Thus, in June 1996 the first version of DirectX was born, available for Windows 95 and NT 4.0. See Games for Windows and the DirectX SDK for lots of posts on this very topic.But always quick to detect the needs of the user, Microsoft found a way to offer game developers a tool for direct access to hardware resources in Windows. Also, it is recommended that you make use of the Windows 8.x SDK and not make use of the DirectX SDK. This works for both Win32 desktop applications and Windows Store apps.

The recommended API to use for writing new applications on Windows 7 and Windows 8 is Direct3D 11. You can use the legacy DirectX SDK on Windows 8, but there are a number of challenges getting it installed and limitations. The Direct3D 9 Debug Runtime is not supported on Windows 8. The standard Direct3D 9 headers are part of the Windows 8.0 SDK (included with VS 2012), but that does not include D3DX9. Direct3D 9 is legacy and there are definitely some compat issues that can potentially impact Direct3D 9-based games, but they more or less function as well as they did on Windows 7.ĭevelopment with Direct3D 9 on Windows 8 is a bit more challenging than it was on Windows 7. Windows 8 has the same basic support for Direct3D 9 applications as was present in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3) if you want to support legacy hardware. But you can use D3D11 and limit yourself to some feature level (e.g. Sorry, you can't use D3D9 directly for Metro-style apps. Pitfalls and performance issues developers have hit in the past, andĭirectX 11 Technology Update for a summary of the differences between Porting from Direct3D 9 to Direct3D 10.x applies fully here sinceĭirect3D 11's API is very similiar to Direct3D 10.īe sure to review the Windows to Reality: Getting the Most out ofĭirect3D 10 Graphics in Your Games presentation as it covers numerous

There are a number of resources available to help you in porting aĭirect3D 9 codebase to Direct3D 11. Use of the DirectX SDK with Metro style applications is For Metro-style apps, I'll let Chuck Walbourn from Microsoft speak:ĭirect3D9 and Direct3D9Ex are not supported for Metro styleĪpplications.

However this is only valid for plain old desktop apps. If you need PIX for some debugging, or the high level D3DX library, you'll have to install the old DXSDK again, as this is not in the Windows 8 SDK. You can go for the 'old way' with no problem. For development, the old DirectX SDK is now deprecated, but you'll have all the libraries and headers you need within the new Windows 8 SDK, which comes included with Visual Studio 2012.

Directx 9 windows 8