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Managed DirectX - Have you used it?

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So I asked before what types of features you would like to see in Managed DirectX (and the feedback was awesome - I'm still interested in this topic)..  What I'm also interested in that I didn't ask about back then though was what types of things people are using it for currently? 

Are you using it to write some tools?  Game engines?  Playing around on the weekends?  What experiences have you had working with the API?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2004
    Writing a game engine for creating indie games.

    The experiences have mostly been good, except for the lack of documentation which I know you are aware of. Also I would like to see MDX run through FxCop - I know certain elements of it could be more .NET-ish (naming conventions amongst other).

  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2004
    Sound processing, playing around in spare time. I've been working on a collaborative cellular automata music generation that's been pretty challenging.

    MDX has been 10 times easier to use than DX6 - 8 because coding mistakes don't lock up my machine. I'd love to see the DirectShow filters accessible via MDX, and to make it possible to write MDX sound plugins.

    I understand that DX isn't a game engine, but it might make sense to eventually have a DX game engine layer that runs on the DX core. That's not my interest, but it looks like it's something other folks are asking for.

  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2004
    I've been using it to create a heightfield editing tool (http://www.btinternet.com/~nfactorial/heightpic.jpg).

    Though this is mainly a precursor to converting a 3D editor I was working on in C++DX9 to C#MDX. I'm basically looking at how to structure C# applications and using C#MDX effectively(http://www.btinternet.com/~nfactorial/Mantra/Screenshots/scrn2.jpg, C++ version).

    I'm also working on a data driven game-engine as a research project, which is going pretty well. No screenshots on that one yet as most of the work is in the framework and my artistic talents are zero, so its just cubes walking around.

    n!

  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2004
    As far as experiences, I've chosen MDXC# as my main home development environment now (which used to be C++DX9). So it's very good for me.

    Some things I don't like though are the portions of the API where it seems to be trying to remain too close to the C++ API. Such things like, DirectInput returning an array of bytes for MouseState.GetMouseButtons when it would make much more sense to simply have a MouseState.IsPressed( int button ) or something.

    Or AudioVideoPlayback classes not supporting creation from streams (which means my audio has to be in a file on its own rather than contained within a package).

    A few other issues as well, but these are only minor compared to the entire API. Which works and works very well so far :)

    Thanks,
    n!

  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2004
    I am getting ready to use it in a medical imaging app because I am hoping that using shaders I can perform fast image processing. I previously implemented this using System.Drawing and it was horribly slow. Hopefully Managed DirectX is the answer to my woes.

  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2004
    Yep, trying to do a mathematical 3D functions viewer....

  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2004
    Stratching the MDX surface for a pet project, a Connect4 game using minimax/alpha beta pruning. More real usage later on.

    Having said that, it would be better to have MDX more .NETish as n! mentioned. Ex: I can refer to the DefaultView instance of a DataTable and play with it, so I'd like to refer to a "scene" object rather than going over a global "device" object.

    It's very very easy to code with MDX, on the other hand. Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    April 14, 2004
    I have been using MDX to build in house engineering tools. Mostly viewing models with complex reflections. We are in the process of writing new CAD environments using MDX as well. It has been pretty easy to use MDX. I chose to go that way as our developers moved to .Net. Before, we used OpenGL for all of our internal apps.

  • Anonymous
    April 14, 2004
    I'm trying to do build an editor for my forthcoming game. I'm an absolute beginner in coding DirectX-apps and for me it's difficult to understand all the math (like picking an object in my 3D-editor).
    But don't get me wrong - I like MDX very much, cause it's very easy to handle and I think, I'm able to solve my math-problems ;-)

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2004
    I like MDX a lot. I'm using it to make a 3D Game engine and it's set of tools. I'm expereinced in Unmanged DX9 and was very impressed with MDX so I started this new game engine project with MDX.

    The only gripe I have at present is trying to use Windows Media 9 encoded sound files with Managed DirectSound. Was hoping to have that functionality built in...or at least Ogg and MP3 support.

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2004
    MDX is very nice. it's easy to get a hang on it. i decided to start getting into the basics of Direct3D because of it. As a learning process, i decided to make a "simple" app launcher (check my url for it). it came in really handy for some stuff. blazing fast when it comes to rendering.

    earlier i tried doing some DirectInput stuff with it but never actually got around finishing it because i couldn't figure out how to do some things (that i did b4 with DI8) on it. documentation on that front was really a big problem for me.

    overall the api is great to use. the only shame i might say is that we need to support sooo many different video cards....

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2004
    I wish there was documentation on DirectShow for C#.net !!! and pre written examples.. I've used managed direct x for little things like music players and such. I am just getting into this type of coding and find it hard getting documentation for DirectShow for C#.net..

  • Anonymous
    April 16, 2004
    An extra thing, not quite related to MDX but maybe you're in a position to push it a bit. Is native managed support for matrices and quaternions (as well as single precision math support).

    Given the fact that managed code is stored in intermediate assembly language and the JIT. It would be awesome if the .NET framework had intrinsic matricesvectorsquaternions etc. So that when compiled by the JIT they evaluated directly to optimized versions for the host processor.

    Again not quite in MDX's realm, but would be really cool. :)

    n!

  • Anonymous
    April 17, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 18, 2004
    I am using it to do a 2d game using 3d. Would love to see more int the way of 2d. As it appears directdraw may go the way of the dodo... would be nice to see d3d pick up its routines. Sprites seem to do a great job (speed wise), but dd has all the good drawing routines.

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2004
    I am using it for a complete 3d engine ( graphics, sound, input, network, collisions, physics ).... And really love it.

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2004
    Currently I am using it as a platform to learn 3D Graphics programming on.
    I'm hoping to eventually build up enough basecode to build a complete 3D game engine on.

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2004
    Currently I am using it as a platform to learn 3D Graphics programming on.
    I'm hoping to eventually build up enough basecode to build a complete 3D game engine on.

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2004
    I'm have been using it to teach an introductory game programming course at a university. It's a 2D GP course, and although most of your book is on Direct3D, I was still able to use chapters on DirectSound, DirectInput, DirectDraw, DirectPlay, and some sidebar comments from other chapters.

    Your book was very useful, but for my course I'm still hoping to find something more like "Inside DirectX" by Bargen & Donnelly (pub'd in 1998 for DX5) rewritten for MDX.

    One quick question: The DuplicateSoundBuffer method from previous versions of DirectSound does not seem to exist in MDX - what has happened to it?
    Anyone with an answer - please reply to: dancolasanti@hotmail.com (thanks)

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2004
    I used it for our game project:
    http://www.projectcolonisation.tk/
    and for 3D part and even some math calculatins (D3DX math classes like Vector come pretty handy sometimes...) for my diploma thesis (mobile robot control)... It helped me a lot...

    Last week, I was on MS WinDays2004 conference here in Croatia, and saw that some guys use it for simulation and control of manipulator in reactor chambers...

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2004
    Rather than making a big post here I will direct you you my web site. www.createdbyx.com

    You can either look for the May 12, 2004 blog post called "Textured Index Buffers for D3D" or you can find the document under the Development link on the sidebar. Look for the "Textured Index Buffers for D3D" link under the DirectX category.

    I'm hoping this post does not crash my site,... but well see.

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2004
    I have posted my previous question on a number of fourms at ...

    http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/showthread.php?t=166874

    http://www.vbgamer.com/msgboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=166

    http://www.intheoryforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=360

  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2004
    I've been using it to build an isometric RPG game engine :)

    As for the features I'd like to see - above all, more integration into the Visual Studio help system. XML comments for code-complete, and true .NET style documentation (not the difficult-to-comprehend older style you currently use).

    Also, why does the documentatation say that it is in beta? Isn't managed direct-x release code?

    Parts of MDX don't make sense from a ".Net" point of view. The naming can strange, and there are methods where there should be properties. (ie/ the "raise_DeviceLost" event, which should be named "OnDeviceLost" and also be virtual)

    I couldn't find any way to determine the real size of a texture (not the source image's size, but the in-memory texture).

    I also heard rumors that for MDX to work, you need to deploy a redistributable file (in addition to Direct-X itself). I'm not sure if this is the case (I have the SDK installed), but if it is, it sure would be nice to have it as part of the base Direct-X install (I think it is, but some people were acting as though it wasn't in a discussion board once...)

  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2004
    I also would suggest that it would be very nice to have "Direct-X" friendly Form/Application classes (or something similar) that allow for more control over the main application's message loop.

    DoEvents isn't tight-loop friendly, and there are minimal alternatives (other than rewriting everything from scratch - goodbye form designer!)

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2004
    I need Managed DirectShow classes in the worst way!

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