Microsoft makes DirectX 12 easier to use for Windows 7 games

Microsoft is going to make it easier to use DirectX on Windows 7. The company is making more documentation public about the api so developers can more easily run their games on the older operating system.

Microsoft has been working with studios for some time to make DirectX 12 games compatible with Windows 7. This happened, for example, with World of Warcraft, for which Microsoft collaborated with Blizzard. The latest version of the software normally only works on games made for Windows 8 and 10, but Microsoft also wants to continue to support the older operating system. How long that is still relevant is the question, because support for Windows 7 will end in January next year.

Microsoft is now going to offer more tools and documentation to game developers. They can thus add DirectX 12 to Windows 7 games. Microsoft provides more details about the tools in a blog post. In addition, there is technical support through a Discord channel. The new tools include better documentation of the api, an example, and a D3D12onWin7 NuGet package that includes binaries to add licenses to games.

According to Microsoft, almost all features are supported that are also in the October update of Windows 10 from last year. The only difference seems to be that Direct Machine Learning, or DirectML, is not supported in Windows 7. Also, there are a few limits to the api. For example, only the 64-bit version of Windows 7 with SP1 is supported, and HDR support is not self-evident. Developers need to know how to implement that themselves.