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February DirectX SDK Available!

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It's actually been available a few days, but..  Here are the new features:

What’s New in this Release:

For a complete list of updates, please refer to the SDK Documentation "What's New" 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.

You can download the new SDK here.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2005
    Tom, do you know if this has any impact on targeting Windows 2000 or is this just related to the SDK itself?
  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2005
    It's only the SDK.. The runtime will still work just fine on Win2k
  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2005
    Ok, before I get on my soapbox, let me start by saying what a wonderful job I think you and your people are doing Tom.

    I have been patiently awaiting each update to the managed code hoping for that update that will bring DirectDraw into the mix. While MS claims that all the functions are there I have to disagree. To me the heart and soul of DD are surfaces and the miriad of overloads for the draw and drawfast functions. I could do whatever I needed with them. While im sure if I spent some time creating a class with sprites etc I could somehow come close, why are you making me? You guys built the original API, why not add those functions to a new class under D3D? Perhaps I ask too much to continue to have the ease with which DD made my life.

    Time to come down, Thanks for listening to my ranting and keep up the good work!
  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2005
    Bummer about the Win2K drop. Guess I'll have to stick with the previous SDK until I upgrade.
  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2005
    Is there any equivalent for DSSPEAKER_DIRECTOUT in managed DirectSound? I tried looking in Microsoft.DirectX.DirectSound.Speakers but there is no DirectOut property. I thought Managed DirectX could do everything native DirectX can?
  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2005
    help
  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2005
    Poor / Non existant VB.NET Documentation...

    This is really annoying, have you people forgotten about all those that like to use VB.NET? ;)

    I can read/Convert C# quite easy, but i would love to see some more support for VB.NET in MDX.
  • Anonymous
    June 18, 2009
    PingBack from http://homelightingconcept.info/story.php?id=3123