About a week back we brought you some early information that suggested Microsoft’s Direct X 11.2 would be a Windows 8.1 and Xbox One exclusive. Now a recent update on the Microsoft website has confirmed this earlier prediction and Direct X 11.2 is listed for Windows 8.1 only. Microsoft’s Direct X 11.2 brings some new features we haven’t seen before with Direct X. You can see these below:
- HLSL shader linking
- Inbox HLSL compiler
- GPU overlay support
- DirectX tiled resources
- Direct3D low-latency presentation API
- DXGI Trim API and map default buffer
- Frame buffer scaling
- Multithreading with SurfaceImageSource
- Interactive Microsoft DirectX composition of XAML visual elements
- Direct2D batching with SurfaceImageSource
This is hardly a surprising or new tactic from the software giant. Microsoft has long used the “Direct X limiting tactic” as a way of forcing people to upgrade their operating systems. For example Windows XP was capped at Direct X 9.0c, Windows Vista introduced Direct X 10 but does support Direct X 11.0 with a service pack update. Windows 7 introduced native support for Direct X 11.0 but does not support Direct X 11.1 which is a Windows 8 exclusive. Therefore Direct X 11.2 being a Windows 8.1 exclusive isn’t a surprise and just continues a long-running trend. For Windows 8 users this is fine because you can simply update to Windows 8.1 for free, but for Windows 7 users this means you’re going to miss out on some extra graphical features unless you upgrade – a rather cheap tactic from Microsoft.
Image courtesy of Nethope.org
DX 11.2 doesn’t look like much of a biggie. I, for one ain’t gonna die wondering. DX 10 never had people stampeding to buy Vista, why should this be any different? Will the extra 20 sales of 8.1 make any difference? Doesn’t MS ever learn?
well said. 🙂
Another attempt of m$ to force it’s users to adapt Win8 (i.e.8.1)
so? fail.