SHOCK!
Since the worldwide release of Windows 8 back in October, an interesting question has popped up concerning the newest version of its 3D API: Will DirectX 11.1 be made available for Windows 7 users?
The answer from Microsoft’s Daniel Moth on the Visual Studio support forum was, “DirectX 11.1 is part of Windows 8, just like DirectX 11 was part of Windows 7…at this point there is no plan for DirectX 11.1 to be made available on Windows 7.”
This is no real surprise considering that Microsoft has done this before with its last API update, DirectX 11. During the initial launch of Windows 7, DirectX 11 was not available for any previous versions of Windows. Since then, Microsoft has made it available for some older versions of the OS.
DirectX 11.1’s major feature is the native support of stereoscopic 3D for games, a feature that previously was only available to you if you had the right graphics card. 3D gaming has never really interested me and if this is the best they can do for DirectX 11.1, I’m not going to be upgrading my OS any time soon.
DirectX 11.1 exclusive to Windows 8 [Polygon]
