Direct X 11.2 Confirmed As Windows 8.1/Xbox One Exclusive

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