Ray tracing, variable shading, mesh shadows, and sample feedback
In a sustained conference call with NVIDIA staff we were introduced to what will be the new protocol of DirectX 12 Ultimate.
What is Direct XII?
A series of libraries that Microsoft debuted with Windows 10 in order to simplify multimedia, video and programming tasks. Basically it is a protocol that improves the understanding of all the hardware focused on video games.
What's new in Direct XII Ultimate?
- Drivers that will be standard PC and console
- Reflections, lighting effects and shadow enhancements
- Better performance in smart shading
- More objects detailed by the GPU bandwidth control.
- Improved texture loading performance
What does all this imply?
Initially, that more than 30 games improved considerably visually in aspects such as ray tracing, shadow effects and an optimization in the loading of textures, however, to increase the performance of GeForce RTX cards.
Let's not forget that ray tracing has been included in the main graphics engines such as Vulkan, Unreal, Unity and Frosbite, so these improvements will undoubtedly be reflected in games that decide to integrate this technology into their PC versions.
DX12 Ultimate will be available in Windows 10 update 20H1 scheduled for April 2020 and developers will have access today in Windows Insider, meanwhile NVIDIA has already made beta drivers available with support for all resources. When this is available to the general public, there will be one in game ready with full support.
It is noteworthy that all these resources are available under the Turing architecture found within the RTX graphics cards.
PC Gamers, let's put those GPUs to work.
Join us and our friends at @OfficialPCMR in supporting folding @ home and donating unused GPU computing power to fight against COVID-19!
Learn more → https://t.co/EQE4u7xTZT pic.twitter.com/uO0ZCq8PEv
– NVIDIA GeForce (@NVIDIAGeForce) March 13, 2020
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