A significant effort went into improving MonoGame and implementing missing features, such as occlusion queries, mipmap generation, hardware instancing (GraphicsDevice.DrawInstancedPrimitives), multiple vertex streams (GraphicsDevice.SetVertexBuffers). These changes plus other fixes have been accepted and merged by the MonoGame team. As a result, lens flares, hardware instancing and morph target animations are now supported in MonoGame apps.

(Note: The change log below only lists changes made by the DigitalRune team. All changes made in the official MonoGame repository have also been merged into the DigitalRune repository. For a complete list of changes, please check the official MonoGame project.)

Apps for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) may now run in HiDef profile and make use of advanced graphics. The ID WindowsUniversal has been added to the PlatformID enumeration.

Microsoft released the WPF DirectX Extensions [1][2] to host DirectX 10 and 11 content in WPF applications. Users may wonder how this relates to the WPF interop provided by DigitalRune Graphics.

WPF uses Direct3D 9Ex for rendering. Using the built-in D3DImage [3] source it is possible to display Direct3D 9Ex surfaces directly in WPF. However, hosting Direct3D 11 in WPF is a different matter. While it is possible to share surfaces (render targets) between Direct3D 9Ex and Direct3D 11, accessing shared surfaces is not automatically synchronized. This causes problems when WPF tries to display a surface, while Direct3D 11 is still busy rendering the content.

The solution is to manually synchronize access to surfaces shared between WPF (Direct3D 9Ex) and Direct3D 11. One possible implementation is Microsoft’s surface queue library [4][5]. Unfortunately, all links leading to the official Microsoft sample have been broken for some time (years?) now. Luckily, Microsoft has dug up the old code and released it in the form of the WPF DirectX Extensions.

DigitalRune Graphics does not use the WPF DirectX Extensions for interop. The WPF DirectX Extensions (Microsoft.Wpf.Interop.DirectX.dll) provide a native (C++) and, in our opinion, over-engineered solution. Further, the synchronization in the WPF DirectX Extensions is achieved by blocking the CPU. This greatly reduces performance.

DigitalRune Graphics uses a lightweight, fully managed (SharpDX) implementation. The synchronization is part of the D3DImagePresentationTarget. The D3DImagePresentationTarget allows different modes of synchronization. By default, it tries to block the CPU as little as possible to maintain optimal performance.

For further information, see: D3DImagePresentationTarget

(Note that by settings D3DImagePresentationTarget.IsSynchronized = true, the D3DImagePresentationTarget behaves the same as the WPF DirectX Extensions.)

New in this release is the flag D3DImagePresentationTargetIsFrameReady. This flag can be polled to check whether Direct3D 11 has finished rendering the content.

Furthermore, the D3DImagePresentationTarget now adapts to the Windows DPI settings. When running with high-DPI settings, the D3DImagePresentationTarget will render the Direct3D 11 content in the native resolution for optimal quality.

References:

• [1] Microsoft.Wpf.Interop.DirectX x86 (NuGet), https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Wpf.Interop.DirectX-x86/, https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Wpf.Interop.DirectX-x64/
• [2] WPF DirectX Extensions (GitHub), https://github.com/Microsoft/WPFDXInterop
• [3] WPF D3DImage (MSDN), https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.interop.d3dimage.aspx
• [4] Surface Sharing Between Windows Graphics APIs (MSDN), https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee913554.aspx
• [5] Sample for Direct3D 9Ex and DXGI-based API interoperability on MSDN Code Gallery, http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/D3D9ExDXGISharedSurf (broken)

One addition may come in handy for importing models with cyclic (looping) animations, such as walk cycles. It is now possible to specify AddLoopFrame="True" in the model descriptions (.DRMDL file). This new attribute enables automatic insertion of "loop frames" for animation.

The “loop frame” is the last key frame of a cyclic animation. The last key frame needs to match the first key frame of the animation. Ideally, the loop frame should be exported from the 3D modeling/animation tool. However, some exporters skip the loop frame. Or, in some cases the last key frame does not exactly match the first key frame.

The new setting AddLoopFrame="True" automatically adds a loop frame at the end of the duration and enables smooth transitions.

The setters for FormsPresentationTargetGraphicsService, ElementPresentationTargetGraphicsService, and D3DImagePresentationTargetGraphicsService have been made private. This was an oversight in the original API - the properties were never meant to be set by the user.

This change may cause an error in Windows Forms projects. The Windows Forms designer may try to set the property GraphicsService in the code behind file. If you run into this error, please modify the code behind file and remove the line which sets the property.

• NEW: New Platform ID for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) added. See PlatformIDWindowsUniversal.

• NEW: Property setter for Vector4FXYZ and Vector4DXYZ added.
• FIX: Result of GetAngle is NaN. Problem fixed for Vector2F, Vector3F, Vector2D, Vector3D, QuaternionF, and QuaternionD.

• CHANGE: Improved height field contacts at height field borders.

• CHANGE: AnimationHelperCompress improved. Method now uses same implementation as SkeletonKeyFrameAnimationCompress.

• NEW: Support for hardware instancing in MonoGame.
• NEW: Support for morph target animation in MonoGame.
• NEW: Support for HiDef effects and renderers on Universal Windows Platform (UWP).
• NEW: Support for Windows DPI scaling in D3DImagePresentationTarget. The render target now automatically uses the native size in pixels for optimal resolution.
• NEW: Property D3DImagePresentationTargetIsFrameReady added, which can be polled after a new frame was rendered. The flag indicates whether Direct3D 11 has finished rendering the frame into the back buffer of the D3DImage.
• NEW: The MeshHelperMerge methods now supported on all platforms.
• NEW: Support for adding a "loop frame" to cyclic animations in content pipeline. See attribute "AddLoopFrame" in Model Description (*.drmdl File).
• CHANGE: Hide setter of the following properties: FormsPresentationTargetGraphicsService, ElementPresentationTargetGraphicsService, D3DImagePresentationTargetGraphicsService. These setters are not meant to be called by the user.
• CHANGE: Setting MipFilter = "NONE" in DirectX Effect files where possible. (Previously, MonoGame did not support NONE.)
• CHANGE: Function VSScreenSpaceDraw removed from Common.fxh. The function ScreenToProjection should be used instead.
• FIX: Possible divide-by-zero exception when processing normal textures with invalid values.
• FIX: SkyRenderer could perform unnecessary sun occlusion test. Sun occlusion queries are not started when a previous query is still in progress.
• FIX: CloudLayerNodeSunOcclusion is now independent of player camera and only depends on clouds. Previously the sun occlusion was 1 (fully occluded) when the camera was not looking at the sun.
• FIX: CloudLayerNode also tries to read occlusion query (in case the renderer is only called once and the sky is cached).
• FIX: MeshHelperMerge could create garbage when meshes with 32-bit indices were combined into one mesh which only needs 16-bit indices.
• FIX: TerrainHelperSmoothTexture must not change border samples. (Before this fix the border samples were changed and terrain tiles did not match anymore. This caused a problem in the collision detection, but not for graphics.)
• Minor other improvements.

• CHANGE: In MonoGame the MaxNumberOfPlayers now depends on the platform. Previously the property always returned 4.
• FIX: LayoutSerializer did not deserialize certain properties on iOS and UWP.

• NEW: CollisionFilterSample shows how to enable/disable collisions using filters.
• NEW: SpatialPartitionSample shows how to use spatial partitions (e.g. bounding volume trees).
• NEW: HealthBarSample shows how to position a UIControl relative to a 3D object to display a 2D health bar.
• NEW: ProjectedShadowSample shows how to create planar projected shadows using a custom scene node renderer.
• NEW: ProjectedShadowSample2 shows how to create planar projected shadows using a custom render pass, custom effect and custom effect parameter bindings.
• CHANGE: The Direct3D debug layer is now disabled by default to improve performance in DEBUG builds. See SampleGame.cs.
• CHANGE: Startup sample is now set in SampleGame.cs and not in SampleFramework.cs.
• CHANGE: Disable mipmaps in TerrainSample to improve performance. (Terrain mipmaps are only required for anisotropic filtering on AMD GPUs. Mipmap generation is unnecessarily expensive.)
• CHANGE: Use POSITION semantic instead of SV_Position for vertex shader input.
• Minor other improvements.

• NEW: OcclusionQuery implemented for DirectX.
• NEW: Mipmap generation for render targets is now implemented.
• NEW: GraphicsDevice.SetVertexBuffers implemented for DirectX.
• NEW: GraphicsDevice.DrawInstancedPrimitives implemented for DirectX.
• FIX: AccessViolationException in X3DAudio.Calculate.
• FIX: Do not build external references "Asset_0" if the asset is included directly in the content project and explicitly built as "Asset" (no suffix).
• Minor other improvements.