I usually avoid all the craziness of the control panel by just creating the device with the debug flag - then you have no question whether it is enabled or not.

I can’t use D3D11_CREATE_DEVICE_DEBUG without the Windows SDK 8 installed, something I fear doing considering apparently some things have to be done through Visual Studio 2012 (which I do not have).


L. Spiro

VS 2012 makes it easier to launch these applications, you can still just manually go into the SDK directory and launch the tool you need from there.

I can’t use D3D11_CREATE_DEVICE_DEBUG without the Windows SDK 8 installed, something I fear doing considering apparently some things have to be done through Visual Studio 2012 (which I do not have).


L. Spiro

I guess I'm going off topic here, but I exclusively use VS2012 Express for Windows Desktop at work for my visualization tools. Is there a substantive reason you don't want to upgrade? My applications are targeting Windows 7+, so if you are using D3D11 then that should be ok for you too.

When I made the switch off of the DXSDK, it was essentially to remove my D3DX dependencies and find an alternative way to load textures. If you are working in a cross platform engine, I would assume you have both of these topics covered already, so why not upgrade? Each version of 2012 provides performance and bug fixes for the toolset and libraries, so there is a reason to upgrade. Plus newer C++11/14 features are being added in each release which is also a nice bonus...

DXGI ERROR: IDXGISwapChain::Release: Swapchain Released while fullscreen. Switch it to the windowed state first. [ MISCELLANEOUS ERROR #66: ]
LSTest.exe ? 0x000007fefd4b940d ?????????????: 0x0000087A: 0x87a

I wasn't aware that the Pro version was free - do you have a link showing where that is stated? We have been using the express editions because of the licensing cost, but of course if the Pro SKU is available then I would upgrade to that. I would be really surprised if that isn't a time limited demo for free, otherwise why would they even have the Express SKU???

So now you have the root cause of the issue, right? So no further need for debugging there?

We have been using the express editions because of the licensing cost, but of course if the Pro SKU is available then I would upgrade to that.

Off topic - but apply to BizSpark and they'll give you free keys for every version of Visual Studio.

I downloaded it last night but have yet to install or convert my projects.

IIRC, VS2012 is the first version that gives you the option of not converting your projects (assuming you're using an older Visual Studio at the moment).
e.g. you can use a VS2010 project file, and then work on it in both VS2010 and VS2012 without having to convert it.

Do you really have to use VS2012 to use that debug flag though? Or can you use whatever IDE you want just as long as the platform SDK has been installed on your PC some time?

Off topic - but apply to BizSpark and they'll give you free keys for every version of Visual Studio.

I work at a company that has roughly 300,000 employees, so I'm pretty sure BizSpark is out of the question :) Thanks for the suggestion though!

Regarding the debug flag, I was not aware that there were any restrictions about which version of the SDK had to be installed. I added the debug flag in debug builds in one of the earliest versions of Hieroglyph 3, which was created when D3D11 was still a CTP...