DirectX Developer Blog

D3D12 Work Graphs

This is the official release of D3D12 Work Graphs, enabling new types of GPU autonomy, originally available as a preview in 2023. To start, here's what Epic sees: With the proliferation of GPU-driven rendering techniques - such as Nanite in Unreal Engine 5 - the role of the CPU is trending towards primarily resource management and ...

Exciting additions to your Auto HDR experience on PC

Last year, we brought Auto High Dynamic Range (HDR) to your PC gaming experience, letting you breathe new life into your existing games by giving them an entirely new range of vibrant colors. Today, we’re excited to talk about the additional improvements to your Auto HDR experience on PC that are currently available on Windows 11 and the ...

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...

Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing!

If you just want to see what DirectX Raytracing can do for gaming, check out the videos from Epic, Futuremark and EA, SEED.  To learn about the magic behind the curtain, keep reading. 3D Graphics is a Lie For the last thirty years, almost all games have used the same general technique—rasterization—to render images on screen.  While the ...

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 ...

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 ...