Just a quick note to let y'all know that the SimpleMath header has been merged into the DirectX Tool Kit on CodePlex.

Chuck , awesome fellow that he is, has been slaving away on a 3D model loading solution for the DirectX Tool Kit . Documentation here . I won't bother to repeat all the details in this post, but as a quick summary: This is an implementation of a mesh...

Feb 2013 update: in response to overwhelming popular opinion, SimpleMath has now been merged into the DirectX Tool Kit on Codeplex. --- I am curious what folks think is the right long term home for the SimpleMath helper code? A post on my...

Feb 2013 update: SimpleMath has now been merged into the DirectX Tool Kit on Codeplex. --- SimpleMath, created by my colleague Chuck Walbourn , is a header file that wraps the DirectXMath SIMD vector/matrix math API with an easier to use C++ interface...

Kudos to Clayton, mantis, and MannekinPis, who were on the right track about how to make beer in 17th century Germany .  The trick to exactly hitting arbitrary temperatures without a thermometer lies in the fact that boiling water is always 212 ...

Warning: this post is not about programming.  Andy suggested I should sneak some homebrewing material onto my blog, and I thought hmm, why not?  If you violently object, let me know in the comments and I won't do it again :-) Yesterday I brewed...

Eric Lippert wrote a fantastic article that categorizes C# exceptions into four categories: Exogenous exceptions occur due to the messy nature of reality.  Filesystems can run out of space.  Network connections can drop.  These things are...

Catalin has a great article on how to convert textures to .dds format , which is the most efficient way to load images for use with Direct3D.  He describes how to integrate the texconv tool (from DirectXTex ) into Visual Studio using MSBuild, so...

Windows Phone 8 devices support Direct3D 11.1 feature level 9.3, but our emulator uses the WARP rasterizer, which can handle all the way up to feature level 11.  This means that, if you aren't careful, it is possible to accidentally use more advanced...

Inspired by long standing XNA team tradition , the Windows Phone graphics team recently spent some time using our product and trying to build some apps.  One of our goals in supporting native C++ was to make it easier to port existing software and...

I suspect this will come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to what I've been working on recently... The latest version of DirectXTK adds support for Windows Phone 8.  In fact, DirectXTK pretty much already worked on WP8, which...

The developer SDK for Windows Phone 8 (codename Apollo) is now available for download from an internet near you. Which means I can finally talk about what I’ve been working on this past year! I am dev lead for graphics, so I’ll probably have...

The latest version of DirectXTK adds a PrimitiveBatch helper, for easily and efficiently drawing dynamically generated geometry such as lines or triangles. This fills the same role as the legacy D3D9 APIs DrawPrimitiveUP and DrawIndexedPrimitiveUP. PrimitiveBatch...

The DirectX Tool Kit has been updated with two new features: Added a ScreenGrab module for easily saving rendertarget contents into .dds or other image formats Extended GeometricPrimitive.h with a new CreateGeoSphere method  (thanks to my colleague...

Lots of people asking for samples for the DirectX Tool Kit - sorry I haven't had a chance to work on such a thing yet  (I'm kinda busy right now getting Windows Phone 8 finished :-) Would appreciate feedback on what platform you most want to see...

DirectX Tool Kit (aka DirectXTK ) is a collection of helper classes for writing Direct3D 11 code for Metro style apps, Windows 8 Desktop, and Windows 7 'classic' applications in C++. Features: SpriteBatch - simple & efficient 2D sprite rendering SpriteFont...

The DirectX Tool Kit ( DirectXTK ) has been updated with the addition of a SpriteFont implementation, similar to the one in XNA. Get it here: DirectXTK Shamelessly plagiarizing the readme file : This is a native D3D11 implementation of a bitmap...

I often find myself writing little throwaway utilities to help with other tasks, and many of these utilities need to parse command lines.  There are myriad ways to do this in C#, ranging from the quick and dirty to the infinitely flexible and confusing...

The WinRT programming environment, which is used to create Metro applications for Windows 8, replaces the old Win32 threading APIs such as CreateThread with a new ThreadPool::RunAsync API. This is generally a good thing (ThreadPool is better than CreateThread...

Over the Christmas break I spent some time porting the built-in XNA effects (BasicEffect, SkinnedEffect, etc.) to native C++ using Direct3D 11. Finding that strangely enjoyable, I went on to make a C++ version of SpriteBatch, and also ported the XNA Primitives...

Ok, silliness aside , is it possible to implement an efficient bloom effect on Windows Phone without custom shaders? Bloom consists of three operations: Identify which parts of the image should be bloomed Blur those parts Combine blurred bloomy bits with...

Thanks for the comments about what I should write about next .  Hopefully I managed to count these more accurately than the Iowa Republican party   :-) C++ 16 How GPU’s work 11 3D math 10 Game design 10 SIMD optimization 3 Of course my blog...

Time for some end-of-year silliness... Inspired by this recent Twitter exchange: Scionwest - @shawnhargreaves @nickgravelyn How about post processing for WP7? I've seen people do Bloom effects and thought P.P. was not part of WP7? nickgravelyn - @Scionwest...

I have a couple more articles planned about aliasing and motion blur, but am curious to hear where you would like me to take this blog next. Some topics I am considering: C++ .  Dirty secret: although I've mostly blogged about C# programming, much...

After six years working on XNA, I decided it was time to take on a new challenge.  I am moving to the Windows Phone team, where I will be working on things I'm not sure how much I can say about here  (leaking future business plans on MSDN might...