DirectX August SDK

[Demirug]

Hot of the press: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=529f03be-1339-48c4-bd5a-8506e5acf571&DisplayLang=en

[AlexV]

It's rather nice that they have a DX10.1 preview in.

[Demirug]

It's rather nice that they have a DX10.1 preview in.

Yes but you need Vista SP1 to get it running.

[AlexV]

Saw that as well. What somewhat surprised me is that they're talking about a bump to the Shader Model to SM4.1-do you have any idea what they're changing/adding/improving?

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Cool thanks for the link!

PS: I finally figured out what was making DXUT dirt-slow ever since the June release: gamepad input in cameras (which is enabled for all of the default camera types), even when no gamepad is plugged in! It's so slow that even if you're not rendering anything or doing anything it will slow down the app to 200Hz max. Anyways simply changing the third parameter of all of the calls to GetInput to *false* (disable gamepad input) fixes the issue, but ideally there's a more elegant solution that allows gamepads to work without the ludicrous performance hit!

[Xmas]

Saw that as well. What somewhat surprised me is that they're talking about a bump to the Shader Model to SM4.1-do you have any idea what they're changing/adding/improving?
That should hardly be surprising. Every feature addition that affects the shading language, e.g. adding a new type for cube map arrays, needs a version bump.

[Mintmaster]

but ideally there's a more elegant solution that allows gamepads to work without the ludicrous performance hit!Unfortunately joystick ports are rather slow. They use variable resistance for the axis and I think it's measured by charging a capacitor for which the RC time constant is not particularly fast. Seems silly, but I guess 25 years ago it was a lot cheaper to have a voltage comparator than an ADC.

When I coded for the joystick way back in the day (386, Turbo Pascal), I used polling to time how long it took for the charging to happen. I think you can use interrupts too, but I don't know the details. Maybe measuring the charging time over multiple frames causes inconsistency somehow.

[Demirug]

If I remember right DXUT use XInput and there was some talk about query a not plugged device is slow.

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Unfortunately joystick ports are rather slow. They use variable resistance for the axis and I think it's measured by charging a capacitor for which the RC time constant is not particularly fast.
Huh, well I can believe that but I wouldn't expect it to be slow even when there are no (plugged in) devices! Furthermore when I used DirectInput for gamepads/joysticks I could still get >1000Hz, and that was for the whole game, not just the gamepad part! That said, maybe things have deteriorated since then, who knows.

If I remember right DXUT use XInput and there was some talk about query a not plugged device is slow.
Aha... indeed it does use XInput and that could certainly explain the slowdown. Do you happen to have a link to such a discussion? I'm only casually interested as I don't really need gamepad support right now, but it would certainly be nice for them to fix this for all of the upcoming XNA titles ;)

[stevem]

The August release includes Beta 1 of XAudio2. XAudio2 is a new cross-platform audio API (Windows and Xbox 360) that is based on the Xbox 360 XAudio API. XAudio2 is a low-level audio signal processing library for Windows XP and Windows Vista providing a fully modern audio pipeline...

This sounds interesting.

[corysama]

The August release includes Beta 1 of XAudio2. XAudio2 is a new cross-platform audio API (Windows and Xbox 360) that is based on the Xbox 360 XAudio API. XAudio2 is a low-level audio signal processing library for Windows XP and Windows Vista providing a fully modern audio pipeline...

This sounds interesting.

I'll say it stronger: It's about time! The DirectSound API is still based on working around the limitations of ISA soundcards. It has been quite irritating to know that the current sound hardware works pretty much they way I want to program but then I have to use an API that emulates hardware from 1995.

I'm refering to how the DirectSound buffer interface artificially ties voices to samples. Back in the bad-ol-days the ISA bus was too slow to adequately stream samples in real time so you had to upload the samples to onboard sound RAM in advance. No sound cards work like that today but DSound still works as if they do. It's not hard to work around, but it's annoying and unnecessary.

[JHoxley]

XAudio2 does indeed look pretty interesting. I was lucky enough to be in a chat with the PM (I think) for XA2 back in March and was pretty excited about it after an hour of hearing about it. ISTR what I saw was a version of the GDC'07 slides boiled down to a few key diagrams and lots of talking :smile:

I'm pretty sure the GDC'07 slides are up on the DX/XNA portal for anyone who wants to see more.

Jack

[ShaidarHaran]

I can't believe it took the Inq (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=41367) to catch this:
Direct3D 10.1 Tech Preview

Direct3D 10.1 is an incremental, side-by-side update to Direct3D 10.0 that provides a series of new rendering features that will be available in an upcoming generation of graphics hardware.

* TextureCube Arrays which are dynamically indexable in shader code.
* An updated shader model (shader model 4.1).
* The ability to select the MSAA sample pattern for a resource from a palette of patterns, and retrieve the corresponding sample positions.
* The ability to render to block-compressed textures.
* More flexibility with respect to copying of resources.
* Support for blending on all unorm and snorm formats.

[willardjuice]

Yeah but XAudio2 can only be software accelerated (in addition it lacks the ability to support extensions like EAX). :sad: I just don't see why a develop would choose it over OpenAL. I mean what's XAudio2's mean selling point, compatibility between Vista/XP and Xbox? OpenAL already does that (with additional support for other platforms).

[BRiT]

I don't think XAudio2 will be coming to XP. Especially if it's tied to any flavor of DX10.

[Rys]

I can't believe it took the Inq (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=41367) to catch this:
It didn't. We published the same story yesterday as well.

[ShaidarHaran]

It didn't. We published the same story yesterday as well.

Doh! :razz:

[Silent_Buddha]

* The ability to select the MSAA sample pattern for a resource from a palette of patterns, and retrieve the corresponding sample positions.

That is the one feature there that has me the most excited. Now if only developers will support this. Although I'm assuming that there will be significant pressure from Nvidia for developers not to support this as I'm assuming it will by-pass their hardware AA and do the custom AA through shaders? Similar to what was done in the CoJ DX10 Demo?

The new sound system also sounds interesting. It's about time sound joined 3D in the present rather than being stuck with the limitations of the past.

Regards,
SB

[Sc4freak]

The release schedule for the SDK is changing, too, Microsoft moving away from bi-monthly releases to a different four-yearly schedule. November 07, March 08, June 08 and August 08 are the next four months to see an SDK release for DirectX.


From 2 months to 4 years !? Wow, Microsoft must be getting lazy. :lol:

[Demirug]

From 2 months to 4 years !? Wow, Microsoft must be getting lazy. :lol:

I am not a native speaker but doesn’t “four-yearly” stand for “every three months”?

[BRiT]

"Quarterly"

[digiJack]

da thing I like about XAudio 2 is its sheer simplicity and straightforward concepts, well I may go far as to say it takes the piss out of all the other API's.

The concept of a queue of buffers is brilliant in its inception and even execution.

I dont know why I am so pleased, sure it took only 2 days to integrate with my original software, much better than wrestling with that monstrosity DXsound. Sure microsoft have big ideas to help you guys out especially for multi-chan 3D op but I just want easy connect to DACs and ADCs and it does that in a clean and simple hand holding way. Its cool y'All.

Finally some feedback goodies from Xbox to the parent.

check ya later dudes after I quit Jackin in multi-chan nirvana!!!!!!

[JHoxley]

When chatting with the MS people behind XA2 they had a lot of data/reasoning to suggest that hardware accelerated audio wasn't actually that important. Apparently a lot of vendors were implementing a lot of their techniques like EAX in part (or in total) in the driver - and that the hardware did relatively little of the hard work. Apparently a big part of the soundcard business model was just licensing the use of their patents in audio effects/processing rather than the way that these were actually implemented.

I forget all the finer details now, but it seemed like pretty reasonable justification to me at the time!

Now if only developers will support this. Although I'm assuming that there will be significant pressure from Nvidia for developers not to support this as I'm assuming it will by-pass their hardware AA and do the custom AA through shaders?There are only a few entries in the spec-defined palette that are mandatory requirements for 10.1, so I'd imagine there'll still be emphasis on the IHV-specific formats. It just gives developers a nice "lowest common denominator" to work with.

I see no indication that these fixed AA patterns are not fully hardware implemented the same as any other MSAA pattern you've seen...

Cheers,
Jack

[Davros]

Can someone tell me what effects XA2 supports
positional audio (can you place a sound in 3d space x y z) ?
reverb ?
occlusion and obstruction?
sounds altered based on room size and geometry ?
htrf + crosstalk cancelation ?
velocity dependant dopler ?

[purpledog]

Last Release of the DirectX SDK That Will Contain ....

This is the final release of the DirectX SDK that will contain the following components:

* Direct3D8 and all of the earlier versions
* Direct3D RM
* DirectAnimation
* DirectMusic
* DirectInput7 and all of the earlier versions
* DirectPlay
* DirectPlayVoice
* DirectX8-era HRESULT conversion routines
* Managed DirectX samples and documentation


No more c# api for directx... Weird...
Apparently all the c# stuff are moving to XNA. I'mnot sure I get the logic of such choices...

[JHoxley]

There is no more Managed DirectX and for the foreseeable future there won't be any updates or new releases.

Best look into the community wrappers if you want to use the 'pure' API in the managed world rather than go down the XNA route.

Jack

[Demirug]

No more c# api for directx... Weird...
Apparently all the c# stuff are moving to XNA. I'mnot sure I get the logic of such choices...

The number of MDX users was never very large and most of these people seem happy with the XNA framework now. In its second iteration it still has unsupported corners and some of them will never be filled (like fixed function vertex and pixel processing).

As Jack already said if you need more direct access to the raw metal but don’t want to use C++ there are two community wrappers or you can write your own.