Working with DirectX in Visual Studio 2015

C++ and DirectX are being promoted by Microsoft as the primary way to build high-performance games in Windows 10.

Tip

Developers looking for the spiritual (if not outright) successor to the popular XNA Framework are encouraged to check out MonoGame, an open source implementation of XNA at http://www.monogame.net/.

As a DirectX developer, you will be pleased to know that there is no longer a separate DirectX download required for Windows 10. The DirectX SDK is now incorporated into the Windows SDK, and the DirectX runtime is built into the Windows 10 operating system. For older versions of Windows, the current requirement to download a separate SDK and runtime remains in place.

Windows 10 includes two major versions of DirectX—DirectX 11.x representing the latest evolution of a higher-level API, and the new DirectX 12, which is a lower-level API providing much greater control in an effort to provide greater performance. When designing a project, you...