DirectX 11.1 Released for Windows 7, Sort of

A Microsoft employee has already confirmed last week that the Redmond-based company had no intention to make DirectX 11.1 available on the Windows 7 platform, but it seems like someone convinced them to change their minds.

The software giant has released some of the DirectX 11.1 features on Windows 7 together with the Internet Explorer 10 preview flavor for the same operating system.

“Portions of the “DirectX 11.1 Runtime” are being made available on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 via the Platform Update for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (KB 2670838) included with the Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview for Windows 7. This includes the updated components above, but is limited to WDDM 1.1 drivers on Windows 7,” Chuck Walbourn wrote.

The update brings, among others, improved Direct3D 11 device interoperability and D3D11_FEATURE_DATA_D3D9_OPTIONS feature detection.