Speculation about the performance boost DirectX 12 will give games on Xbox One has been flying around for months. With the new programing interface modernizing the way games talk to the graphics chip, we can be almost certain we will see a boost in performance.
Microsoft have admitted that DirectX 11 did not work as intended, and users have often blamed DirectX 11 for poor performance with games on PC. These older APIs tend to impose more overhead than necessary on the graphics driver and CPU, and they’re not always terribly effective at keeping the GPU fed with work. However, DirectX 12 looks to change that. It will give developers more direct, lower-level access to the graphics processor, which will give new levels of performance in PC gaming. But what about Xbox One?
Well, it looks as though Lionhead Studio’s highly anticipated free-to-play RPG, Fable Legends, will be the first game to take advantage of the DirectX 12 for some of its features. While Fable Legends has been in development for a while, the final game will work with DirectX 11 as well as DirectX 12, and is surely developed with the older API and its requirements in mind. So how have Lionhead Studios managed to take advantage of DirectX 12? A statement from Microsoft on the matter said:
“Lionhead Studios has made several additions to the engine to implement advanced visual effects, and has made use of several new DirectX 12 features, such as Async Compute, manual Resource Barrier tracking, and explicit memory management to help the game achieve the best possible performance”.
While Fable Legends will not fully utilize the potential of DirectX 12, the memory management and resource tracking capabilities get at the heart of what this lower-level API is supposed to offer, and the game gets to manage video memory itself rather than relying on the GPU driver to shuffle resources around.
With Fable Legends taking advantage of DirectX 12, hopefully we will soon start to see other games that are currently in development, start to take full advantage of what DirectX 12 hast to offer!
Source: The Tech Report
Simon contributed 16 articles to ICXM in 2015, covering game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the Xbox One’s first full year of post-launch coverage, including the early days of Backwards Compatibility and Windows 10 gaming.