MDXInfo is a new site created by DirectX enthusiasts containing articles, tutorials and resources about Microsoft’s Managed DirectX. From the site’s main page:
“…Managed DirectX needs some more momentum so we figured to contribute a bit to this by providing these resources for working with it.
Our aim for MDX info is to make it a one-stop resource for all things MDX.”
I think its a blessed intiative. Go there and check it out…
Another interesting post at the inquirer…
I didn’t expect any significant change to DirectX before DirectX10\WGF (Vista).
It seemed the DirectX team’s main focus in the DirectX9 updates was on tools etc. but according to this article, DirectX9 will get a significant core upgrade featuring Shader Model 4.0 support.
Should be interesting… I wonder if they’ll invite me to the beta program (if there will be one)…
Just notices on MSDN’s DirectX developers center that the Meltdown2005 presentation are availble for download.
You can download them directly from this link.
Although not technical, be sure to check out “Publisher Business Track” presentations which are quite interesting…
Get them here:
Game Developers Conference 2005
This download includes presentations given by the Windows gaming and graphics team at the Game Developers Conference 2005. Included is the Microsoft DirectX Developer Day content and the High-Level Shader Language (HLSL) Workshop content.
Besides the HLSL Workshop content mentioned above it also contains an introduction to Visual Studio 2005 features (especially C++ compiler optimizations), Advanced PTR, Best Practices and more….
Microsoft’s MSDN site features the new DirectX developers center which now looks and feels like the other developers center on the site.
Check it out at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/
Microsoft have announced the latest update to the DirectX SDK.
You can download the it from here.
From the microsoft’s web :
The DirectX® Team is pleased to announce the final release of DirectX 9.0 SDK Update (February 2005)!
This SDK release contains the first release of D3DX as a Dynamic Link Library, new graphics samples, new\updated technical articles, enhanced tools and updated documentation. Below are highlights of what is new in this SDK release. For a complete list of updates, please refer to the SDK Documentation “What’s News” sections.
SDK:
• Windows 2000 is no longer a supported platform for the SDK.
• All of the DirectShow components (Header, Libs, Utilities, Tools, and Samples) were moved to the extras folder.
New Samples and Technical Articles:
• New “Top Issues for Windows Titles” article
• New PRTCmdLine sample
• New Managed HDRFormat sample
• Updated “Install-on-Demand for Games” and “Gaming with Least-Privileged User Accounts” with information about patching
Tool Updates
Enhancements to PIX have been made:
• You can now capture the Microsoft Direct3D calls made by a single frame of your application and play them back within PIX.
• When grabbing screenshots:
- You can append an incrementing number, or the current frame number, to the screenshot filename.
- You can specify whether to overwrite existing image files with the same filename.
- You can specify whether to show or hide the mouse cursor in the screenshot.
• New command-line options are available to:
- Convert a .PIXRun file to a .csv format that can be read by Microsoft.
- Save an exclusive-or comparison of two images to a file.
D3DX:
Precomputed Radiance Transfer
The precomputed radiance transfer (PRT) system has been enhanced:
• New fast raytracing methods have been added for direct computation of ray/mesh intersections against a simulation scene.
• GPU-accelerated direct-lighting computation now supports normal maps.
Math Library
• D3DX math functions on X64 have been heavily optimized for 64-bit processors in this release.
HLSL Compiler
• A series of improvements and bug fixes have been made to the HLSL compiler
Effects Framework
• New functions have been added to allow a developer to specify parameters to be ignored by the effects system and managed directly by the application.
D3DX as a Dynamic-Link Library
• Starting with this SDK release, D3DX is being released as a dynamic-link library (DLL). Updates to D3DX in the future will continue to ship as uniquely-named DLLs that exist side-by-side on the system. This allows for continued improvements to the library without imposing regression risk. D3DX9.lib is still provided as the import library for the DLL which your application can statically link against. See documentation for details.
• The D3DX DLL included in the SDK is automatically installed as part of Installing DirectX with DirectSetup. If your application does not use D3DX, you can remove D3DX from the redistributable (see Directx redist.txt for details).
• The statically-linked debug library (D3DX9dt.lib) has been removed; use D3DX9d.lib instead.
Other
• D3DX for DirectX8 was removed from the SDK in December. This was not mentioned in the release notes for the December SDK.
The DirectX 9.0 SDK - (October 2004) contains the FINAL release of the DirectX 9.0c Runtime and all DirectX software required to create DirectX 9.0 compliant applications in C/C++, and C#.
Primary areas of concentration for this Summer Update have been with the Direct3D Extension Library (D3DX), Graphics Samples, Tools and documentation. The included developer runtimes and the DirectX Redistributable have also been updated to include the latest updates (DirectX 9.0c).
Here are the download links: Release Notes, SDK, Extras, Symbols.
There is an interesting article at extremetech.com about Microsoft’s plans for its next generation 3D graphics API.
Basically, according to the article, Microsoft plans to merge its DirectX with GDI+ for its longhorn platform (which relies heavily on 3D graphics).
One of the main shortcommings of DirectX at the moment is vector graphics (In GDI+ you can draw arrows, arcs etc. which is a complex task in DirectX). Hopefully this new platform will bring the advantages of GDI+ to DirectX…
