DirectX Developer Blog

DirectX at Game Stack Live 2021

Jianye Lu April 20, 2021 Apr 20, 2021 04/20/21

At Game Stack Live 2021, DirectX team shared how they continue evolving DirectX with the latest features across hardware and providing the greatest tools and support. Hardware partners also shared their updates on DirectX support.

Announcing HLSL Shader Model 6.6

Greg Roth April 20, 2021 Apr 20, 2021 04/20/21

After months of development and refinement in collaboration with hardware vendors and software developers, we are pleased to announce the availability of Shader Model 6.6! Shader Model 6.6 empowers shader authors with new tools for greater flexibility to make existing shaders faster and more versatile as well as to devise all new techniques...

Announcing the DirectX 12 Agility SDK!

Jacques van Rhyn April 20, 2021 Apr 20, 2021 04/20/21

We’re excited to unveil the DirectX 12 Agility SDK, an update that will allow devs to adopt the newest DirectX 12 graphics features faster than ever before.  With the Agility SDK, developers can now add the newest DirectX 12 features to their games, and gamers can play games with these features without having to upgrade their OS...

Getting Started with the Agility SDK

Jacques van Rhyn April 20, 2021 Apr 20, 2021 04/20/21

This guide is intended for developers who want to get started developing games that use the Agility SDK. It covers: Be sure to also see our Announcement blog, Downloads Page, Game Stack Live talk and spec.   What is the Agility SDK and how does it work? The DirectX team used to rely solely on Windows 10 OS ...

Windows Graphics News – 2021 Q1

Ana Marta Carvalho April 7, 2021 Apr 7, 2021 04/7/21

With the first quarter of 2021 behind us, we here at the Windows Graphics team would like to share what we've been up to in the last three months.

Auto HDR Preview for PC Available Today

Hannah Fisher March 17, 2021 Mar 17, 2021 03/17/21

Today we’re excited to bring you a preview of Auto HDR for your PC gaming experience and we’re looking for your help to test it out. When enabled on your HDR capable gaming PC, you will automatically get awesome HDR visuals on an additional 1000+ DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games!

Moving Gears to Tier 2 Variable Rate Shading

Jacques van Rhyn January 12, 2021 Jan 12, 2021 01/12/21

The team at The Coalition haven't stopped innovating since bringing Tier 1 VRS to Gears Tactics, and have brought Tier 2 VRS support to both Gears 5 and Gears Tactics.  The team saw similarly large perf gains from VRS Tier 2 - up to 14%! - this time with no noticeable visual impact. See for yourself if you can tell which side of the first ...

In the works: HLSL Shader Model 6.6

Greg Roth November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

  Microsoft and its partners are happy to announce the development of Shader Model 6.6, the latest advancement in HLSL capability. Shader Model 6.6 will grant shader developers increased flexibility to enhance and expand existing rendering approaches and devise all new ones. New features include expanded atomic operations, ...

Announcing the OpenCL™ and OpenGL® Compatibility Pack for Windows 10 on ARM

Angela Jiang November 17, 2020 Nov 17, 2020 11/17/20

The OpenCL and OpenGL to DirectX 12 mapping layers are now available in the Microsoft Store as the OpenCL™ and OpenGL® Compatibility Pack. We’re excited to talk more about the project and share one specific use case: Photoshop on Windows 10 on ARM.

DirectX 12 Ultimate for Holiday 2020

Jianye Lu October 29, 2020 Oct 29, 2020 10/29/20

DirectX 12 Ultimate is the new gold standard for gaming graphics on both PC and the next generation of Xbox consoles. In this blog post, we will show PC gamers which hardware fully support DX12 Ultimate, how to use Xbox Game Bar to check for DX12 Ultimate support, and where to find games utilizing DX12 Ultimate features.