XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

.NET on XBox confirmed

TrayGames Blog — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:31:15 GMT

As anticipated the port of the .NET framework for the XBox 360 has been
announced.&nbsp; They're calling...

XNA Framework Announced

Michael Klucher's XNA Blog — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 20:06:36 GMT

There are a bunch of great news articles floating around talking about the XNA Framework that was announced...

Managed DirectX 2.0, Xna and Me...

Tom Miller's Blog — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 03:24:01 GMT

One of the&nbsp;Program Managers&nbsp;for the Xna Framework recently started his first blog.&nbsp; Unless...

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re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Matt — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 16:45:16 GMT

How long did it take to port the CLR to the PowerPC, and how much work was involved.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

aL [MSFT] — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 20:32:52 GMT

The .NET CF team did most of the work porting the CLR to the PowerPC architecture on Xbox 360. It took them quite a bit of time. I'll let Robert Unoki comment specifically :)

Robert Unoki's Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/robunoki/

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

MK — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:35:25 GMT

I'm not sure I really like the approach of "just use MDX 1.1" if you need DirectSound, DirectInput, Diagnostics, D3DX, etc. I am a bit worried that MDX in XNA will be reduced to a "greatest common denominator" framework (i.e., only support capabilities that are present on every supported platform) instead of a flexible framework that can take advantage of special capabilities of certain platforms (e.g., DirectInput, DirectSound, Diagnostics on Windows but not on the Xbox). We envision some cross-platform applications that may have additional capabilities when run on a PC vs. an Xbox. Can Microsoft.DirectX.Diagnostics provide some sort of "Environment" class that allows the application to query/determine what type of machine/platform it is running on and its basic capabilities (in order to make appropriate calls)? Methods that are not supported on a given platform could simply raise NotSupportedExceptions (instead of removing the entire method/namespace from the framework).

Will Managed DirectX continue as a "living" product after XNA (which on the surface looks to be somewhat "casual game-centric") is released? For example MDX for .NET 2.0, 64-bit, D3D10, etc. or is MDX 1.1 based on .NET 1.1 the end of the road?

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Sandrino Marinescu — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 05:41:32 GMT

"We’d like to hear from customers using MDX that aren’t building games. This is another area that Microsoft as a whole is actively trying to solve."

I find myself falling into this category.

I guess the real question here is why developers from not-game related industries are using Managed DirectX. It is because MDX is so cool? Well yes, it is, there is no doubt about. Unfortunately the real reason for this is the fact that at this moment, MD3D is the only released (CLR based) Microsoft development tool that provides the reasonable amount of speed required by the UI of the latest generation applications in the DAQ industry.

I am confident that as soon as Microsoft will replace the obsolete GDI technology with something similar in performance with Direct3D technology, MDX/XNA team will have one group of developers less to consider when performing architectural changes.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

aL [MSFT] — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 08:15:51 GMT

MK - MDX 1.1 is fully compatible with the .NET 2.0 CLR. We will certainly be exposing platform specific functionality such as mouse input on PC.

MDX 2.0 will evolve into the graphics API for the XNA Framework.

Will there be an MDX outside of the XNA Framework? That's something that we are still trying to figure out.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

RobUk — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 18:12:22 GMT

I too am concerned that MDX and XNA will become a "greatest common denominator" framework.

There are still people out there like me that really are not bothered whether their application can run on a 360 or not. In my case, my application makes no sense on the 360, but I am already using D3DX and DirectInput.

What's more, I'm not a games studio, and I don't have wads of cash to give microsoft so that I can use XNA :( - I know there is no pricing released yet, but you have to assume there will be :(.

And to top it all off, MDX2 got canned too. MDX2 gave a massive performance increase my engine, and now the solution is "use MDX1.1", that really isn't good enough.

Seems XNA will cater to the a lot of people that want to write cross platform apps, but will dash the hopes of those that really don't care about it, and want to write windows apps/games.

I've spent a long time working on my engine, this really wasn't the news I was looking for today :(
<cries>

Good luck with XNA!

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

stephan mantler — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 11:37:41 GMT

Just as Sandrino, I am not a game developer, but work on scientific visualisation projects, mostly in 3D. As such, our needs are relatively close to game developers, but with a few twists.
There is practically no content production pipeline (data is generally either created dynamically or created and managed by our customers), and our builds are (relatively) lightweight. Thus, a lot of the XNA build stuff doesn't really apply to us.
Basically, we are in it only for the graphics system. Input is either through keyboard & mouse, or through specialized devices that will probably never make it into DirectInput and its XNA equivalent (SpaceMouse, magnetic and optical tracking systems, etc.).

In some cases we need to integrate our system with legacy applications, typically by running it side by side to the main app. So windowed rendering is of much higher importance for us than for the average game, as is 64-bit and large data support: Some of our applications have obscenely high polygon counts, or work with volumetric data (CT,MR,...) up to 2048x2048x512. In these cases we certainly don't expect very high performance, but the framework should be able to handle these loads stably and preferably without severe thrashing (ie. optimization for a game-typical polygon and texture count is acceptable, but should not be a hard limit).

Interesting times are ahead...

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

hngpf — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 20:45:16 GMT

Who cares about 360? Who cares about XNA? I want a stable and fast MDX2.0.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Rove — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:36:45 GMT

Here is a question: does XNA allow development with Visual Basic, or is it C# only?

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Joku — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 13:55:50 GMT

MDX 2 is not canned, it might however be delayed.

Personally I am looking forward to MDX providing support for DX10 and helping developers to fully utilize the power of GPU perhaps with a little handhelding by providing efficient but generic framework/engine sample and articles that help move the graphics processing to the GPU as much as possible whether you want to do 2D with few 3D effects or full blown 2D applications, or perhaps helping to utilize the GPU for some non-graphics work.

The future for Managed code in games look bright and the new driver architecture means it becomes feasible to do the next Far Cry or Flight Sim in c# since more and more of the graphics engine can be moved over to GPU. 10 years from now the future game developers will be wondering why did anyone ever write games in C++.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

aL [MSFT] — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 11:24:11 GMT

RobUk

Hi Rob. It is true that cross-platform game development is a primary goal but we doing anything to prevent people from using platform specific features. We fully expect people to only build games for Xbox or Windows only.

As for pricing and availability regarding the XNA Framework, I can't talk about that in detail at this point. We will have a lot more to announce about this at GameFest in August. You should definately check out our announcements then.

If you have any specific concerns feel free to ping me directly.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Phillip — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 00:54:33 GMT

I just wanted to chime in that we use MDX extensively for many Medical applications and I can say that we are not the only medical company that does. Our development team was really looking forward to MDX 2.

GDI just cannot offer the features we need to display the rich and interactive UIs to our customers need for diagnosis. We also use DirectInput and DirectSound for various ques and control. XNA which is a nice concept seems like a waste of time for non-game developers. Too bad Microsoft cannot develop both XNA and MDX 2.0 in parallel.

On another note, I hope XNA is affordable for the indie developers which thrive on MDX/DirectX and cannot afford an SDK that IMO should be offered for FREE! Is it just me or are there more people here interested in MDX than XNA?

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Nick V. — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 01:50:06 GMT

I'm happy to hear that MDX is recognized for its usefulness and is being consolidated with bigger projects.

1. Will MDX in XNA remain free? (If not, will it be available on MSDN?)
2. When (day, month, quarter, fiscal year) will the final result of MDX in XNA be available for download?
3. If we continue development of current projects with MDX2.0 (April), can we expect the code to be fairly compatible with MDX in XNA?

Btw, I have to side with Phillip; most indie developers can't afford several hundred dollars for software. If we don't have something freely available to BEGIN developing the first level of a game, there's no way we'll find the time and money to write a proof-of-concept for real funding.
Can you give the community some assurance that we'll have a free version of XNA with MDX?

Thanks!

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

aL [MSFT] — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 06:04:39 GMT

The XNA Framework which encompasses much more than what MDX2 had will be freely available on Windows. We plan to provide more than just hardware-level type Graphics (D3D) api's for game development. We will be trying out best to maintain compatibility with MDX2 where it makes sense. Regardless, we will provide documentation that will detail the differences between MDX 1.1, MDX2 and the XNA Graphics API.

As for indie development, we certainly have lots of plans to invigorate the indie development community on Windows.

We'll have more detailed information and quite a few big surprises for game developers that we are announcing around GameFest (August 14th) this year.

There is a LOT of excitement amongst our team and we really wish we could say more ;)

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

nICK v. — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 03:57:10 GMT

That's what we needed to hear.
Thanks aL!

Looking forward to trying XNA.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Chris W — Wed, 24 May 2006 03:14:53 GMT

I just want my dxdiag to still exist. :(

For troubleshooting, that little app is essential! I really think it's a bad idea to get rid of it. Even if the xbox360 doesn't have/need it.

DirectX SDK for June 2006 Released

Michael Klucher's XNA Blog — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 23:25:43 GMT

Wow, people are really on the ball when it comes to new DirectX SDK releases. Browsing Virtual Realm...

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Vincent — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:37:29 GMT

I think that Direct3D without D3DX is like OpenGL.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

qrli — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:34:41 GMT

"I think that Direct3D without D3DX is like OpenGL. "

I can't agree more. I switched from OpenGL just for D3DX.
And I don't care about 360 too, I just need the full power on Windows.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Danny Tuppeny — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:49:03 GMT

What's happening with XNA? None of the blogs of people working on it have been updated for months! I've started playing with MDX2 again, but I know I'm just gonna have to change everything!

Since MDX2 was a fairly stable beta, how far can some kind of pre-release version of XNA Framework be? :-(

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

aL [MSFT] — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 23:05:35 GMT

XNA is still happening :) We are super, super busy prepping for GameFest (https://www.microsoftgamefest.com/conferencedetails.htm)

We'll have several sessions there and be making some big announcements about our releases and future plans.

I'm sure you guys can guess as to what's happening ;)

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

John Flaherty — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:29:59 GMT

When the master speaks, I listen.

Everyone who programs for a living realizes the amount of intelligence, skill, and dedication required to program a real 3-D game is overwhelming. Now, thanks to folks like the XNA team, perhaps some us who thought we'd never see the day may actually have a chance of becoming a real game developer. I'm sure that it will be truly years before I am qualified to include myself as a real game developer, but at least I now have a chance.

Thanks for giving the more BASIC amongst us a chance at living the dream.

Respectfully,

John Flaherty
http://smartwebagent.com/
smartwebagent@hotmail.com
john.flaherty@ky.gov
502-718-6471

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

miral — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 16:02:49 GMT

what is th MDX2

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Brian Peal — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:15:01 GMT

Will XNA provide some of the basic features found in middle tier products such as Torque? In particular, networking for MMORPG's for communications between clients and servers ( and client to client)?

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Christmas Gifts — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 19:57:38 GMT

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re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Donny Zimmerman — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 07:06:29 GMT

I write weather applications using MDX 1.1. I too am nervous of the fact that the only types of apps that are mentioned around XNA are games. Some of my apps do not render frames as fast as possible, but rather on user input. This is because just like medical apps, some of my apps have an extremely large poly count (3D radar and such).

Please keep the existing MDX functions intact!!!

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Donny Zimmerman — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 20:32:09 GMT

After further reading I have decided that it is clear Microsoft does not support non-game 3D applications.

Simply look at what you have to download to use XNA, "GAME STUDIO EXPRESS". That says it all.

My weather apps are written using MDX1.1 and C#.

I will definately be looking at using OpenGL(Tao) and C# for my purposes.

Microsoft saying "stick with MDX1.1" for non-game apps is not acceptable.

I think MS should release MDX2.0 for non-game PC developers.

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

Simon Roberts — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 01:22:01 GMT

HI,

I was wondering if there was anyway to support variable frequency sample playback in XNA.

it would be cool if I could adjust the speed of samples during playback - like in directX...

I really need this for a game I am developing?

Are there any plans on including either a) real-time access to adjust more parameters in Xact. Or b) increased subsumance of the previous functionality offered in DirectX audio.

cheers.

Simon.

DAQ in visual basic

ali — Mon, 21 May 2007 11:46:45 GMT

application of DAQ in visual basic

re: XNA Framework Goals Part 1 and MDX2

aL [MSFT] — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:33:11 GMT

Hi Simon. Sorry about the long, belated reply. My blog had your comment queued up for review. You should be able to accomplish what you need to do with creating variables in the XACT tool. Check out http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb172310.aspx#Create. If you can't find what you need there, please post a more detailed question on our forums at http://creators.xna.com.