There is absolutely no way they will add DX12 support to Windows 7. If it's truly 18 months away, I doubt we'll see it in Windows 8. MS do not like releasing new tech to older OS, presumably at least partly because it removes an incentive to upgrade. We saw this with DX10 on Vista when everybody was still using XP.

There is absolutely no way they will add DX12 support to Windows 7. If it's truly 18 months away, I doubt we'll see it in Windows 8. MS do not like releasing new tech to older OS, presumably at least partly because it removes an incentive to upgrade. We saw this with DX10 on Vista when everybody was still using XP.

...but yet they released DX11 to Vista, which gave some indication that their stance had mellowed, at least for that time. We also need to consider that the new CEO may have his own ideas about what the right thing to do is.

...but yet they released DX11 to Vista, which gave some indication that their stance had mellowed, at least for that time. We also need to consider that the new CEO may have his own ideas about what the right thing to do is.

Yeah; the fact is that XP was a legacy product and pulling back all the infrastructure to get DX10 running on it simply wouldn't have been worth the cost of doing so.

DX11 is a different matter as the driver model was largely the same, although I won't argue that the 11.1/11.2 Win8/8.1 only stuff was a bit of a dick move which pretty much means it'll never get widely used.

This time around developers have kicked up a fuss about DX12 being on Win7 (and they haven't said "no" yet where as before it was very upfront) and about the overhead of DX11 being a problem. Faced with some mounting pressure from other OSes and a change of leadership it could very well end up being on Win7 'in some form'.

It's a bit of a 'wait and see' game but with devs still firmly entrenched in Win7 it might be a case that for mass market they HAVE to support it or people will just stick with DX11 as their machines support nothing else.

However if this comes out with W9, supporting a two-generations old W7 still seems very unlikely. You can tell even supporting newer versions of Internet Explorer on W7 isn't likely to last that long!

Except Win7 got the new version of IE; it even involved back-porting some of DX11.1 to support it so I wouldn't rule it out still.

Except Win7 got the new version of IE; it even involved back-porting some of DX11.1 to support it so I wouldn't rule it out still.

I doubt IE needed very advanced features though. Unless they did their webpage rendering with sparse textures or something lol

I really hope they do support Win7, otherwise it'll be neglected for an extra 5 years until gamers all upgrade to 8/9/...

Either way, consider me hyped. They really are bringing PC APIs much closer to console APIs - actual multithreading, DIY resources, thin resource headers -- with just the necessary level of abstraction for portability. In the meantime, Mantle is basically a D3D12 preview ;)
I've actually spent the past week redesigning my engine to more closely match the D3D12/Mantle way of doing things, and emulating the new design all the way back to D3D9 ^_^

Based on my preliminary, incomplete understanding of D3D12.

I think there's chance the market will have to split, with non-performance critical apps staying D3D11 and therefore being not "up to snuff". Fortunately this isn't likely a problem for them.

I have personally been in love with display command lists since they were released on OpenGL 1.0 Direct3D 10 so I see some not-yet-quantifiable benefit in moving however with performance being not an issue for me this benefit is purely architectural. I'll need to see it released to understand if it's worth biting the bullet. I also build objects similar to Pipeline State Objects, as well as the saved bindings so there's some chance going D3D12 might result in smaller code for me or at least in moving it to more controllable sections.

I am wondering however how those "awesome" companies not understanding their trade will fare. You know, those who want the newest stickers (usually big proponents of GL since the API never changes). Those are going to have a nasty surprise!

Every recent version of D3 had its "selling points", so it will be interesting to see exactly how the big players market this one, especially to the gamers who they claim will benefit from this. I believe that OpenGL is in real danger of getting so far behind in the mind of people that it permanently loses the publicity race with D3D/DirectX. Could that relegate OpenGL to only nerdy software for niche business needs with ugly user interfaces typical from pure coders? (Being sarcastic)

On the other hand, gamers always want more content and better looking at that - all the time - so it will be also interesting to see how the new API will impact games in that area of the amount and quality of art. They want 200 FPS to impress their friends, too, which is far beyond necessary. Of course, for most game developers the "trickle down economics" of all this is more like an occasional drop that hits them in the eye by accident.

OpenGL lost that battle to D3D a long time ago - at least in the realm of Windows games, where the vast majority use D3D.
GL has a monopoly on Mac/Linux, and GLES on Apple/Android mobile platforms though.