What's New in the August 2006 DirectX SDK

This version of the DirectX SDK contains the following new features, tools, and documentation.

PIX: Direct3D 9 Shader Debugging

PIX now enables you to debug vertex shaders and pixel shaders inside of a single frame capture. You can step through the assembly instructions, set breakpoints, and restart the shader from the beginning. If the shader was compiled with debug information and if the HLSL source file is available, the source code will be shown as well. Currently the shader debugger shows register contents. In future releases it will also show the contents of HLSL variables and will allow source-level stepping.

PIX: Current Mesh Viewing

It is now possible to view the mesh data for the currently selected draw call event. The 3D data is displayed in wireframe and numeric forms for each stage of the rendering pipeline: before vertex processing, after vertex processing, after the geometry shader, and in screen space. This allows you to inspect how the data changes as it flows through the pipeline for each draw call event.

XACT: 3D Pan Property

New properties on the Play event allow a sound designer to specify a panning direction for wave playback of mono or multichannel content. See the XACT Event, Play Wave reference for more information.

Direct3D 10 Technology Preview

Samples and applications built with the Direct3D ® 10 Technology Preview in the August 2006 DirectX ® SDK require Windows ® Vista ^TM RC1 to run. The Windows Vista RC1 will be available to MSDN ® subscribers.

Developers will notice that syntax has changed for several of the Direct3D 10 core APIs between the Windows Vista Beta 2 and Windows Vista RC1. Several APIs have been added, renamed, or removed. For a full list of changes, please refer to the August release notes.

New Technical Articles

This release includes three new technical articles:

·         Graphics APIs in Windows Vista: describes the new display driver model.

·         Coding For Multiple Cores on Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows: gives some advice on how to get started with multithreaded programming.

·         Making Video Games Accessible: Business Justifications and Design Considerations: descibes how to add basic accessibility features to games.

Skinning10 Sample

The Skinning10 sample demonstrates four different methods to perform skinning on Direct3D 10 hardware