As I prefer to camp in the managed world I couldn’t resist to download the new XNA beta. I must confess that I was less interested in the Game Studio. I was locking for what Microsoft had done with MDX 2. The first impression wasn’t that bad as it looks very similar to what we have seen in MDX 1 and 2. Even if there are some leftovers the fixed function are gone as announced. Some classes are renamed but that’s fine. I like the step that gives us properties for the old descriptions structures. The new effect framework looks very similar what I am already have seen for Direct3D 10. Good work guys.

But with light comes shadows. I really don’t like that the have cut the possibility to lock and unlock resources. This makes dynamic resources less effective. Remove most of Direct3DX doesn’t make me happy too. This reduces the use of the XNA framework to write tools.

As this is only the first impression on a first beta I am still undecided how useful the final version would be for me. If I will not be happy at the end I still could use MDX 1 or write my own wrapper.