Wine Begins Work On Direct3D Shader Compiler

It's time for another development snapshot of Wine, but this bi-weekly release does carry several features worth noting.

Straight up from the WineHQ.org data for this latest Wine 1.5.6 release:

- Automatic installation of the Mono add-on package.
- Control panel applet for joysticks.
- Device bitmap rendering now done through the DIB engine.
- Support for video rendering through DirectX (VMR-9).
- First steps towards a D3D shader compiler.
- Build fixes for DragonFly BSD.
- Various bug fixes.

Two weeks ago with Wine 1.5.5 support was added for installing Mono as an add-on package to Wine while with this latest update it can now be automatically installed.

Of interest is also the support for video rendering through DirectX. This video-through-DirectX is done via VMR-9, which as implied by its name, is a DirectX 9 feature. VMR-9, short for Video Mixing Renderer Filter 9, uses Direct3D 9 (not DirectDraw) and allows for videos to be manipulated using Direct3D pixel shaders.

Microsoft describes the VMR-9 video rendering as "In DirectX 9, the Video Mixing Renderer 9 (VMR-9) filter offers advanced video rendering capabilities on all platforms supported by DirectX. It is fully integrated with DirectX 9 3D capabilities. For example, that you can easily add video to games and other 3D environments or transform video images using the Direct3D pixel shaders and other effects."

Another interesting feature of Wine 1.5.6 is the start of a Direct3D shader compiler ("d3dcompiler"), but it doesn't appear to be ready for any real-world use at this time.

Seeing device bitmap rendering through the DIB engine is another nice addition to make this an all-around nice release.

Benchmarks of Wine continue to happen on OpenBenchmarking.org.