DirectX Developer Blog

Open Sourcing Direct3D 9 on 12 and the Release of the DXBC Signer NuGet Package

It’s been a while since we last mentioned the D3D9On12 mapping layer. As a quick refresher, it maps D3D9 commands to D3D12 by acting as the D3D9 Device Driver Interface (DDI). Having this mapping layer enables older D3D9 applications to run on modern systems that may not have a D3D9 driver. Since the last blog post, we’ve added support for...

Direct3D 11 on 12 Updates

It’s been quite a while since we last talked about D3D11On12, which enables incremental porting of an application from D3D11 to D3D12 by allowing developers to use D3D11 interfaces and objects to drive the D3D12 API. Since that time, there’s been quite a few changes, and I’d like to touch upon some things that you can expect when you use...

Gaming with Windows ML

Neural Networks Will Revolutionize Gaming Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Machine Learning. We mentioned the wide-ranging applications of WinML on areas as diverse as security, productivity, and the internet of things. We even showed how WinML can be used to help cameras detect faulty chips during hardware ...

Announcing new DirectX 12 features

Announcing new DirectX 12 features We’ve come a long way since we launched DirectX 12 with Windows 10 on July 29, 2015. Since then, we’ve heard every bit of feedback and improved the API to enhance stability and offer more versatility. Today, developers using DirectX 12 can build games that have better graphics, run faster and that are ...

GPU plugins, improved SDK layers, and hang debugging: Bringing DirectX 12 tools to the next level

If you are a Windows game developer using DirectX 12, you know that great tools are essential for getting the most out of the graphics hardware. In the past few months, we’ve been making rapid progress on delivering the tools you’ve requested. At the Game Developers Conference today, we demoed new features for both PIX, our premier tool ...

New DirectX Shader Compiler based on Clang/LLVM now available as Open Source

The DirectX HLSL (High Level Shading Language) compiler is now available as an open source project built on the Clang/LLVM framework. Microsoft drives the leading GPU shader language Since 2002, HLSL has been a key focus of industry collaboration on GPU programming. As the shader language for the popular DirectX12 API, HLSL is at the ...

DX12 performance tuning and debugging – PIX on Windows (beta) released!

Continued commitment to gaming on Windows 10 With Windows 10, we promised to build an OS designed for PC gaming, with DirectX 12 as one of the cornerstones of the Windows 10 gaming experience. In the 18 months since our release, DirectX 12 has seen very rapid adoption, with nearly 20 AAA games now available with DirectX 12 support. Much of ...

Rise of the Tomb Raider, Explicit DirectX 12 MultiGPU, and a peek into the future

Rise of the Tomb Raider is the first title to implement explicit MultiGPU (mGPU) on CrossFire/SLI systems using the DX12 API.  It works on both Win32 and UWP.  Using the low level DX12 API, Rise of the Tomb Raider was able to achieve extremely good CPU efficiency and in doing so, extract more GPU power in a mGPU system than was possible ...

Hello World: DirectX 12 developer edition

Hello graphics developer pals! We're as excited as a ninja-cat-riding-a-T-Rex to share our work with you all. We’ve been working with some of you already and we're excited to welcome any newcomers! So, let me give you a little tour of where you can find the content you may be looking for. Let’s meet up after the T-Rex, shall we? &...