Microsoft video hints at games to be ported to DX12

By Sean Sinha

Ashes of the Singularity

DirectX 12 is here, with several developers working on porting existing titles over to the Microsoft API. Just Cause 3 has been confirmed as getting some DirectX 12 treatment, along with several other games. To be honest, the video Microsoft has provided isn’t really telling and doesn’t do a great job of explaining what makes DirectX 12 such an important API. In fact, we noted that some of the effects teased in the video are actually capable of being run under DirectX 11, though perhaps Microsoft is trying to tout that these features can run with less GPU overhead in DirectX 12? Also, we noted at around 40 seconds of the video, the framerate in Deus Ex appears to be lagging, so we’re surprised Microsoft would use this footage. Either way, this is just a teaser video of some Direct X 11 titles that have been upgraded with DirectX 12 features. The true power of DirectX 12 will be realized when games are fully designed around the API, rather than having features tacked on.

Legit Reviews recently took a look at the latest version of the DirectX 12 title Ashes of Singularity and put the game through benchmarking rounds on various graphics cards. The latest version of Ashes of Singularity is using an actual game engine based on DirectX 12, so it is a more viable benchmark than the previous version, which was more of a canned tech demo than an actual game. The current Ashes of Singularity benchmark does support mixed-GPU’s, a capability of DirectX 12, meaning cards from NVidia and AMD can be run simultaneously and provide performance benefit.

Take a look at the video below. Do the visual upgrades and promises of DirectX 12 make you want to go back and play these games over again? Is DirectX 12 the true evolutionary API that we need to drive PC gaming into the future? That all remains to be seen, but it’s definitely an exciting time for PC gamers, with future technologies such as VR finally here, along with low level APIs that can truly take advantage of current and future hardware.