A high-level list of changes to the SDK since the 8.4.4 release:

• PlayStation 5 support added. Supplemental documentation specific to this platform is available in our PS5 SDK zip file.
• All SDK client callbacks were consolidated into a single system (See Callback System). The previous collection of callbacks evolved over several years and were spread across the SDK inconsistently.
• In the wind source code, all “Games8” structures and functions were renamed to “Sdk” (for example, SConfigGames8 in Include/Core/WindStateMgr.h was renamed to SConfigSdk).
• Streamlined example shadow shader functions SampleShadowMap() and ShadowMapLookup() in Shaders/Include/shadows.h.
• Sample shader source file extensions changed from *.fx to *.hlsl.
• Added Visual Studio (VS) 2017 and 2019 projects and solutions for desktop platforms. Also added VS 2019 files for Xbox GDK (VS 2017 was already supported).
• Applications/ source folder renamed to ReferenceApplication/.
• CTextureRI::DefineTextureSet() and CTextureRI::DefinedRenderTargetSet() function parameters rearranged a bit.
• CForestRI now has an embedded EView enumeration to distinguish the five main views in a typical rendering pass: main, shadow_map0, shadow_map1, shadow_map2, and shadow_map3. This was needed to keep shader constant buffers from conflicting during render on some platforms.

• In Utility_UnpackNormalFibonacci() in the shader source, there were two code paths: table lookup and computational. The lookup path was removed as the computational path proved far faster on all platforms.
• CBlockPool sometimes caused memory alignment issues and outright crashes.
• CCore::CleanPlatformFilename() now reentrant.
• CCore::HasBillboard() would sometimes falsely report that a billboard set existed in an .stsdk file when it did not.
• In the CCell constructor in Include/Forest/Culling_inl.h, an allocation call was removed that was mistakenly left in the last release. This should result in overall faster culling performance on all platforms.