DirectX Developer Blog
The latest news on Microsoft's Graphics and Display technology
Latest posts
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...
Celebrating 20 Years of DirectX 9
The last 20 years have brought countless hours of play to millions of gamers via the DirectX 9 graphics API, with 2,500+ games still being enjoyed today. For the first time, developers experienced the power of high-level shader language (HLSL) combined with pixel and vertex shaders, paving the way for the future of DirectX Raytracing and high-precision floating point color, which would bring new levels of quality and depth to every pixel.  Microsoft is committed to bringing you a great gaming experience and in honor of the 20th anniversary of DirectX 9, we’re happy continue our dedication to the API through D...
The Windows HDR Calibration app is here
The wait for the Windows HDR Calibration app is over! If you're on Windows 11 and want to calibrate your HDR-capable device, you can now go to the Microsoft Store and download the app. 😊 As we shared in our announcement blog post, the Windows HDR Calibration app will feature three test patterns which will help you calibrate your display by improving the color accuracy and consistency of your HDR panel. Besides that, we also added additional functionality - the app will allow you to customize the color saturation of all content when HDR is turned on! Benefits of calibrating your HDR device In some c...
Announcing our summer Agility SDKs
We’re pleased to announce that we have two new Agility SDKs available today! Agility SDK 1.606.3 contains support for Shader Model 6.7, which we announced was in the works earlier this year. Today, Shader Model 6.7 is ready for you to try! We also have another preview Agility SDK out today: 1.706.3-preview, see here for our blog. In addition to SM 6.7 support, this SDK contains a new and improved preview for Enhanced Barriers, plus a few smaller features. The addition of Enhanced Barriers support in this preview also makes Shader Model 6.7 is even more useful by letting developers access the full capabiliti...