Direct3D 11 Resources - Practical Rendering and Computation with Direct3D 11 - page 41

However, you will notice three new resource types that are available in the unioned struc-
ture. Figure 2.5 shows this structure.
The new types of resources listed here are TextureCube, TextureCubeArray, and
BufferEx. A texture cube allows reinterpretation of a Texture2D Array resource to a cube
texture, which allows HLSL programs to use specialized intrinsic functions for sampling the
texture. This also holds true for a TextureCubeArray, which is basically an array of the same
type of cube resource interpretations. We will explore what this means in more detail later on
in the "Texture Resources" section, but it provides a good example of the ability of a resource
view to take a resource's data and provide a different "view" of it for a particular purpose.
The final new type of resource available for shader resource views is the Buf f erEx type.
This is essentially a structure that allows a buffer to be interpreted as a raw buffer. This gives
HLSL programs the freedom for structure interpretation within the shader program itself. This
will also be discussed in more detail in the "Buffer Resources" section of this chapter.
Unordered access view options. The final resource view type is the unordered ac-
cess view. Its description structure also follows the now standard format, as shown in
Figure 2.6.
Figure 2.6. The D3D11_UNORDERED_ACCESS_VIEW_DESC structure.