Microsoft Brings DirectX 12 To Windows 7

[Perkel]

lol

Looks like they are pushing hard for their next gen console to be all encompassing platform.
There are already rumors that they want to release xbox for switch and playstation and in recent Win10 they got native xboxone game running on win10.

Netflix of gaming and all of that jizz.

Anandtech

Sometimes things happen that are unexpected – just ask Ned Stark. In a far less fictional event, Microsoft has posted an update on their DirectX Blog announcing that they’ve brought a form of DirectX 12 to Windows 7, via official support for the latest DX12 version of World of Warcraft on Windows 7. Where do we even begin?

For some background, Microsoft’s latest DirectX API was created to remove some of the CPU bottlenecks for gaming by allowing for developers to use low-level programming conventions to shift some of the pressure points away from the CPU. This was a response to single-threaded CPU performance plateauing, making complex graphical workloads increasingly CPU-bounded. There’s many advantages to using this API over traditional DX11, especially for threading and draw calls. But, Microsoft made the decision long ago to only support DirectX 12 on Windows 10, with its WDDM 2.0 driver stack.

Today’s announcement is a pretty big surprise on a number of levels. If Microsoft had wanted to back-port DX12 to Windows 7, you would have thought they’d have done it before Windows 7 entered its long-term servicing state. As it is, even free security patches for Windows 7 are set to end on January 14, 2020, which is well under a year away, and the company is actively trying to migrate users to Windows 10 to avoid having a huge swath of machines sitting in an unpatched state. In fact, they are about to add a pop-up notification to Windows 7 to let users know that they are running out of support very soon. So adding a big feature like DX12 now not only risks undermining their own efforts to migrate people away from Windows 7, but also adding a new feature well after Windows 7 entered long-term support. It’s just bizarre.

 

[Valky]

Just guessing, but could this be due to them caving because every rational human knows that windows 10 is dogshit? I'm certainly never upgrading.

 

[Perkel]

Just guessing, but could this be due to them caving because every rational human knows that windows 10 is dogshit? I'm certainly never upgrading.

Doubtful.
MS knows that sooner or later you will have to switch to 10 and there is no other option if you want to have all in one thing.

 

[LESS T_T]

Even now that Windows 10 is the dominant OS (65% according to Steam stats) among gamers, there are, and will be, still sizable Windows 7 gamers out there. So, I think, from a game developer's perspective, when DX 11 can cover the both audience there's little reason to use DX12. So now MS really wants devs to use DX12, not Vulkan.

(Also China, AFAIK many people there still use Windows 7.)

 

[Makabb]

But it's only for 1 game currently

 

[unfairlight]

(Also China, AFAIK many people there still use Windows 7.)

Correct, it's Windows 7 and XP neck to neck there.

 

[Azalin]

That's perplexing,like the article said in a year they are supposed to stop supporting Windows 7 and now they are going to add DX12 just a few months before they pull the plug?Are they going to announce a delay on that?

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Stopping support is more of a bonus than anything.

 

[Perkel]

Even now that Windows 10 is the dominant OS (65% according to Steam stats) among gamers, there are, and will be, still sizable Windows 7 gamers out there. So, I think, from a game developer's perspective, when DX 11 can cover the both audience there's little reason to use DX12. So now MS really wants devs to use DX12, not Vulkan.

(Also China, AFAIK many people there still use Windows 7.)

One of the key reasons why MS is so dominant is that everyone buying pc wouldn't want to be hindered by os in what they do.
Namely gaming. This is the sole reason why no one else could compete with them because they very early took API initiative and managed to convince whole industry to follow DirectX apis.

What changed ? Vulcan is picking up steam + MS works on all encompassing platform that is supposed to get all platforms on xbox network.

So they have to do something about Win7 because you can't have Vulcan picking up steam and ultimately MS losing only reason why would someone pick it over Linux.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Just guessing, but could this be due to them caving because every rational human knows that windows 10 is dogshit? I'm certainly never upgrading.

Isn't Windows 7 pretty much 10 these days with a shitter interface?

Forced updates
Tracking yo ass
Stealing your wifi passwords

Everything was ported over already.

 

[Perkel]

I tried to make some point about win10 but then i realized i am already fucked because my phone has more important stuff for me than PC and i don't seem to mind same stuff i would mind for Win10.

Hopefully Vulcan will go full speed and Linux will became viable OS for most of people.

 

[cosmicray]

So they have to do something about Win7 because you can't have Vulcan picking up steam and ultimately MS losing only reason why would someone pick it over Linux.

Then why not bring it to Win 8.1? Win 7 is a lost cause. Besides, having cross-platform API is better anyway.

 

[Perkel]

So they have to do something about Win7 because you can't have Vulcan picking up steam and ultimately MS losing only reason why would someone pick it over Linux.

Then why not bring it to Win 8.1? Win 7 is a lost cause. Besides, having cross-platform API is better anyway.

Because Win 8 is a failture and barely anyone uses it. Win7 have strong userbase so does win10. Win8 barely have any:

 

[cosmicray]

3% is still quite alright in actual number of people. The problem is that Win7 is gonna be unsupported in 2020. It is rather strange that Win7 will support DX12, but not Win8.1, which is supported until 2023. Althought, I don't know all the details. Maybe it is indeed just one game only, so who cares.

And why did you make screenshot of MS Paint's paste?

 

[Morkar Left]

Because Win 8 is a failture and barely anyone uses it. Win7 have strong userbase so does win10. Win8 barely have any:

I use it and it's pretty

 

[Perkel]

3% is still quite alright in actual number of people.

Pretty much means some garbage tier laptops at 3% rate so just random Steam noise.
Not particularly important market for DX12.

 

[Valky]

Just guessing, but could this be due to them caving because every rational human knows that windows 10 is dogshit? I'm certainly never upgrading.

Isn't Windows 7 pretty much 10 these days with a shitter interface?

Forced updates
Tracking yo ass
Stealing your wifi passwords

Everything was ported over already.

No, only if you actually enable windows updates, they ported over some of the shitty botnet from windows 10 in some updates to 7, but those were obviously after windows 10 was made. I haven't installed an update to my copy of 7 since before windows 10 was even created. Only an absolute imbecile has windows update going, it's completely useless and microsoft stopping "support" of 7 next year means absolutely nothing.

 

[cosmicray]

3% is still quite alright in actual number of people.

Pretty much means some garbage tier laptops at 3% rate so just random Steam noise.
Not particularly important market for DX12.

It's still more than vulkan/linux alternative that MS is supposedly fearing. Of course Win7/Vulkan is more of a threat, but Win7 will only decline.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Linux had directx 12 before windows 7
https://github.com/d3d12/vkd3d

 

[LESS T_T]

More push: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/porting-directx-12-games-to-windows-7/

Porting DirectX 12 games to Windows 7

We announced “World of Warcraft uses DirectX 12 running on Windows 7” back in March. Since that time, we have received warm welcome from the gaming community, and we continued to work with several game studios to further evaluate this work.

To better support game developers at larger scales, we are publishing the following resources to allow game developers to run their DirectX 12 games on Windows 7. Please post technical question or feedback to our Discord channel at http://discord.gg/directx.

• Development Guidance Document – please read through this document before planning and coding
• D3D12onWin7 NuGet package, which contains header file, binary files, and license terms to unblock coding
• D3D12 sample, which runs on both Win7 and Win10 with the same binary

We would like to thank the development community for their help in evolving the DirectX 12 technology, and we have been so excited to work with game developers to bring the benefits of DirectX 12 to all their customers. Please keep the feedback coming!