1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,920 Typically, when we get excited about improvements to gaming performance, it's because of some 2 00:00:04,920 --> 00:00:09,480 new piece of hardware like a high refresh rate monitor or a graphics card that's beefier 3 00:00:09,480 --> 00:00:16,800 than a porterhouse steak. But Microsoft has come out with a new piece of software that looks like it should give 4 00:00:16,800 --> 00:00:21,080 your visuals a significant boost in terms of both quality and performance. 5 00:00:21,080 --> 00:00:27,780 It's called DirectX 12 Ultimate, and despite the tacky gamer sounding name, it features 6 00:00:27,780 --> 00:00:31,220 technical optimizations that should really make a difference. 7 00:00:31,220 --> 00:00:34,420 The first big change is about ray tracing. 8 00:00:34,420 --> 00:00:38,900 You can learn more about ray tracing in general in this video, but in a nutshell, it's a 9 00:00:38,900 --> 00:00:44,540 technique in which your GPU can track where light rays are going in a scene to give much 10 00:00:44,540 --> 00:00:47,700 more realistic light and shadow effects than you'd otherwise get. 11 00:00:47,700 --> 00:00:53,460 Reflections look amazing. Ray tracing support first became widespread on consumer graphics cards with NVIDIA's 12 00:00:53,460 --> 00:00:56,980 release of their high-end RTX 2000 series. 13 00:00:56,980 --> 00:01:02,780 But DirectX 12 Ultimate will not only support ray tracing on both NVIDIA and AMD cards, 14 00:01:02,780 --> 00:01:07,300 but it should lighten the load on your system to make the technology more accessible to 15 00:01:07,300 --> 00:01:11,300 all. Now, developers are going to have more control over the process instead of just letting the 16 00:01:11,300 --> 00:01:16,820 system decide how to schedule ray tracing through a process called inline ray tracing. 17 00:01:16,820 --> 00:01:21,180 Essentially, this makes the processing of simpler lighting effects more efficient, since 18 00:01:21,260 --> 00:01:25,980 the developer is telling the GPU exactly when to trace a certain effect instead of forcing 19 00:01:25,980 --> 00:01:29,620 the GPU to spend processing resources trying to decide on its own. 20 00:01:29,620 --> 00:01:33,460 The DX12 Ultimate API also eases the load on your CPU. 21 00:01:33,460 --> 00:01:37,940 As originally, the shaders on your GPU had to talk to the CPU to start ray tracing a 22 00:01:37,940 --> 00:01:44,620 scene. Now, your GPU can just do this on its own, allowing for faster processing overall, hopefully 23 00:01:44,620 --> 00:01:50,980 leading to ray tracing support in more games with lower hardware requirements for an eye-pleasing 24 00:01:51,780 --> 00:01:56,780 experience. Moving on, mesh shading should also prevent your GPU from rendering parts of the scene 25 00:01:56,780 --> 00:02:02,860 that you'll never even see. Suppose you're playing a high-end AAA title with thousands of detailed objects in each 26 00:02:02,860 --> 00:02:08,900 scene. That's a lot for your GPU to handle, as it might have to draw trillions of little triangles 27 00:02:08,900 --> 00:02:14,340 every frame in extreme cases. But your eye can only detect so much detail, right? 28 00:02:14,340 --> 00:02:17,380 Imagine you're looking at a faraway mountain, for example. 29 00:02:17,380 --> 00:02:20,900 You're not going to be able to make out every little crag in rock formation. 30 00:02:20,900 --> 00:02:25,220 And mesh shading takes this idea and applies it to computer graphics. 31 00:02:25,220 --> 00:02:29,660 Specialized shaders first figure out which objects even need to be rendered at all, then 32 00:02:29,660 --> 00:02:34,500 every object that makes the cut is assigned a certain level of detail. 33 00:02:34,500 --> 00:02:39,420 Close by objects are rendered at high detail levels, with more triangles, with objects 34 00:02:39,420 --> 00:02:43,700 that are farther away getting lower levels of detail and fewer triangles. 35 00:02:43,700 --> 00:02:49,020 Even several orders of magnitude fewer, depending on how far away it is, with the level of detail 36 00:02:49,020 --> 00:02:53,780 getting adjusted dynamically as objects move closer or farther away. 37 00:02:53,780 --> 00:02:57,580 Although assigning objects different levels of detail is a technique that's been around 38 00:02:57,580 --> 00:03:03,060 for a while, mesh shading allows your GPU to process triangles in chunks instead of 39 00:03:03,060 --> 00:03:08,140 individually, allowing level of detail computations to happen far more quickly. 40 00:03:08,140 --> 00:03:17,620 Next up, let's talk about sampler feedback. This is a method that allows more static parts of an image to be shaded from scratch less frequently, 41 00:03:17,620 --> 00:03:22,100 meaning that your GPU will take shading data from previous frames and apply it to subsequent 42 00:03:22,100 --> 00:03:25,140 frames without having to reprocess everything. 43 00:03:25,140 --> 00:03:30,380 What a waste of work. So instead of having to do tons of work on every object, every frame, an object might 44 00:03:30,380 --> 00:03:35,500 only be reshaded every second, third, or even tenth frame, depending on the environment. 45 00:03:35,500 --> 00:03:40,860 A related feature called variable rate shading only applies detailed shading to parts of 46 00:03:40,860 --> 00:03:45,340 the screen that you're actively looking at with your eyes, as your eyes peripheral vision 47 00:03:45,340 --> 00:03:48,660 starts to blur quickly from the center of your field of view, and you can learn much 48 00:03:48,660 --> 00:03:52,940 more about variable rate shading in our dedicated video right up here. 49 00:03:52,940 --> 00:03:57,780 So all this means that DirectX12 Ultimate is primarily concerned with stopping your 50 00:03:57,780 --> 00:04:03,020 GPU from wasting energy rendering crap that you simply won't see, freeing up computational 51 00:04:03,020 --> 00:04:07,060 power that could be used to create more realistic game worlds. 52 00:04:07,060 --> 00:04:11,260 And not only will we see it on PC, but it will be supported on the Xbox Series X too. 53 00:04:11,260 --> 00:04:15,660 So hopefully we'll see developers leverage it in lots of upcoming titles. 54 00:04:15,660 --> 00:04:19,700 After all, why would you want to make your GPU do unnecessary work like some kind of 55 00:04:19,700 --> 00:04:23,100 power hungry boss? 56 00:04:23,100 --> 00:04:28,500 I know how that is. So thanks for watching guys. If you like this video, give us a thumbs up, hit subscribe, and be sure to leave a message 57 00:04:28,500 --> 00:04:33,020 in the comments section with your suggestion for topics that we should cover in the future.