
Mesh Shaders will offer developers more programmability than the previous geometry pipeline. DX12 Ultimate support will make this tech more commonplace, making games perform faster as GPU power can be dialled up in important areas and down where it is of less noticeable.

Variable Rate Shading (VRS) has been in HEXUS news previously as PC graphics vendors sought to introduce this efficient tech to their users. These are the ability to prepare raytracing work on the GPU and then immediately spawn it, streaming engines can more efficiently load new raytracing shaders as needed, and inline raytracing is now available in any shader stage including compute shaders, pixel shaders etc.ĭevelopers will use both the new inline raytracing and the original dynamic-shader-based raytracing for different purposes - or can combine them within a single renderer. These are mentioned in the intro but you will find fuller summaries below.ĭirectX Raytracing 1.1 introduces three major capabilities taking it above and beyond the 1.0 release. Looking a bit deeper, there are four major innovations present in DX12 Ultimate, which will benefit the next-gen Xbox consoles and modern PCs.

In other words, rather than following independent cycles, Xbox Series X and modern PC titles will immediately benefit from graphical programming advances on either platform. "By unifying the graphics platform across PC and Xbox Series X, DX12 Ultimate serves as a force multiplier for the entire gaming ecosystem," it asserts. Importantly, DX12 Ultimate will not impact game compatibility with existing hardware, which will simply use a subset of available features as applicable.Ī virtuous circle will be the result of the introduction of DX12 Ultimate, opines Microsoft on the DirectX Developer Blog. In essence, DX12 Ultimate brings together all of DX12's upcoming features such as DirectX Raytracing and Variable Rate Shading, as well as adding new major features such as Mesh Shaders and Sampler Feedback.


The new DX12 Ultimate is the result of five years of continual investment in the DirectX 12 platform to keep Xbox consoles and Windows PCs at the cutting edge of gaming. Microsoft has announced DirectX 12 Ultimate, which it calls the next evolution of DirectX.
