SharpDX and 3D model loading

I used to be a great fan of XNA Game Studio as a framework to try new graphics techniques, those that needed a bit more support in the runtime than FX Composer or other shader editors could offer. It hasn’t been updated for quite some time now though, and it is becoming irrelevant in an age of advanced graphics APIs and next gen platforms.

In the past few months I noticed a promising framework, SharpDX, which seems to offer a similar level of abstraction of Direct3D as XNA, ideal for graphics demos, but updated to support D3D11 as well. There is another similar framework, SlimDX, but if I understand correctly it is not being as actively developed.