The second update to Visual Studio 2012 is now available for download . For full details, see the following blog posts: Visual Studio team blog , Somasegar's blog , and Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server blog . See KB 2797912 Compiler and...

The Windows 8.0 SDK includes DirectXMath version 3.03 for use with Windows Style apps and Win32 desktop applications on Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows 7, and Windows Vista. DirectXMath 3.03 is also part of the Windows phone 8.0 SDK for use on Windows...

As of today, IE 10 for Windows 7 has been officially released . IE10 for Windows 7 includes portions of the DirectX 11.1 runtime for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 via KB 2670838 . Full technical details of what...

The DirectX Toolkit ( aka DirectXTK) for Direct3D 11 introduced last year and made an official CodePlex project has continued to improve. The DirectXTK project provides 'runtime' utility shared-source C++ code to replace the deprecated D3DX library for...

Windows 8 includes a number of changes to the parental control ratings systems supported by Windows Family Safety (aka Windows Parental Controls) for Win32 desktop games. These changes are now available on Windows 7 via KB2773072 . It is recommended that...

When programming graphics applications, one of the more frustrating aspects of development is that you can end up writing thousands of lines of code and when you run it, all you get is a blank screen. Or maybe a blue screen. Or a crash. But often, not...

An update to Visual Studio 2012 is now available for download . For full details, see the following blog posts: Visual Studio team blog , Somasegar's blog , and Visual Studio ALM + Team Foundation Server blog . This update includes support for targeting...

There are a number of new features and some bugs fixed in the Windows Imaging Component for Windows 8 . With the installation of KB 2670838 this new version of WIC is also available on Windows 7 Service Pack 1. The Windows 8.0 SDK contains the latest...

Windows 8 includes an updated “DirectX 11.1 Runtime” that supports Direct3D 11.1 , updates Direct2D and DirectWrite , DXGI 1.2 , and a revision of the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) . Portions of the “DirectX 11.1 Runtime”...

The BUILD 2012 conference includes a number of game developer related presentations which are available on Channel 9 . Windows Store apps Designing games for Windows 8 Core technologies for Windows 8 games Developing a Windows Store app...

The Effects 11 library (FX11) was made available as shared-source in the DirectX SDK. Previous versions of the Effects library were part of D3DX (FX9) or built into the OS (FX10). With the DirectX SDK now legacy (see Where is the DirectX SDK? ), there...

Writing shared code for Windows Store and Win32 desktop apps (continued from part 1 and part 2 ) Windows Runtime (WinRT) APIs There are a number of areas of the system where you must use WinRT APIs to access the required functionality for Windows...

Writing shared code for Windows Store and Win32 desktop apps (continued from part 1 ) Win32 APIs The majority of the “core” API family are new Windows Runtime (WinRT) style APIs which are not available for down-level Win32 desktop...

Writing shared code for Windows Store and Win32 desktop apps Introduction Apps written for the Windows Store make use of the Windows Runtime (WinRT) and a restricted subset of Win32 APIs located in the core API family (indicated by WINAPI_FAMILY...

In our last installment in this series, we cover a few additional instructions that extend the AVX instruction set. These instructions make use of the VEX prefix and require the OS implement “OXSAVE”. Without this support, these instructions...

The Advanced Vector Extensions ( AVX ) instruction set goes beyond just adding more instructions like we’ve seen in previous installments. AVX also introduces an extended register file and a new x86 instruction encoding prefix. The AVX instruction...

The SSE4 instruction set consists of two parts, referred as SSE4.1 and 4.2. The intrinsics are located in the smmintrin.h header. The SSE4.1 instruction set is the most interesting for DirectXMath, while SSE 4.2 adds some more specialized instructions...

The SSE3 instruction set adds about a dozen instructions (intrinsics are in the pimmintrin.h header). The main operation these instructions provide is the ability to do “horizontal” adds and subtracts (ARM-NEON refers to these as ‘pairwise’...

The DirectXMath library provides high-performance linear algebra math support for the typical kinds of operations found in a 3D graphics application. The library achieves this by making use of specialized SIMD (Single-Instruction-Multiple-Data) instruction...

Recently many older releases of the DirectX SDK and REDIST packages expired and were removed from the Microsoft Downloads Center site. The DirectX SDK and REDIST packages for all 2008, 2009, and 2010 releases are currently available, but all 2007 and...

The Windows SDK for Windows 8 (aka Windows 8.0 SDK) RTM version is now available on MSDN . See Where is the DirectX SDK? for details on DirectX content in the Windows 8.0 SDK. This includes the D3DCompiler_46.DLL release of the HLSL compiler , DirectXMath...

DirectXMath (aka XNAMath version 3) provides almost all the functionality of the original D3DXMath library with two exceptions. The first is the ' matrix stack ' helper and the second is the ' spherical harmonics' math functions. The matrix stack is fairly...

The July 2012 release of the Xbox 360 XDK includes a new version of XNA Math, version 2.05. We are making it available here for Windows developers. The update is subject to the same EULA as the DirectX SDK (June 2010) release. What's New XNA Math...

In various forums and discussion threads of late, I've seen some confusion about the difference between "DirectX 11" the API and "DirectX 11" the class of video hardware. The key to this is the concept of a "Feature Level" for devices which simplifies...

The DirectXTK and DirectXTex libraries now have official homes on Codeplex. http://directxtk.codeplex.com/ http://directxtex.codeplex.com/ The Codeplex site has the latest release packages, source code revision history with a Team Foundation...