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DirectX 11.1 will be exclusive to Windows 8

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 12 Nov 2012 10:57 User comments (10)

DirectX 11.1 will be exclusive to Windows 8 Microsoft has announced that DirectX 11.1 will be a Windows 8 exclusive.
The company says there are no plans to make it available for Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, either.

Employee Daniel Moth added: "DirectX 11.1 is part of Windows 8, just like DirectX 11 was part of Windows 7. DirectX 11 was made available for Vista...but at this point there is no plan for DirectX 11.1 to be made available on Windows 7."

That being said, 11.1 does not add any killer features, with the exception of stereoscopic 3D, which has yet to be widely adopted.

The full update list:
Shader tracing and compiler enhancements
Direct3D device sharing
Check support of new Direct3D 11.1 features and formats
Use HLSL minimum precision
Specify user clip planes in HLSL on feature level 9 and higher
Create larger constant buffers than a shader can access
Use logical operations in a render target
Force the sample count to create a rasterizer state
Process video resources with shaders
Extended support for shared Texture2D resources
Change subresources with new copy options
Discard resources and resource views
Support a larger number of UAVs
Bind a subrange of a constant buffer to a shader
Retrieve the subrange of a constant buffer that is bound to a shader
Clear all or part of a resource view
Map SRVs of dynamic buffers with NO_OVERWRITE
Use UAVs at every pipeline stage
Extended support for WARP devices
Use Direct3D in Session 0 processes

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10 user comments

112.11.2012 11:26

Gotta do something to get us to upgrade I guess but don't see this standing. Gonna piss a lot of Win7 users off. Not enough for me to upgrade though.

212.11.2012 12:09

Oh, it'll stand, just like DX10 and Vista. But just like DX10, this won't be enough to force people who don't like the OS to change their minds. It's not like 3D isn't already available.

Unlike DX10 and XP, however, there's no fundamental structural change that makes it unfeasible for someone to hack the code to get it to run on Win7, if anyone cares enough. Considering most games still use mostly DX9 features with a smattering of DX10, I doubt anyone will - lol...

I'm surprised it took 'em this long to pull this stunt with Win8.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 12 Nov 2012 @ 12:22

312.11.2012 12:51

if 11.1 makes 3D playback native, this can be a killer feature given how expensive 3D media players like TMT5/powerDVD are. therefore, if you like 3D and win7, like me, you are going to be pi$$ed off for sure.

412.11.2012 13:31

@ mukhis: The latest SVN builds of MPC-HC (Media Player Classic-Home Cinema, a free player) support 3D.

512.11.2012 15:20

no biggy

613.11.2012 06:01

After suggesting they'd do such a thing months ago, I can't say I'm surprised. It's how they tried duping some people into 'upgrading' to Vista.

713.11.2012 10:14

I don't give a toss anyway. I predict a major failure and the next head to roll will be Mr Ballmer's.

813.11.2012 12:03

kma while your at it steve.

916.11.2012 08:50

Will it still run at half the speed of opengl ? http://tiny.cc/5pcvnw

1030.11.2012 06:39

Originally posted by mukhis:
if 11.1 makes 3D playback native, this can be a killer feature given how expensive 3D media players like TMT5/powerDVD are. therefore, if you like 3D and win7, like me, you are going to be pi$$ed off for sure.
No. All it does is make quad-buffered output GPU agnostic. Previously you needed to use NVAPI or AMD's API for S3D. Now you just use DirectX. All three are free for anyone to use anyway. The exception was you couldn't use NVAPI quad-buffered output with OpenGL on GeForce GPUs without a license.

Someone still has to make the Blu-ray media player.
This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 30 Nov 2012 @ 6:40

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