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December SDK Available.. Better late than never?

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I blame my self-imposed umm.. isolation? while on vacation for the lack of a Dec SDK release announcement.  Since i'm so late and lazy now though, i'm just going to copy David's post:

The Windows Graphics and Gaming Technology Team is proud to announce the latest version of the DirectX SDK, available for immediate download!

 

The latest SDK, as always, can be found at https://msdn.com/directx/sdk.

 

So what's new? Well, some of the really cool additions and updates are:

- Direct3D 10 Technology Preview: That's not a typo. If you have Windows Vista, you'll be thrilled to get your hands on this _very early_ preview of the new version of Direct3D.

- Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT Beta): Our audio geniuses are at it again.

- Managed DirectX for .NET Framework 2.0 (Beta): Much improved from October's SDK, this new version includes support for the retail version of Visual Studio 2005 family of products.

- Windows Vista Game Explorer (Beta): "Getting your game on" takes on new meaning in Windows Vista. Learn how to get your game integrated into the Game Explorer.

- DirectX Runtime: We've now created a cumulative redist to help you address some of the small (and not-so-small) annoyances with the runtime. In addition, we now offer a web installer that will incrementally update your end user to the latest DirectX runtime libraries.

- XInput: New and improved, with an article included on how to use DirectInput and XInput together!

- Tools: PIX and DxErr have been improved

- Samples: New samples on HDR, as well as numerous additions to help you learn Direct3D 10, have been added. Also returning by popular demand: the Pick sample.

- Technical Article Updates: We've added tons of new technical articles. Find them all in the DirectX SDK Sample Browser.

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Ok, I guess i'll add a few of my own comments (specifically related to Managed DirectX 2.0 beta):

  • Now includes x64 'native' support (for everything except XACT).
  • Now includes XACT
  • The majority of 'missing' API's should no longer be 'missing'.  (I don't want to say all just in case i screwed up again)

Once again, please leave any feedback/questions/comments here on this post, contact me through this blog, or on the MSDN Forums.  The forums will guarantee someone from MS (other than me) will also see it, and is probably the recommended place.  Comments on missing APIs, bugs, confusion, etc are all welcome.

Oh, and while i'm thinking about it.. One of the more common pieces of feedback I've received is why the removal of taking a Windows Form control as the constructor for devices, etc.  Since this is something that most likely won't be changing, i'll speak briefly about it now.  Essentially, just by having that constructor in the code base, it forces System.Windows.Forms.dll to be loaded with our assembly (even if you don't call it, due to more complicated reasons I won't get into here).  Aside from the fact that this is a performance 'burden' on developers who aren't using WinForms, a more pressing problem is that in the not too distant future, there will be components that we will need to work with that simply *will not work* if WinForms dependencies are found.  There are only two real 'breaks' with this change.  One, you can no longer simply use a form as your variable in the device constructor, and instead must use form.Handle.  This is extremely minor.  The other change which could cause more problems is the device will no longer reset on form resizes automagically when using the event model.  Since we recommend everyone use the DXMUT framework (which handles this 'automatically' anyway), we don't consider this a major issue either.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 27, 2005
    Awesome!!!!! So glad that you removed the WinForms dependency. I know I asked about it here at least once.
  • Anonymous
    December 28, 2005
    In addition to the MSDN Forums, please take a look at the connect.microsoft.com beta feedback/bug reports as well.
  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2006
    The SDK is great so far, but I have one concern:
    Do we get any alternatives for AudioVideoPlayback? Playing videos + sound or rendering them to a texture seems to be an impossible thing right now.
  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2006
    DXMUT... erm... any chance this stuff will eventaully be turned into a real library (like D3DX) with ... documentation?
  • Anonymous
    January 11, 2006
    Tom Miller,
    I bought one of your books "Beginning 3D Game Programming". However, I ame having an extreemely hard time figuring it out... I could not get the teapot to render, so I skiped that (which isn't realy important to me). I have just finished adding the code on page 60 for the blockers game. You now say that I can render a design onto my screen, but it says there are 18 errors. Each error is the same "Expected class, delegate, enum, interface, or struct". I am very frusterated with this (as I can not figure out what I did rong), and have nowhere else to turn for help. Tom please help me out... Email me at weston144@yahoo.com
    Thanks...
    -Weston Elliott
  • Anonymous
    January 19, 2006
    Is the 2.0 documentation anywhere? I've been digging around and can't find it. I was trying to convert my 1.1 DirectX code to 2.0 and while a lot is logical, I'm stuck on some of the other changes.

    thanks,
    arne
  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2006
    I found from my debug output that when going from windowed to full screen or vica versa, the device was resized twice - not good. So it's not too difficult just to handle the changes yourself. Also it is much easier to handle exceptions from invalidating or restoring your device objects if you call it from your code; when the D3D device handled it you had to put a try block around base.OnSizeChanged which is messy IMHO.

    btw I found that I got memory leaks when creating dynamic vertex buffers in the default pool, and I reproduced this in the CreateDevice tutorial from the SDK...I'll see if I can post that code for you...

    Cheers
  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2009
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