With Windows 7 pre-Beta Build 6801 out of Redmond, it was only natural that DirectX 11 would follow. And this is precisely what happened. Having served Milestone 3 Build of the next iteration of the Windows client, Microsoft is also moving forward with the graphics technology included by default with the operating system. The transition from Vista to Windows 7 is synonymous with the evolution from DirectX 10.1 (in Vista SP1) to DirectX 11. At this point in time, the first taste of the next version of the DirectX suite of multimedia application programming interfaces (APIs), namely DirectX 11, is available for download via the November 2008 DirectX Software Development Kit.

“Included in the November 2008 DirectX SDK is a technical preview of Direct3D 11 and associated components and tools. Direct3D 11 is an update to Direct3D 10.1 enabling new hardware features as well as improving the breadth of configurations supported by Direct3D. As such, Direct3D 11 enables developers to create applications and games that work on Direct3D 10, Direct3D 10.1, and Direct3D 11 hardware when it becomes available. With the addition of WARP and Direct3D 10 Level 9, Direct3D 10.1 and Direct3D 11 have the ability to target fast software rasterization and Direct3D 9 hardware,” Microsoft revealed.

According to the software giant, the November 2008 DirectX SDK package for Windows 7 pre-Beta Build 6801 and Windows Vista SP1 brings the evolution of Tessellation; Compute Shaders; Multithreaded Rendering; Dynamic Shader Linkage; Windows Advanced Rasterizer (WARP); Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 on Direct3D 9 Hardware (D3D10 Level 9); Runtime Binaries; D3DX11; Completely Updated HLSL and Direct3D Compiler; D3D11 Reference Rasterizer; and D3D11 SDK Layers.

“Don't mix Beta DLLs with their correspondingly named non-beta DLLs,” Microsoft warned. “The Direct3D 11 Technical Preview in the November 2008 DirectX SDK provides a dxgi_beta.dll that is different from the dxgi.dll included in Windows Vista. Developers should not use interfaces from one of these DLLs with the other as it may cause issues that are difficult to track down. The recommendation is that if you are using a beta DLL, don't link to the correspondingly named non-beta DLL.”

The November 2008 DirectX Software Development Kit is available for download here.

The November 2008 DirectX End-User Runtime Web Installer can be downloaded via this link.

DirectX End-User Runtimes (November 2008) is up for grabs here.