What are pixel shaders?

Pixel shaders are advanced visual effects that require special hardware to run. There have been several updates to pixel shaders since their introduction in 2000, and the specific version your computer supports depends on the hardware.

How do I check my pixel shader version?

Open Construct and create a new DirectX 9 game. Under Application Properties, find the Pixel shaders heading. Shader version gives your computer's maximum supported pixel shader version.

What versions are there?

Pixel shader 1.0 was introduced with DirectX 8.0 in late 2000, so they have been around for a while. Every version is backwards compatible with the previous, so if your computer supports Pixel Shader (PS) version 2, it also supports 1.0, 1.1, 1.4 and so on. Listed are the versions supported by Construct and the first graphics hardware that supported it. Source: Pixel Shader Wikipedia article

Pixel shader	Introduced	Supporting graphics hardware
1.0, 1.1	2000	GeForce 3 Series
1.4	2001	Radeon 8500, GeForce FX series
2.0	2002	Radeon 9500, GeForce FX series, Intel GMA 900

There are more newer pixel shader versions, but Construct does not take advantage of these yet. Any decent modern graphics card will support PS 2.0, but cheaper or older hardware may not support PS 2.0 or even pixel shaders at all. In this case, you can still use PS 0.0 effects in Construct, since they do not require any pixel shader hardware.

Last revision 3rd December 2007