To many out there it may seem like DirectX 12 is still a brand-new technology – and in some ways it still is – but in fact we’ve now been talking about the graphics API for the better part of half a decade. Microsoft first announced the then-next generation graphics API to much fanfare back at GDC 2014, with the initial iteration shipping as part of Windows 10 a year later. For a multitude of reasons DirectX 12 adoption is still in its early days – software dev cycles are long and OS adoption cycles are longer still – but with their low-level graphics API firmly in place, Microsoft’s DirectX teams are already hard at work on the next generation of graphics technology. And now, as we can finally reveal, the future of DirectX is going to include a significant focus on raytracing.
This morning at GDC 2018 as part of a coordinated release with some of their hardware and software partners, Microsoft is announcing a major new feature addition to the DirectX 12 graphics API: DirectX Raytracing. Exactly what the name says on the tin, DirectX Raytracing will provide a standard API for hardware and software accelerated ray tracing under DirectX, allowing developers to tap into the rendering model for newer and more accurate graphics and effects.
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