Windows 7 to get a few DirectX 11.1 options

Windows 7 receives some DirectX 11.1 features after all. On MSDN, Microsoft reveals that portions of the DirectX 11.1 runtime are being made available for Windows 7 SP1 via the Platform Update for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (KB 2670838) included with the Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview for Windows 7.

WDDM 1.2 remains a Windows 8 exclusive though, including the support for stereoscopic 3D without additional software.

Here is a quick summary of what KB 2670838 adds to Windows 7 Service Pack 1 / Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1: 

• ID3D11Device1, ID2D1Factory1, IDWriteFactory1, IDXGIFactory2, IWICImagingFactory2, ID3DUserDefinedAnnotation and related APIs are available. Methods that depend on WDDM 1.2 drivers or new Windows Store app APIs are not supported.
• Improved Direct3D 11 device interoperability via ID3DDeviceContextState, including the improved interop with Direct2D/DirectWrite
• D3D11_FEATURE_DATA_D3D9_OPTIONS feature detection

• In addition to the new Windows 8 WIC features, this update also fixes decoding of 96bpp floating-point TIFF images. 
  
  All other features of DirectX 11.1 are Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 only.