LuminalShine 26.08.2

LuminalShine 26.08.2 is a stability-focused release for direct-to-encode streaming. It introduces a stricter ownership boundary between LuminalVGD's display surfaces and the hardware encoder, moves capture/encoding into an isolated worker process, and bundles the signed LuminalVGD v0.1.0-alpha.8 (driver version 0.1.0.24, protocol 0.10, Build 24).

The goal of this architecture is to prevent a stalled, replaced, or retired indirect-display swapchain from wedging LuminalShine's main process or the Windows display stack. Native D3D12 encoding remains available; this release does not replace D3D12 with a lower-fidelity capture path and does not inject hooks into games.

Highlights

• Isolated capture and encode worker: video capture and hardware encoding now run outside the main LuminalShine process. A capture/encoder failure can be detected and recovered without taking the control, audio, input, or session-management process down with it.
• LuminalVGD surfaces are decoupled from encoder lifetime: the worker copies each accepted VGD frame into a bounded pool of worker-owned surfaces, releases the VGD ring slot, and only then submits the worker-owned resource to NVENC, AMF, or QSV.
• Immutable Build 24 fence transport: direct VGD capture uses the protocol 0.10 fence-only contract. A ring generation is admitted only after stable metadata snapshots, and synchronization semantics are not downgraded inside the same generation.
• Deterministic failure handling: a broken or inconsistent ring generation is marked dead and rebuilt instead of being silently reused through a weaker synchronization path.
• Safer fallback boundary: WGC/DDA fallback is confined to the isolated worker. Fallback capture cannot retain or reinterpret a retired LuminalVGD surface.
• Native D3D12 retained: supported D3D12-to-NVENC operation remains available alongside D3D11 NVENC, AMD AMF, and Intel Quick Sync paths.
• Signed Build 24 driver included: the installer bundles the current stable LuminalVGD alpha.8 package and verifies its pinned SHA-256 during the release build.

Direct-to-encode reliability

The direct path now observes a strict resource-ownership sequence:

1. LuminalVGD publishes a completed frame and fence value through the protocol 0.10 ring.
2. The isolated worker waits for the advertised completion fence.
3. The frame is copied into one of four bounded worker-owned surfaces.
4. The LuminalVGD ring slot is released immediately after the copy completes.
5. The worker-owned surface is converted or encoded through the selected hardware backend.
6. If the ring generation changes, the previous generation is retired without allowing encoder work to retain its surfaces.

This prevents encoder back-pressure from extending the lifetime of IddCx-owned swapchain resources. It also removes the unsafe condition where NVENC could still reference a surface while Windows or LuminalVGD was deleting or reassigning the corresponding swapchain.

Worker recovery and admission controls

• Direct capture waits for two mutually consistent ring snapshots before admitting a new generation.
• Ring admission is bounded to six seconds so an unusable generation cannot block session startup indefinitely.
• Worker-owned frame storage is bounded to four surfaces, limiting queue growth and making overload behavior predictable.
• A failed worker can be terminated and recreated without restarting the main LuminalShine service.
• Capture fallback is selected inside the worker and does not weaken the active VGD generation's synchronization contract.

Display and client behavior

• Client-requested resolution, refresh rate, HDR, and chroma behavior remain controlled by the negotiated stream configuration.
• HEVC 4:4:4 HDR workflows remain supported where the client and encoder support them.
• Native frame-generation refresh handling remains available without requiring a global frame-generation override.
• LuminalShine does not hook a game's Present/Present1 path; D3D11 and D3D12 games continue to render through the Windows compositor and LuminalVGD display pipeline.

State and recovery hardening

This release includes the state-file and temporary-state handling improvements introduced during the 26.08 series. Session recovery tolerates interrupted temporary writes, avoids treating stale temporary files as authoritative state, and restores display topology through the normal recovery path.

Bundled LuminalVGD

• Release: LuminalVGD v0.1.0-alpha.8
• Driver file version: 0.1.0.24
• Protocol: 0.10
• Driver build: 24
• Package: LuminalVGD-v0.1.0-alpha.8-x64.zip
• Package SHA-256: 1cbe52890c732e5dfb6d2455d9035eb4c7881ab19dd49d89343b8b1fdbf807c2

The LuminalShine release workflow downloaded this exact package, checked the pinned digest, and validated its signatures before producing the installer.

Installation and upgrade

Use LuminalShine_x64-installer.exe for a normal installation or upgrade. The installer and bundled driver may require elevation. Reboot if Windows requests it after replacing the display driver; otherwise, restart LuminalShine before beginning a new test session.

The MSI upgrade-compatibility and invariant gates passed for this release. Existing LuminalShine installations using the same UpgradeCode are upgraded in place, while service identities, component GUIDs, custom-action contracts, and installer feature conditions remain protected by CI.

The portable ZIP is also provided for advanced testing. Driver installation and service integration still require the installer or equivalent elevated setup.

Validation performed by release CI

• Downloaded and checksum-verified LuminalVGD alpha.8 Build 24
• Validated bundled driver signatures
• Built LuminalShine with the UCRT64 Windows toolchain
• Signed application executables
• Built and signed the MSI and bootstrapper installer
• Verified Authenticode signatures on staged release artifacts
• Passed MSI upgrade-compatibility comparison
• Passed MSI invariant validation
• Passed Windows unit tests and configuration-consistency checks
• Produced installer, portable, and debug-information artifacts from merge commit b46405043aa5f6951083453c4123710266408c73

Release assets

• LuminalShine_x64-installer.exe — signed installer and recommended download
• LuminalShine_x64-portable.zip — portable application package
• LuminalShine_x64-debuginfo.7z — debugging symbols for crash and hang investigation

Notes and limitations

• Recovery isolation reduces the blast radius of capture/encoder failures; it cannot prevent an independent GPU driver or operating-system TDR.
• Hardware codec, 10-bit, HDR, and 4:4:4 availability still depend on the GPU, driver, client, and negotiated codec profile.
• Do not replace the bundled driver DLL or catalog independently. Windows driver package integrity and signing must remain intact.

Full changelog: 26.08.1...26.08.2