Since 1996 Microsoft's DirectX API has been a universal presence on gaming PCs, allowing games to access low-level hardware features directly. With the rise of Ray Tracing, this has become more important than ever, and a new update is set to improve Ray Tracing performance greatly.

Microsoft revealed at GDC that big updates are in the pipeline for its DirectX software suite. These updates will affect DirectX Raytracing 1.2, PIX, and Neural Rendering to improve performance, efficiency, and visual fidelity.

DirectX Raytracing 1.2 announced by Microsoft

To begin with, two new technologies are planned to be introduced to DirectX Raytracing 1.2. The first is called Opacity MicroMaps, or OMM, while the second is named SER, or Shader Execution Reordering.

OMM is designed to juggle opacity data in games that contain Path Tracing. By having software directly handle this data, performance can be improved by up to 2.3 times with no drop in visual quality.

SER makes games with Ray Tracing smoother by grouping the execution of certain shaders together in a logical order to improve efficiency. This reduces the load on the GPU which frees the GPU to do other tasks. This can make rendering performance up to two times faster.

The aim of DXR 1.2 is to deliver up to 40% performance improvements during complex scenes. A demonstration of the technology used Alan Wake 2 as a showcase to display detailed ray tracing visuals.

To go alongside these updates, day-one support will be added to the DirectX Debugger known as PIX. Microsoft said it was working closely with its hardware partners on its official Development blog.

“We're thrilled that our hardware partners are fully embracing these cutting-edge features. NVIDIA has committed driver support across GeForce RTX GPUs, and we're actively working with other hardware vendors, including AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm, to ensure widespread adoption.”

Microsoft

These technologies will be available in a preview Agility SDK sometime in late April 2025.

About the Author

Rebecca Hills-Duty

Writing and journalism experience at VRFocus, UploadVR, The Escapist, HTC, PC Gamer, Tech Radar+ and Dexerto. Can sometimes be found playing with retro tech.