Compiling Ogre with DirectX 9ex

[Oogst]

To be able to run my game Proun in a dome/planetarium, I have been asked if I could provide a version of Proun that is compiled with DirectX 9ex. I had never heard of that before, but apparently DirectX 9ex is normal DirectX 9c, but with some extra features from Windows Vista/7. So everything should be compatible and this sounds like in theory I could just swap the DirectX version and then recompile Ogre and Proun and it works.

However, I have no idea whether it really is as simple as that. I couldn't even find a download for the DirectX 9ex SDK on MSDN. Proun uses Ogre version 1.7.0 and I compiled it with the August 2007 DirectX SDK.

So my questions:
-It it really as simple as just recompiling with different include directories, or do I need to do more than that?
-What exactly do I need to change to make Ogre compile with a different DirectX version?
-Where can I download the DirectX 9ex SDK?

[Mind Calamity]

Well according to the last post here the person says that DirectX 9ex is just DirectX 10 for Windows Vista, and also from what I understood DirectX 9ex is also known as DirectX 9l (which I don't think is true).

Direct3D 9Ex (known internally during Windows Vista development as 9.0L or 9.L): allows full access to the new capabilities of WDDM (if WDDM drivers are installed) while maintaining compatibility for existing Direct3D applications. The Windows Aero user interface relies on D3D 9Ex.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX

[Zonder]

You shouldn't need to recompile it was supposed to be compatible with the normal version. Can you not try it?

[Oogst]

Well, it is supposed to add some features to how the screen is output towards Windows, so shouldn't I at least link with a different lib?

[bstone]

No, DirectX is developed around the concept of COM interfaces. The only stuff you link to in related libs is basically identifiers of the DirectX interfaces. You should be fine without any changes and recompilation as long as DX9ex is backward compatible with DX9c.

[Oogst]

So does that mean I don't have to do anything at all? If I run Proun in Windows 7 it automatically uses DirectX 9ex, and if I run it in Windows XP, it automatically uses DirectX 9c?

[Zonder]

Yes that should be the case.

[Oogst]

Okay, I'll tell the planetarium guy to just try the current version on Windows Vista/7 then. It might be that he just asked me for it and hadn't tried yet whether it works. Thanks for the quick replies!

[Mind Calamity]

If for some reason they need some DirectX 10 feature, you can try compiling and using the D3D11 render system, that should be backwards-compatible with DrectX 10/DirectX 9 ex

[Wolfmanfx]

Hi,

First off there is a guy which already add d3d9ex support to ogre here is the repo -> https://bitbucket.org/JaredThirsk/ogre-d3d9ex/wiki/Home
but the port is not that clean (i mean its not in a state so it could be merged to the trunk).

Also you must make the impl dynamic -
Use Direct3DCreate9Ex on WinVista and later and use standard Direct3DCreate9 on winXP (there is an article in MSDN how todo this - its not hard)
Here the MSDN snippet:

Code: Select all

    HRESULT hr = S_OK;

    HMODULE hD3D = NULL;
    if (!m_pD3D)
    {
        hD3D = LoadLibrary(TEXT("d3d9.dll"));
        DIRECT3DCREATE9EXFUNCTION pfnCreate9Ex = (DIRECT3DCREATE9EXFUNCTION)GetProcAddress(hD3D, "Direct3DCreate9Ex");
        if (pfnCreate9Ex)
        {
            IFC((*pfnCreate9Ex)(D3D_SDK_VERSION, &m_pD3DEx));
            IFC(m_pD3DEx->QueryInterface(__uuidof(IDirect3D9), reinterpret_cast<void **>(&m_pD3D)));
        }
        else
        {
            m_pD3D = Direct3DCreate9(D3D_SDK_VERSION);
            if (!m_pD3D) 
            {
                IFC(E_FAIL);
            }
        }

        m_cAdapters = m_pD3D->GetAdapterCount();
    }

Cleanup:
    if (hD3D)
    {
        FreeLibrary(hD3D);
    }

    return hr;

D3DPOOL_MANAGED is only valid with IDirect3DDevice9 but not with IDirect3DDevice9Ex. (So this also something the guy just changed)

But the main difference between the ordinary device and the ex device is the device lost behaviour. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx)

Devices are now only lost under two circumstances; when the hardware is reset because it is hanging, and when the device driver is stopped. When hardware hangs, the device can be reset by calling ResetEx. If hardware hangs, texture memory is lost.

So this means when the hardware hangs we just need to recreate the textures on the device but not the hardwarebuffers / shaders and the other stuff.

hope it helps

[Oogst]

I got it to work, but only in windowed mode. However, the folks who need this are only going to run windowed anyway, so that is fine. They also sent me a little guideline and following that was enough to get it to work:

The initialization in D3D9 is done using the code:

IDirect3D9 *d3d9 = NULL;
IDirect3DDevice9 *d3d9Device = NULL;
HRESULT res = S_OK;
.
.
Direct3DCreate9(D3D_SDK_VERSION);
.
.
res = d3d9->CreateDevice(.........,&d3d9Device);

Please change it to:

IDirect3D9Ex *d3d9Ex = NULL;
IDirect3DDevice9Ex *d3d9DeviceEx = NULL;
HRESULT res = S_OK;

res = Direct3DCreate9Ex(D3D_SDK_VERSION,&d3d9Ex);
.
.
res = d3d9Ex->CreateDeviceEx(........,&d3d9DeviceEx);

Last step: Wherever the "flag" D#DPOOL_MANAGED exists replace it by D3DPOOL_DEFAULT

In CreateDeviceEx, there are other flags that if you need some help just let us know, but this last one is the important one.

There was one function that required a D3DDISPLAYMODEEX and I couldn't get that to work correctly for fullscreen, but in windowed mode it should be NULL, so just using NULL there worked fine.