If you don’t have DirectX 11, it’s a good idea to get it. Under System Information, look at the DirectX version.

(Officially, the last version for Windows XP is DirectX 9.) If you’d like to check on that: If you run Windows Update regularly, you likely have DirectX 11 installed, as this is the most current version on Windows Vista and Windows 7. What version of DirectX do I have on my PC? So it’s important to know two things: whether your PC has the latest version, and whether your hardware can support the latest version - DirectX 11.1. Though originally designed for games, DirectX has now become important for users of other applications or Windows in general - especially Windows 8. DirectX scales the multimedia experience on a system based on its hardware. In plain language, DirectX allows any application to learn what your PC is capable of, and then adjusts the application’s settings to run best on that PC.

You may want to take a look at the DirectX Tool Kit tutorials.Under System Information, determine your DirectX version.ĭirectX is Microsoft’s set of APIs, or application programming interfaces, that handle multimedia on Microsoft PCs. For XInput, you can use the basic XInput 9.1.0 which is built-in to Windows 7. See Microsoft Docs.įor XAudio2 on Windows 7 SP1, use the XAudio2Redist instead of the legacy DirectX SDK. That said, if your learning materials still reference legacy stuff like D3DX11, you can install it but beware there are some special setup details. You do not need the legacy DirectX SDK at all. VS 2019 comes with the Windows 10 SDK which includes everything you need for basic Direct3D 11 system headers and libraries. Officially Windows 7 RTM is not supported. VS 2019 can support targeting Windows 7 Service Pack 1 for Win32 desktop development. For the details on handling DirectX 11.0, see this blog post. My Win32 templates assume you have DirectX 11.1 these days.

Most any Windows 7 system that's updated from Windows Update should have it. Basically this means you won't get D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_11_1. Windows 7 can support DirectX 11.1 'software features' but not 'hardware features' with KB2670838. I maintain a number of similar templates for UWP and Win32 for DirectX 11 & DirectX 12 on GitHub.

As noted by Simon in the comments, the 'DirectX' templates built-in to VS 2019 are for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps only which requires Windows 10.

Directx 11 support