![]() ![]() So, without further ado, let's get down to the nitty gritty. NET and WPF's capabilities, you are only limited by DirectX and that, my friends, is huge. A little more impressed now? No? Well then, stop and think for few more minutes and realize that what this application demonstrates is the very small tip of an infinitely large iceberg. Stop being unimpressed for a moment and consider that what we have here is a Direct3D rendered spinning cube along with anti-aliasing and graded translucency being composited seamlessly through a real time generated alpha channel. My intention is to change that.Īt first glance this example application may seem unimpressive "Oh yay it's a spinning cube on a window". Not one example have I found that uses Direct3D the very system which the WPF and DWM use natively. On the custom graphics side of the equation it's either WPF or GDI+ for special effect programming like true alpha blended graphics etc. NET framework, a few use older class libraries like MFC or WTL, and fewer still use good old vanilla Win32. ![]() The vast majority of the programming examples I have found on the net targeting Vista use the. NET developers in the dark about how to do what WPF does. Ten points to Microsoft for that achievement and negative ten points for leaving non. You can write a Vista app using the standard Win32 libraries and it will just work exactly as you would expect it to. Microsoft has managed to give us this new windowing environment without breaking any previous software (well no software that followed the Win32 design rules anyway). The standard desktop view appears to be good old 2D but a quick hit of the WinKey+TAB will demonstrate that this is definitely not the case. To be short and sweet, the DWM is a full screen Direct3D app that creates a textured quad for every "window", arranges these quads in 3D space, and renders them to the screen along with some sexy pixel shader effects (Aero Glass). The DWM is the application that provides the hardware accelerated windowing system in Vista. His blog gave me enough information to believe this could most certainly be done. Greg has shared a lot of very useful information about Vista technologies but most importantly he has described in reasonable detail how the DWM works. After some time I came across the blog of one Greg Schechter a member of the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) development team. I began my search for information by hunting through Microsoft developer blogs. Both of these features are excellent but I'll be damned if I'm going to use a managed language and. Finally we get the features of GDI+ but with hardware acceleration and in addition WPF even introduces the concept of true 3D controls. The WPF provides some rather cool functionality for developers. NET and WPF is the only answer and to reinforce that implication, have provided no information (that I could find) on how to do anything without. They have just done a very good job of implying that. It turns out that Microsoft has not hidden the functionality from unmanaged developers. NET to do anything special in Vista did not sit well with me at all so I set about finding as much information as possible about how Vista does what it does so that I could then bypass. NET and/or managed programming languages. I am a control freak when it comes to programming and as such I am not a fan of. NET and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Finally it arrives and I'm bombarded with information from all over the internet implying that I won't be able to leverage this hardware accelerated interface without using. I have been waiting for a hardware accelerated interface in Windows for a very long time. I am self-taught a computer enthusiast who has just become very interested in DirectX. I am not a university trained programmer nor am I a DirectX expert. The application provided uses good old unmanaged C++ and DirectX 9 Ex to create an anti-aliased, semi-transparent, 3D spinning cube on an Aero Glass window that operates as smoothly as any other application under Vista. This article will demonstrate how to access the power of Vista's new hardware accelerated windowing system without "managed" languages and best of all, without any use of. ![]()
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