D3D team is pleased to announce the availability of a downloadable preview version of WARP, also known as Microsoft Basic Render Adapter. What is WARP? This software rasterizer is a key component of Windows and is leveraged for rendering 2D and 3D graphics on Windows PCs that don’t have any GPU available or don’t have a suitable GPU driver, as well as for offloading rendering work to the CPU to free up GPU resources. You can read more about WARP and how to use it in your application here: Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) Guide - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn. But WARP is more than just a fal...