Microsoft and Nvidia have officially launched DirectX 12, which should allow gamers to enjoy the visuals in various titles like never before. It doesn't affect the graphics programming architecture that much, but it does unify some existing interfaces into one update.
DirectX 12 brings mesh shaders, which allows developers to have more control over GPU acceleration in terms of surface complexity for better performance; variable-rate shading to concentrate system resources to where they're more visually important, and sampler feedback, which is an essential part of the Xbox SSD support. The update also brings Ray tracing (DXR 1.1) to the table for easier to create and realistic illumination, shadows, and reflections.
Simply put, DirectX 12 creates a single programming interface across Windows 10 and the Xbox Series X console, which scheduled for release before the year 2020 ends. It makes PC graphics-card driver support faster, cross-platform game design simpler, and perhaps the most important thing of all is that it would make games more realistic without compromising performance.
It's worth noting that DirectX 12 was created in partnership not only with Nvidia but also with AMD. Nvidia's RTX-generation of graphic processors has been added with ray-tracing cores as well, and AMD added it in the RDNA 2-generation of its graphics chipsets, exactly the ones found in the upcoming PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has already released the specs of its next-gen console, publishing three articles about the Xbox Series X's reduced system latency and its controller. Most of the details came out in February, including the RDNA 2 graphics card and Zen 2 processor that can produce 12 teraflops.
"The Xbox Series X is going to be a beacon of technical innovation leadership for this console generation and will propagate the innovation throughout the DirectX ecosystem this year and into next year," said Sebastien Nussbaum, corporate vice president and senior fellow, semi-custom products and technologies at AMD.
Tech watchers are also talking about the Xbox Series X's SSD drive, which has the new Xbox Velocity Architecture. It should give developers the freedom to use up to 100GB of game assets instantaneously.
The Windows-maker showed off its new console in a video, featuring the loading times of the Xbox Series X versus older Xboxes. While the Xbox One X took 50 seconds for the game to load, the next-gen console carried it out in just 9 seconds.
Microsoft released a video showing off the difference in loading times between the new console and older Xboxes, using the game State of Decay 2. While the Xbox One X takes approximately 50 seconds to load the game, the Xbox Series X takes just 9 seconds.
