GDC 2014 saw the reveal of DirectX 12 and judging from the panel by Microsoft, PC gaming and Xbox One gaming has just gotten closer with DX12.
Microsoft promised a "console-like API," the key feature of DirectX 12 is Direct3D 12, which Microsoft's Anuj Gosalia jokingly described as "more Direct than ever." As expected, it will run across "all Microsoft platforms," including "the lowest of smartphones, to game consoles, to the highest-end graphics cards."
Direct3D 12 will allow developers to "fully exploit the GPU." As a result of the update Xbox One games will see increased performance.
In a 3DMark demo, performance increased significantly simply by moving to D3D12 code, with no optimization. With D3D12, multi-threading is more scalable, with asynchronous command list submissions and "near-perfect scaling" across CPU cores. In the demo shown during the presentation, a jungle scene was rendered in 3D, with resources almost evenly divided across the four CPU cores.
Turn 10 Studios' Chris Tector took the stage to talk about porting Forza 5 to DX11, but there was too much CPU overhead. However, porting the game to D3D12 made it possible. It took a 4 man-month effort to port the rendering engine from Xbox One D3D11.X to D3D12.
The Forza 5 demo ran at 1080p and 60fps. "We're very excited to see console-style development on PC through D3D12, and we're especially excited to see these features come back to Xbox One," Tector said. Unfortunately, no PC port of Forza 5 was announced.
Nvidia also announced that DirectX 11 hardware will support DirectX 12:
"We've already delivered DirectX 12 drivers to developers already," Nvidia's Tony Tamasi announced at the panel.
Gosalia says that by release, about 50% of gaming PCs should be able to run DirectX 12, joking that "100 percent of Xbox Ones" will support the API. DX12 is targeting a Holiday 2015 release.
With DX12 it was made a point that porting games to PC is now easier, now should PC gamers expect more ports or PC versions of games in the future? Sound off in the comments below!
