Is Microsoft ressurecting Managed DirectX?

Question

Today I saw that Microsoft announced 0.85 version of:

"Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework"

This pack is targeted for Windows7 OS, although most features is supposed to work under Vista. One of this pack's features is support for DirectX 11.

Knowing that few years ago Microsoft stopped development of Managed DirectX, and in mean time developed XNA Game Studio, it's hard to see purpose of this. Simplified deployment? Maybe W7 desktop applications are meant to relies heavily on DirectX? Or?

Anyone have a good comment related to this resurrected managed DX?

Answer 1

The way I read it, they're simply providing thin wrappers allowing easy access to the D3D API from .NET.

Managed DirectX was a much bigger effort, basically a separately designed API. I doubt that's the way they intend to go with this.

Answer 2

At the moment, Microsoft does NOT in fact have any plans to bring back MDX. However, they have XNA, which you and some others have mentioned. MDX was just a thin wrapper around the DirectX functionality. That is, you had some device functions, you had some IO functions, and those got wrapped into managed classes, nothing more. XNA is much more than that, having its own content pipeline, a much higher-level support for shaders, 3D models, textures, device management, etc. It is also cross-platform in that it runs on the PC, Xbox360, as well as the Zune. So, on short, no plans are for resurrecting MDX, but there are alternatives, such as the mentioned XNA. There is also another, non-Microsoft, project, SlimDX. It is a managed wrapper around DirectX, much like MDX was, except it seems much more pleasurable to use, at first glance. I have not used it much myself, but from reading what others have to say, it seems to be doing a good job. Hope this answers your question.

Answer 3

I'd like to mention that SlimDX's next release will have full DirectX11 support, along with other Win7 APIs. it's wider than what the code pack has to offer. http://ventspace.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/c-and-directx-11-yes-you-can/