The ZBuffer : What is the state of Managed DirectX 2.0 beta?

9/20/06: Managed DirectX 2.0 dies officially October 5th 2006

Managed DirectX 2.0 has been included in the SDK as a beta since October 2005. Once the XNA framework was announced Microsoft confirmed that Managed DirectX 2.0 would never ship and would be replaced by the XNA framework. The Managed DirectX 2.0 beta files will stop working on October 5th 2006 (announcement, discussion) and code needs to be migrated back to MDX 1.1 or forward to the XNA framework.

Microsoft announced the XNA framework at GDC 2006. As suspected from the pre GDC 'leaks', Tom Miller moved teams from the DirectX team to the XNA team to work on the new framework. Since it makes no sense to have 2 managed wrappers around DirectX Al announced that MDX 2.0 is being rolled into XNA framework. As a result the Managed DirectX 2.0 beta in the SDK is frozen. This is a tough decision because the current state of the beta is most politely described as 'incomplete'. There are some significant APIs missing and if you require one of those you have no current timescale for a fix.

Even with a bigger team this couldn't possibly be a rewrite so don't expect the API to have huge changes (I suspect similar stuff to what you saw between MDX1 and MDX 2). Tom also confirmed this: "many of the API's in the framework will look quite familiar to developers who have used MDX2"

If you are wondering what to target then Tom has some advice. Notice the vague timings - this is because delivery of XNA framework has no public schedule. Also notice from Al's announcement there is a commitment to supporting MDX 1.1 applications "We plan on supporting MDX 1.1 for quite a while, especially since customers have shipped applications using MDX 1.1.

Bottom line - stick with MDX 1.1 unless you really need to be leading edge and you can live with no docs, no support, no end user runtime and an incomplete API for a undetermined period of time. For historical purposes only the following additional docs are available:

API Differences Note: this analysis was done on the October beta.
Generated API Documentation from Mykre


Search ZBuffer News Articles Downloads Links FAQ Blogs/People Games Applications Technology Game Engines Tutorials Books Game Dev Tools Resources Forums About Advertise Contact ZMan Privacy Partners Ad Survey	What is the state of Managed DirectX 2.0 beta? 9/20/06: Managed DirectX 2.0 dies officially October 5th 2006 Managed DirectX 2.0 has been included in the SDK as a beta since October 2005. Once the XNA framework was announced Microsoft confirmed that Managed DirectX 2.0 would never ship and would be replaced by the XNA framework. The Managed DirectX 2.0 beta files will stop working on October 5th 2006 (announcement, discussion) and code needs to be migrated back to MDX 1.1 or forward to the XNA framework. Microsoft announced the XNA framework at GDC 2006. As suspected from the pre GDC 'leaks', Tom Miller moved teams from the DirectX team to the XNA team to work on the new framework. Since it makes no sense to have 2 managed wrappers around DirectX Al announced that MDX 2.0 is being rolled into XNA framework. As a result the Managed DirectX 2.0 beta in the SDK is frozen. This is a tough decision because the current state of the beta is most politely described as 'incomplete'. There are some significant APIs missing and if you require one of those you have no current timescale for a fix. Even with a bigger team this couldn't possibly be a rewrite so don't expect the API to have huge changes (I suspect similar stuff to what you saw between MDX1 and MDX 2). Tom also confirmed this: "many of the API's in the framework will look quite familiar to developers who have used MDX2" If you are wondering what to target then Tom has some advice. Notice the vague timings - this is because delivery of XNA framework has no public schedule. Also notice from Al's announcement there is a commitment to supporting MDX 1.1 applications "We plan on supporting MDX 1.1 for quite a while, especially since customers have shipped applications using MDX 1.1. Bottom line - stick with MDX 1.1 unless you really need to be leading edge and you can live with no docs, no support, no end user runtime and an incomplete API for a undetermined period of time. For historical purposes only the following additional docs are available: API Differences Note: this analysis was done on the October beta. Generated API Documentation from Mykre Updated 9/20/2006 1:55:00 PM by Zman