Download DirectX 8.0b

love it writes that the leaked version of DirectX 8.0b has appeared at the CAD and as you can see from the list of bug fixes below, a lot has been improved. There is one small problem if you think you can get a slightly higher score with this in the video card torture program 3DMark 2001, to use this version of DirectX 8 you also need the 150Mb heavy DirectX 8 SDK. So maybe it’s smart to wait a little longer for the official release:

Bug Fixes

The following lists some of bugs have been fixed in this release. They are separated out by the functionality that they affect.

core

D3DXCreateTextureFromFileEx can now load certain16-bit BMPs generated by IE 5.0

· Add unicode support to D3DXCreateText functions

· All D3DX functions use D3DLOCK_NOSYSLOCK when locking resources

Effects

D3DXCreateEffectFromFile(A or W) now returns D3DXERR_INVALIDDATA for errors

Effect compiler now handles vector literals correctly

Setting a shader constant to a matrix in an effect, now performs transpose

· Setting NULL vertex and pixel shaders in an effect are now allowed

mesh

· ID3DXMesh::GenerateAdjacency() now works with non-zero epsilon parameter. When epsilon is non-zero, all vertices whose distance is less than epsilon share the same point representative, and are treated as collocated for adjacency generation.

ID3DXMesh::CloneMeshFVF now fails for meshes with D3DFVF_XYZRHW

· ID3DXMesh: rawSubset now uses hardware for 32bit drawing if available.

· Calls to ID3DXMesh::Optimize with the SHAREVB flag set will now work.

ID3DXSkinMesh::ConvertToIndexedBlendedMesh has some bug fixes

ID3DXSkinMesh::ConvertToBlendedMesh has some bug fixes and performance improvements

Calling ID3DXSkinMesh::GetMaxVertexInfluences before calling any ID3DXSkinMesh::ConvertTo* calls now works.

· ID3DXSPMesh::ClonePMesh no works with 32bit meshes with more than 65,536 faces.

· D3DXSaveMesh & D3DXLoadMesh* functions now handle 3d texture coordinates correctly.

· D3DXLoadMesh* initializes D3DMATERIAL8 correctly.

· D3DXLoadMesh* now handles duplicated entries in the VertexColors template.

D3DXLoadMesh* functions can now return D3DXERR_LOADEDMESHASNODATA which indicates that a empty mesh template was found in the .X file

D3DXCleanMesh works correctly with multi-attribute meshes

· D3DXIntersectMesh now handles 32 bit meshes.

· Effect & X file in text format now works if the (Windows) decimal separator isn’t a point.

Texas

· Box filter now handles odd sized source surfaces.

samples

· Many improvements and bug-fixes to the SkinnedMesh sample

· SkinnedMesh samples no longer ignores paletted skinning caps.