Computer historians and astute gamers will recall that Microsoft pulled the same stunt with DirectX 11.1, making it a Windows 8 exclusive likewise, DirectX 10 was exclusive to Windows Vista, leaving XP users out in the cold. A complete list of DirectX 11.2 features and changes (Opens in a new window) can be found on MSDN. HLSL shader linking will allow devs to create libraries of precompiled shader functions, and link them into full shaders at run-time. SwapChainPanel and SurfaceImageSource could both result in faster apps and games. Direct3D low-latency presentation API gives apps a route to present frames with lower latency, potentially allowing for more a more responsive UI. GPU overlay support allows for multiple draw planes, so that developers can ensure that their 2D art is always outputted at its native resolution, while 3D scenes are drawn to a second, scaled pane. The whole thing is quite interesting, but you can scrub forward to around the 28-minute mark for the goodies.īeyond tiled resources, DirectX 11.2 introduces a slew of interesting and potentially quite powerful features. You can see the same demo (albeit not shown by Leblond) in the video below.

On stage, Leblond showed us a high-res game demo that apparently used 9GB of textures, most of which were stored in system RAM.

The standout feature appears to be Direct3D tiled resources, which allows developers to easily use both GPU and system RAM to store textures. With DirectX 11.2 offering some cool new features, and yet no clear technological reason for making it an exclusive, it would seem that Microsoft is attempting to tease Windows 7 and XP holdouts into upgrading to Windows 8.1.ĭirectX 11.2 made its debut last week at Microsoft's Build conference, where it was released along with Windows 8.1 Preview and also demoed on stage by Antoine Leblond.

Microsoft has confirmed that DirectX 11.2 will be exclusive to Windows 8.1 and the Xbox One.

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