At GDC 2025, Microsoft unveiled version 1.2 of DirectX Raytracing (DXR), which promises a major leap in game performance and visual quality, pepelac.news reported. The update will benefit Microsoft’s partners — including NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm — who use its tools to integrate the latest technologies into their hardware and games.
DXR 1.2 extends DirectX 12 and introduces two key innovations that significantly boost GPU efficiency:
Opacity Micromaps (OMM) — optimizes alpha-tested geometry, improving path tracing performance by up to 2.3x.
Shader Execution Reordering (SER) — improves shader workload handling, doubling rendering speed.
These enhancements not only increase performance and frame rates but also make ray tracing more accessible by reducing dependence on high-end GPUs. According to Microsoft, NVIDIA already supports these technologies in drivers for RTX 20xx GPUs, and the company is working with AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm to ensure widespread adoption.
Additionally, Microsoft announced new tools for PIX — the debugging and performance tuning tool for DirectX 12 developers. A major update is planned for April 2025, including a preview of a new API that allows programmatic access to PIX features and data using C++, C#, and Python, along with an improved user interface.
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