All chapters in Introduction to DirectX 12

Why DX12 over DX11, what hardware and software you'll need, and an overview of what this series covers.

What to install before writing a line of DX12 code: Visual Studio, the right workloads, and the Windows SDK. CMake comes later — it's not needed until we refactor the project structure.

Before we touch DirectX, we need a window. Here's a tour of how Win32 desktop apps are structured — entry points, message loops, and the event-driven model.

Step-by-step: register a window class, create the window with CreateWindowEx, write a message loop, and end up with a clean blank surface ready for DirectX 12.

Turn the procedural Win32 window setup into a small C++ Window class, split the project into files, and prepare the codebase for DirectX 12.

Why DXGI exists, how it separates presentation from rendering, and how to create a factory, enumerate GPU adapters, and pick the right hardware device.

Create the D3D12 device from the DXGI adapter, enable the debug validation layer before device creation, pick a feature level, and wrap everything in a small class.

Understand why DX12 requires explicit command queues, create a direct queue for rendering, and learn why DXGI needs this queue before it can build a swap chain.

Create the DXGI swap chain using the factory, command queue, and window handle. Understand double buffering, the flip model, tearing support, and how to retrieve back buffer pointers.

Understand why DX12 requires descriptors, create an RTV descriptor heap for the swap chain back buffers, and learn how descriptor handle arithmetic works.

Understand the allocator and list model for recording GPU work, create one allocator per back buffer, create a reusable command list, and learn the reset pattern used every frame.

Write the first real render loop: transition the back buffer with a resource barrier, clear it to a colour, submit to the GPU, present, and wait with a fence. The window turns solid blue.