DirectX 11.1 will be Windows 8 exclusive

A Microsoft spokesperson has made it very clear, that while we might have seen backwards compatibility for DirectX 11 – allowing for Vista support – DirectX 11.1 would be exclusive to Windows 8 only.

“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,” reads the statement posted over on Neowin.

Fortunately DX11.1 isn't exactly a big changer. While DX11 brought us improved physics and the eye popping tessellation, DX11.1's biggest feature is the incorporation of stereoscopic 3D in games that otherwise might not have supported it. Other improvements include:

• 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

KitGuru Says: Considering quite a few have suggested they plan to skip Windows 8 altogether, this could mean that the adoption rate for DX11.1 will be pretty low? What do you guys think?

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