What's New in the December 2004 DirectX SDK

This page is a record of the features that were added in the DirectX December 2004 update. To see the latest features in the SDK, see What's New in the October 2006 DirectX SDK.

SDK Updates
Graphics Updates
Technical Articles

SDK Updates

The following features have been updated in the SDK:

Content Tools
Performance Tools
SDK Samples

Content Tools

DirectX tools are now documented in DirectX SDK Tools. Tools for programming and debugging shaders (which is primarily a graphics topic) are located in Graphics Tools.

The tools are now located in (SDK root)\Utilities\Bin\x86 or x64. The corresponding path to the source files is: (SDK root)\Utilities\Source\x86 or x64.

The DirectX Extensions for Alias Maya now supports options to control the set of exported data, and it can export and preview smooth skinned meshes.

The debug monitor (Dbmon.exe) has been removed from the SDK, but it can still be found in the Platform SDK.

The force feedback editor (Fedit.exe) has been removed from the SDK.

Performance Tools

The following enhancements have been made to PIX:

A collection of countersets is provided as a starting point for you to record useful runtime data from your application.
A new key combination trigger is provided.
You can now set triggers to recur.
Options are available to display PIX information on top of your running application.
You can set a call capture action on a single frame.
Full stream capture performance is improved.
You can launch experiment and log files, or open image files, simply by dragging them onto a PIX window.
The tool is compatible with older versions of DirectX.
Many bugs have been fixed.

D3DSpy has been removed. Nearly all of its functionality is duplicated by PIX.

SDK Samples

The following samples are upgrades are available in the update:

Samples and tool source code now use safer string functions.
Project and solution files for both Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2002 and Visual Studio .NET 2003 are now provided.
A new Install-on-Demand for Games sample.

Graphics Updates

The following features have been updated in the graphics component:

D3DX
Graphics Samples

D3DX

The following new features were added to D3DX:

Effects - The SetPixelShader and SetVertexShader methods have been removed from ID3DXBaseEffect, ID3DXEffect, and ID3DXEffectCompiler. These methods do not perform well within the effect framework when shaders are swapped at run time. Use the following methods instead: IDirect3DDevice9::SetPixelShader and IDirect3DDevice9::SetVertexShader
PRT - ID3DXPRTEngine::ComputeConvCoeffs method has been renamed to ID3DXPRTEngine::ComputeLDPRTCoeffs to reflect its use with locally-deformable precomputed radiance transfer (LDPRT).
New optional parameters have been added to the following functions: D3DXCreatePRTCompBuffer, D3DXCreatePRTEngine.

The following new functions, and methods have been added: D3DXComputeTangentFrame, D3DXComputeTangentFrameEx, ID3DXPRTEngine::ComputeSSAdaptive, ID3DXPRTEngine::ComputeSurfSamplesBounce, ID3DXPRTEngine::ComputeSurfSamplesDirectSH, ID3DXPRTEngine::SetMinMaxIntersection.

Graphics Samples