The answer is awesome: the software WARP device has become a full-fledged display driver. Of course the 3D device caps check is going to fail. My first thought was, OK, I'm running this in VirtualBox without proper video drivers. VideoDisplay/DX9: 3D device is lame - reason: raster caps check failed The other issue is more interesting, and has to do with this debug trace: Easily worked around, but strange nevertheless.

This is causing the current tip display code to fail to find a matching monitor. (Amusingly, over time many of the DirectX APIs seem to be faring worse than their base Win32 counterparts.) The reason is a bit strange, though: in Windows 7, DirectDrawEnumerateEx() returns an entries for the primary monitor with both NULL and non-NULL monitor handles, whereas in Windows 8 DP the callback is only getting called once with a NULL HMONITOR.

Not a big deal, since DirectDraw is basically neutered under WDDM anyway. One issue I have found is that the display code refuses to switch into DirectDraw mode. So far, so good, nothing catastrophic like the display panes totally breaking *cough*Vista*cough*. I've only had a couple of hours to dig into it, and so far, VirtualDub and Altirra run fine. I'll leave it at that since it's clearly unfinished and I'd like to talk about other things. I'll just start by saying, yeah, Metro gets in the way so far. I've managed to install the Windows 8 Developer Preview into a VirtualBox session, after spending a few hours in frustration trying to find a way around not having a dual layer DVD-R handy, and all of the suggested workarounds either requiring a large USB flash drive or not working on a UEFI boot machine.

¶Interesting DirectX changes in Windows 8 Developer Preview

Directx windows 8