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 Release Notes

Release Notes

This section contains the following:


What's New in the March 2009 DirectX SDK
This version of the DirectX SDK contains the following new features, tools, and documentation.
Technical Previews of Direct2D, DirectWrite, and DXGI 1.1
This release includes technical previews of Direct2D, DirectWrite and DXGI 1.1.
Direct2D is a hardware-accelerated, immediate-mode, 2-D graphics API that provides high performance and high quality rendering for 2-D geometry, bitmaps, and text. The Direct2D API is designed to interoperate well with Direct3D and GDI.
DirectWrite provides support for high-quality text rendering, resolution-independent outline fonts, and full Unicode text and layout support, and much, much more.
DXGI 1.1 builds on DXGI 1.0 and adds several new features including support for Direct3D 10.1 command-based remoting and support for synchronized shared surfaces.
For more details on the technical previews, see What's New in the Windows 7/Direct3D 11 technical preview documentation.
Introducing XNA Math
XNA Math provides developers a cross-platform native-code method of generating SIMD instructions without having to resort to special case code. Based on the Xbox 360 SDK's Xbox math library, this set of headers supports the most common vectorized math operations used in graphics and animation. The implementation supports Windows 32-bit (x86) and Windows 64-bit (x64) targets using SSE2 intrinsics, and is fully cross-platform with the optimized Xbox 360 XDK version.
Audio Improvements
This release includes several improvements to XAudio2, xAPO, and xWMA.

  • An optional filter has been added to XAudio2 voice sends. This makes 3D-filtering scenarios, such as obstruction and occlusion, easier and more efficient.
  • The CPU usage for the filter built into XAudio2, when operating on mono data, has been cut in half.
  • The new SetSourceSampleRate method, added to XAudio2 source voices, makes it easy to dynamically reuse voices with data of arbitrary sampling rates. This allows for better voice-pooling support.
  • Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) helper code has been added as inline functions to the xdsp.h header file. This helper code has been added to allow titles to build their own effects xAPOs that are optimized for both Xbox 360 and Windows.
  • The xWMAEncode tool can now encode source data of arbitrary sampling rate and has improved support for encoding short source files.

Improvements to PIX
PIX now works with the public beta version of Windows 7 (build 7000). In addition, PIX can now be used with titles that use DXGI 1.1 as well as with titles that create WARP Direct3D devices.
XNA Testing Tool
The XNA Test Tool is used for game quality testing and is a replacement for the XNA Banding Tool. In addition to the functionality that was in the branding tool, the new tool allows users to create and edit their own set of test cases and passes. These custom test cases and passes can then be used to produce test reports.
Updated Game Explorer Tools, Samples and Documentation
This release includes updated Game Explorer tools, samples, and documentation for Windows 7.

  • The ProviderGDFExampleBinary is an example DLL containing the GDF file of a provider for use with the Windows 7 version of Game Explorer.
  • The GameStatisticsExample sample demonstrates how to get and set statistics viewed by the Windows 7 version of Game Explorer.
  • The Windows Games Explorer for Game Developers whitepaper has been updated to show how to register a game and parental controls on Windows 7 using the new GDF schema. As part of the whitepaper, the GamesuxInstallHelper and GDFExampleBinary samples have also been updated.

New and Updated Samples
The March 2009 DirectX SDK includes several new and updated samples.

  • The new Collision sample illustrates the implementation of a collision library utilizing the new XNAMath library, which performs cross-platform vectorized math operations.
  • The new Samples Content Exporter demonstrates a content pipeline that processes FBX format source content to generate assets for Xbox and Windows.
  • The MeshFromOBJ10 sample has been updated to support the Windows Advanced Rasterizer (WARP).
  • The new AdaptiveTessellationCS40 is an illustration of more advanced compute shader processing techniques that can be run on a D3D10 or D3D11 GPU.
  • The HDRToneMappingCS11 sample has been expanded to implement blur and bloom effects (in addition to tone mapping) using compute shader, as well as providing pixel shader implementations for comparison.
  • The MultithreadedRendering11 sample has been significantly updated, with more complex art assets and more intensive per-thread processing.
  • The SubD11 sample has been updated with a new facial model, and the sample now leverages the adjacency computation feature of the Samples Content Exporter.


What's New in the March 2009 Windows 7/Direct3D 11 Technical Preview
This version of the Windows 7/Direct3D 11 Technical Preview ships as part of the DirectX SDK and contains the following new features, tools, and documentation.
Technical Preview of Direct2D
Direct2D is a hardware-accelerated, immediate-mode, 2-D graphics API that provides high performance and high quality rendering for 2-D geometry, bitmaps, and text. The Direct2D API is designed to interoperate well with Direct3D and GDI. This technical preview allows developers to evaluate the API and write simple applications, with some of the more advanced functionality possible on properly configured machines.
Documentation and samples for Direct2D are currently available on MSDN.
Technical Preview of DirectWrite
DirectWrite provides support for high-quality text rendering, resolution-independent outline fonts, and full Unicode text and layout support, and much, much more.

  • A device-independent text layout system that improves text readability in documents and in UI.
  • High-quality, sub-pixel, ClearType text rendering that can use GDI Direct3D, Direct2D, or application-specific rendering technology.
  • Support for multi-format text.
  • Support for the advanced typography features of OpenType fonts.
  • Support for the layout and rendering of text in all languages supported by Windows.

This technical preview allows developers to evaluate the API and write basic applications for demonstration purposes only.
Documentation and samples for DirectWrite are currently available on MSDN.
Technical Preview of DXGI 1.1
DXGI 1.1 builds on DXGI 1.0 and will be available on both Windows Vista and Windows 7. DXGI 1.1 adds several new features:

  • Direct3D 10.1 Command-based Remoting. This is an enhancement to how Direct3D 10.1 (and Direct3D 10.1 based Direct2D) applications can optimize for the remoted display experience. Applications that want to customize for the remote display experience on rich remote clients (and with, but not necessarily) headless server configurations can choose to leverage Direct3D 10.1 Command Remoting which will transmit DXGI and Direct3D 10.1 APIs across the network rather than rendered bitmaps. Direct2D, based on Direct3D10.1, uses this mechanism of remoting by default, unless otherwise indicated.
  • Synchronized Shared Surfaces Support. This enables efficient read and write surface sharing between multiple D3D (could be between D3D10 and D3D11) devices.
  • BGRA format support. This allows GDI to render to the same DXGI surface targeted by a Direct2D, Direct3D 10.1 or Direct3D 11 device.
  • Maximum Frame Latency. Using IDXGIDevice1::SetMaximumFrameLatency and IDXGIDevice1::GetMaximumFrameLatency, titles can control the number of frames that are allowed to be stored in a queue, before submission for rendering. Latency is often used to control how the CPU chooses between responding to user input and frames that are in the render queue.
  • Adapter Enumeration. Using IDXGIFactory1::EnumAdapters1, titles can enumerates local adapters without any monitors or outputs attached, as well as adapters with outputs attached.


Known Issues with the March 2009 SDK
Title: HLSL Runtime Compiling for Shader Models that Do Not Allow NaN or Infinity Literals
When compiling code that looks like the following:
pow(max(0, f), e)
If the result of max(0,f) is 0, the statement will be evaluated as exp(-inf * e), which may cause the following error message: (error X4579: NaN and infinity literals not allowed by shader model). This is because pow(0, e) will be expanded to exp(log(0) * e), which will evaluated as exp(-inf * e).
The workaround for compiling code like this, for a shader model that does not allow NaN or infinity literals, is to change 0 in max(0, f) to 0.00001f, or some other acceptably small non-zero value.
This scenario typically fails during a call to ID3DXEffectCompiler when compiling for shader models that do not allow NaN and infinity literals (such as DX9 shader targets). It is a regression from the November release. The result may show up when debugging a game that exits at startup and generates an error message such as "nonzero reference count" or "an error occurred in the device creation callback function".
Title: Direct3D 11 Documentation Does Not Show Up in the Start Menu
The link to the Direct3D 11 documentation is missing from the Start menu after installing the March 2009 DirectX SDK. The Direct3D 11 documentation is installed in the following folder: Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (March 2009)\Documentation\DirectX9\. To open the documentation, double-click D3d11.chm.
This will be fixed in a later release.
Sample Browser Installations of Samples that Use Custom Names May Fail to Build
When installing a sample from the Sample Browser, specifying a name that uses illegal C characters may cause the installed sample to fail to build. This issue will be fixed in a later release..
The XactEngineA3_4.dlls Are Not Registered Properly for an AMD64-based System
The March 2009 DXSDK is not properly registering the 64-bit version of XactEngineA3_4.dll. The workaround is to properly register the XactEngineA3_4.dll by using regsvr32 from a command line, as in the following example:
regsvr32 XactEngineA3_4.dll
XAUDIO2_VOICE_SENDS has a Minor Breaking Change to Implement Occlusion + Obstruction Filtering
XAUDIO2_VOICE_SENDS was changed to filter the direct and reverberant sends independently without requiring the use of multiple submix voices, because this was inefficient and inconvenient. Instead of containing pointers to the various voices that a voice will send to, XAUDIO2_VOICE_SENDS points to a set of XAUDIO2_SEND_DESCRIPTOR structures. XAUDIO2_SEND_DESCRIPTOR adds a flag per send voice that controls the use of the send-hosted filter, which allows an application to filter the direct and reverberant sends independently.
Building Samples Using the Visual Studio 2005 Project Files Results In Harmless Warning
Developers who build the samples may see the following harmless warning:
manifest authoring warning 81010002: Unrecognized Element "requestedPrivileges" in namespace "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2".
This is a known issue with the manifest tool (mt.exe) that ships in Visual Studio 2005 SP1. To remove this warning, developers should update their versions of mt.exe to the version that ships in the Windows SDK. Developers should update the instances of mt.exe that ship in Visual Studio 2005 SP1, found in the following three locations:

  • VC\bin\
  • Common7\tools\bin\
  • SDK\v2.0\bin\

Don't Mix Beta DLLs With Their Correspondingly Named Non-Beta DLLs
The Direct3D 11 Technical Preview provides a DLL, dxgi_beta.dll, that is different from dxgi.dll, included in Windows Vista. Developers should not use interfaces from one of these DLLs with the other, because it may cause issues that are difficult to identify. So if you use the beta version of a DLL, the recommended practice is to not link to the correspondingly named non-beta DLL.
ID3DXSPMesh Interface Is Deprecated
The ID3DXSPMesh interface is deprecated and will be removed in a future release of the DirectX SDK. Developers should investigate using Direct3D 11 tessellation as an altertnative to the ID3DXSPMesh interface.
D3DXGatherFragments Is Deprecated
The D3DXGatherFragments function is deprecated and will be removed in a future release of the DirectX SDK. Developers should investigate using Direct3D 11 dynamic shaders.
IXACT3Engine::PrepareWave Doesn't Support xWMA
In the March 2008 and later SDKs, the IXACT3Engine::PrepareWave doesn't support xWMA. If you want to use xWMA in XACT, you can prepare those waves by calling one of the following methods:

  • IXACT3WaveBank::Prepare
  • IXACT3SoundBank::Prepare
  • IXACT3Engine::PrepareInMemoryWave
  • IXACT3Engine::PrepareStreamingWave

Symbols for DirectX
The latest and most complete source for debugging symbols is the Microsoft Symbol Server. We recommend using the symbol server rather than using the included partial symbols package. For instructions about using the Microsoft Symbol Server, see http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/debugstart.mspx.
Installation Notes for All Platforms

  • This SDK installs on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista using Visual Studio .NET 2005 or 2008.
  • Before installing the current DirectX SDK, remove previous versions of the DirectX SDK.
  • Some samples require that you have installed the latest Microsoft Windows SDK on your system.
  • If you are using Visual Studio and run the Platform SDK Integration tool, all custom include and library paths will be erased, including those added by the DirectX SDK. To fix the issue, developers need to either reinstall the DirectX SDK or manually add the paths to Visual Studio.
  • If you encounter compilation issues related to the DirectX headers, make sure that the include directories in Visual Studio are set correctly. On the Win32 platform, make sure that there is a reference to the DirectX headers. "$(DXSDK_DIR)include" should appear in the include directory "$(VCInstallDir)Include."
  • Several virus protection software applications interfere with SDK installation. They may require you to disable virus protection software until SDK installation is completed.
  • Your system may be corrupted, or cryptographic services may be disabled, if you encounter the following error message during installation: "A cabinet file is necessary for installation and cannot be trusted." To resolve the problem, try the following:
    1. Enable cryptographic services. On the Start menu, right-click My Computer, and then click Manage. The Computer Management window appears. In the left navigation pane, click Services and Applications. In the right pane, double-click Services, and then double-click Cryptographic Services. The Cryptographic Services Properties property sheet appears. On the General tab, ensure that Service Status is Started, and that Startup Type is Automatic.
    2. If you are running Windows on a FAT32 drive, run scandisk.
    3. Try the resolution steps in Detecting digital signing issues in Windows XP.
    4. Try the resolution steps in You cannot install some updates or programs.
    5. Remove temporary files in the %temp% folder. If you are installing an end-user runtime, also remove "%windir%\system32\directx\websetup Error."
  • External firewall programs may indicate that the file InstallDeveloperFiles.exe wants to access the Internet. This is by design, and should be enabled.
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