As it stands right now the latest DX is remaining for Windows 8 only, as Microsoft has ”no plan for DirectX 11.1 to be made available” elsewhere. Stereoscopic 3D seems to be the only notable upgrade.
This exclusivity of DirectX 11.1 for Windows 8 might have been more troublesome for PC gamers if it actually added something that blew DX11 out the water, but it doesn’t.
”DirectX 11.1 is part of Windows 8, just like DirectX 11 was part of Windows 7. DirectX 11 was made available for Vista …. but at this point there is no plan for DirectX 11.1 to be made available on Windows 7,” posted Daniel Moth. The only significant upgrade to DirectX through 11.1 is the ability to view stereoscopic 3D content with glasses without the need for specific programming to third-party graphics vendor software like Nvidia’s 3D Vision or AMD’s HD3D tech.
Here is a summary of DirectX 11.1’s features:
• Shader tracing and compiler enhancements
• Direct3D device sharing
• Check support of new Direct3D 11.1 features and formats
• Use HLSL minimum precision
• Specify user clip planes in HLSL on feature level 9 and higher
• Create larger constant buffers than a shader can access
• Use logical operations in a render target
• Force the sample count to create a rasterizer state
• Process video resources with shaders
• Extended support for shared Texture2D resources
• Change subresources with new copy options
• Discard resources and resource views
• Support a larger number of UAVs
• Bind a subrange of a constant buffer to a shader
• Retrieve the subrange of a constant buffer that is bound to a shader
• Clear all or part of a resource view
• Map SRVs of dynamic buffers with NO_OVERWRITE
• Use UAVs at every pipeline stage
• Extended support for WARP devices
• Use Direct3D in Session 0 processes
Microsoft has been very keen to play Windows 8 up as a gaming platform, however the fundamental shift in design for the OS has put a lot of Windows users off from upgrading. Many developers have also criticised the new Windows 8 for being ‘too closed’, accusing Microsoft of locking down the platform as it adopts more tablet-like mannerisms.