What’s New in the August 2015 Xbox One XDK
The August 2015 release of the Xbox One XDK from Microsoft contains the following new features, tools, and documentation. For features that shipped in a previous release of the Xbox One XDK, see the What’s New document for that release, available from Features Introduced in Previous Releases.
Sections:
Release Notes and Xbox One XDK Updates
The most recent release notes for and updates to the Xbox One XDK can always be found on Xbox One XDK Software Downloads on the Xbox Game Developer site. For access, log in with your ID and password on https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/games/xbox/partner/index; at the top of the page, point to Development and click Downloads.
You can check with your account manager for the latest information about upcoming Xbox One XDK releases.
Xbox One XDK Version Info
The August 2015 Xbox One XDK contains the latest tools and libraries for Xbox One.
What’s new in the August 2015 XDK
Roadmap
The Xbox One Developer Roadmap on XGD has been updated with projections of developer-facing feature work from the May 2015 XDK through Q3 of 2015. The roadmap is intended to help developers plan their implementation schedules around upcoming feature and tooling efforts for the Xbox One console and related services.
Table of Contents
Developer Tools
Support for Windows 10
The August 2015 Xbox One XDK is the first release to support Windows 10 as a development platform.
Support for Visual Studio 2015
The RTM versions of both the Professional and Enterprise editions of Visual Studio 2015 are now supported for Xbox One XDK development.
Note The August 2015 XDK does not support pre-release versions of Visual Studio 2015. You can download the release version of Visual Studio 2015 from https://www.visualstudio.com.
Xbox One Manager
The following new features and improvements have been made to Xbox One Manager:
Initiate a factory reset
You can now initiate a factory reset on a console or a group of consoles in Xbox One Manager. To initiate a factory reset, right-click a console or group and then click Factory Reset in the context menu. This is the equivalent of running Clean (xbcleanup.exe) with the /F option.
Uninstall all developer-installed apps
You can now uninstall all developer-installed apps on a console or a group of consoles in Xbox One Manager. To uninstall all developer-installed apps, right-click a console or group and then click Uninstall All Applications in the context menu. This is the equivalent of running Clean (xbcleanup.exe) with the /U option.
Remove all registered consoles and custom groups
You can now remove all registered consoles and custom groups from Xbox One Manager. To remove all registered consoles and custom groups, open the File menu, click Restore Defaults, and then click Remove All Consoles and Groups.
Developer Home on the Console (Preview)
Developer Home on the Console (Dev Home) now includes the following features:
- New screenshot and video capture tool
- New Xbox Live service status indicator
- Ability to specify ports and URLs to exempt from network simulations
- Usability improvements in response to customer feedback
Simulations of the seventh core are now available using xbStress
Titles that take advantage of the seventh processing core can now use Stress (xbstress.exe) to simulate the loads that the system places on that core. These simulations will help you determine the amount of work that you can safely schedule on the seventh core without impacting the performance of your title.
Updated version of the Make Package (makepkg.exe) tool
The August 2015 Xbox One XDK and the August 2015 Tools XDK include a new version of the Make Package (makepkg.exe) tool. This new version runs in user mode (a command prompt with administrator privileges is no longer required), does not require installation of a kernel-mode driver, and removes compatibility problems with other software that interacts with the Windows file-system configuration of your computer (such as search indexing software and antivirus software).
In addition, the new version of makepkg.exe contains the following improvements:
- Uses file system caching more effectively, resulting in faster packaging and encryption.
- Allows you to create multiple packages in parallel on the same computer.
- Allows you to write your packages to fileshares, use the subst command, and use symbolic links.
- Reduces the minimum required overhead for content updates. The new minimum overhead is about four megabytes.
- Supports all NTFS-addressable file systems, including striped RAIDs of SSDs, custom and complex disk arrangements, and so on.
- Removes the new drive letter notification when creating a package.
Graphics
Direct3D 12.x improvements
The following improvements and optimizations have been made to Direct3D 12.x in the Xbox One XDK:
- Execute Indirect is now available as a preview release. Note that resource barrier transitions do not resolve hazards correctly in the current release.
- Texture Border color is now supported.
- Async compute validation has been added.
- Resource barrier begin-end validation has been improved.
- CopyResource and CopyTextureRegion methods have been optimized.
- The fence comparison function for graphics and compute queues now uses “greater than or equal to” comparison. The new 64-bit DMA fence wait is in use for D3D12.x fences only.
- The new DXGI_FORMAT_R10G10B10_SNORM_A2_UNORM DXGI format can be used for vertex input layouts.
Direct3D 11.x improvements
The following improvements and optimizations have been made to Direct3D 11.x in the Xbox One XDK:
- The D3D11DmaEngineContextX::InsertWaitOnPresent and D3D11ComputeContextX::InsertWaitOnPresent methods have been added.
Shader compiler improvements
The following updates have been made to the shader compiler:
- The new __XBOX_RA_PRIORITY_SIZE_GLOBAL flag enables new priority logic for register allocation, which can reduce register usage in some cases. This flag is independent of all other register allocation controls.
- The new __XBOX_HIGH_LATENCY_VMEM flag informs the shader compiler’s static performance estimator that VMEM has high latency. This can improve the performance of generated code for shaders that execute with a large amount of memory latency.
- The following new wave intrinsics perform operations on the input value from all live threads in a wave:
uint<> __XB_WaveOR(in uint<> x); float<> __XB_WaveMin_F32(in float<> x); float<> __XB_WaveMax_F32(in float<> x); uint<> __XB_WaveMin_U32(in uint<> x); uint<> __XB_WaveMax_U32(in uint<> x); int<> __XB_WaveMin_I32(in int<> x); int<> __XB_WaveMax_I32(in int<> x); uint<> __XB_WaveAND(in uint<> x); float<> __XB_WaveAdd_F32(in float<> x); - The following new bit count intrinsics correspond to native GPU scalar instructions:
uint<1> __XB_S_BCNT0_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_BCNT0_I32_B32; uint<1> __XB_S_BCNT0_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_BCNT0_I32_B64; uint<1> __XB_S_BCNT1_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_BCNT1_I32_B32; uint<1> __XB_S_BCNT1_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_BCNT1_I32_B64; uint<1> __XB_S_BREV_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_BREV_B32; uint<1> __XB_S_BREV_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_BREV_B64; uint<1> __XB_S_BSET0_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_BITSET0_B32; uint<1> __XB_S_BSET0_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_BITSET0_B64; uint<1> __XB_S_BSET1_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_BITSET1_B32; uint<1> __XB_S_BSET1_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_BITSET1_B64; uint<1> __XB_S_FF0_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_FF0_I32_B32; uint<1> __XB_S_FF0_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_FF0_I32_B64; uint<1> __XB_S_FF1_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_FF1_I32_B32; uint<1> __XB_S_FF1_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_FF1_I32_B64; uint<1> __XB_S_FFO_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_FLBIT_I32_B32; uint<1> __XB_S_FFO_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_FLBIT_I32_B64; uint<1> __XB_S_FOSB_U32(in uint<1> x); // S_FLBIT_I32; uint<1> __XB_S_FOSB_U64(in uint<2> x); // S_FLBIT_I32_I64; -
The new uint __XB_MBCNT64(uint2 mask) intrinsic returns the count of all nonzero bits below the current lane index in the value of the mask parameter. This intrinsic uses the logic in the following code example.
C++
uint laneID = __XB_GetLaneID(); uint2 laneMask; laneMask.x = laneID >= 32 ? ~0 : ((1 << laneID) - 1); laneMask.y = laneID < 32 ? 0 : ((1 << (laneID - 32)) - 1); uint mbcnt = countbits(mask.x & laneMask.x) + countbits(mask.y & laneMask.y); - The meaning of the __XB_GetBarycentricCoord* intrinsic (linear/noperspective) has been reversed to follow HLSL naming conventions.
- Throughput for the generation of debug info has been improved.
XHIT
The Xbox Hang Investigation Tool (XHIT) now dumps shader disassembly.
Updates to graphics samples
The following graphics samples have been updated on the Samples page of the Xbox Game Developer (XGD) site:
- The Dynamic ESRAM Layout Sample 2 - MSAA sample now reuses ESRAM within a frame to demonstrate how to use the XGMemoryLayout::RelinquishMapping method.
- The new ExecuteIndirect sample demonstrates how to use D3D12-style indirect draws.
PIX
Vertex, pixel, and compute shader debugging (Preview)
The August 2015 version of PIX introduces debugging for vertex shaders, pixel shaders, and compute shaders. PIX must be able to locate the PDBs for these shaders to debug them; the HLSL Symbols sample on XGD demonstrates how to save PDBs to disk and make them available to PIX.
Hardware Instruction Profiling capture (Preview)
The new Hardware Instruction Profiling capture type leverages AMD’s Instruction-Based Sampling (IBS) profiler technology to display performance counter information for each assembly instruction. Unlike the Performance Monitoring Counters (PMCs) displayed in PIX, IBS reports counters with no drift—counter values can now be attributed to the exact instruction that caused the event to occur.
Simplified editing of the user interface layout
Creating and editing user interface layouts in PIX has been simplified. The view editor has been replaced with drag-and-drop editing similar to layout management in Microsoft Visual Studio.
Summary tabs for Memory, Callgraph, and Function Summary captures
Memory and CPU captures now contain a Summary tab that allows you to quickly identify the top performance issues in your title. The Summary tab for Function Summary and Callgraph captures lists the five functions that took the most time to execute. The Callgraph capture summary also displays the most expensive call path. Memory capture summaries provide memory allocation statistics for calls to the VirtualAlloc and HeapAlloc functions.
Performance and usability improvements to Instruction Trace captures
Instruction Trace captures now load much faster. These captures now also have a much more responsive user interface and the ability to control the number of items identified in the memory cache statistics on the Summary tab.
Improved integration between your title and Memory captures
The new PIXRecordMemoryAllocationEvent and PIXRecordMemoryFreeEvent functions allow you to report memory allocations and frees performed by custom routines in your title. All allocations and frees reported from your title are now included in memory captures taken from PIX, which gives you a clearer picture of how your title uses memory.
Async compute and DMA commands are now captured by default during GPU captures
Async compute and direct memory access (DMA) commands are now captured by default during GPU captures (both in PIX and programmatically). You can disable capture of async compute or DMA commands in the PIX Settings menu. You can also programmatically disable capture of commands by passing the D3D11X_PIX_CAPTURE_ASYNC_COMPUTE_AS_CPU or D3D11X_PIX_CAPTURE_DMA_AS_CPU flag to the PIXGpuCaptureNextFrame or PIXGpuBeginCapture method. During playback, the effects of disabled commands will be emulated by CPU memory modification.
System
Ability to reposition toast notifications
You can use the new ISystemUIStatics8::SetNotificationPositionHint method to provide a hint for where the GameOS should position toast notifications such as game invites and achievements. If the hint location currently contains system UI elements, the notification will be positioned in the default location, which is BottomCenter (the bottom of the screen, in the center). You should not provide a hint for the upper-left corner, as that is the location that will be used by the Cortana UI.