Microsoft Launches DirectX Raytracing 1.2: Major Performance Enhancements, Visual Upgrades, and Collaborations with NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel

Microsoft has recently unveiled the latest version of its DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2, which brings enhanced Neural Rendering capabilities compatible with NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD hardware.

DirectX Raytracing 1.2 & Neural Rendering: Innovations Unveiled at GDC

During the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Microsoft introduced significant advancements to its Windows software ecosystem, most notably through DirectX Raytracing 1.2 and other technological enhancements such as PIX and Neural Rendering. These innovations aim to elevate visual quality while boosting performance across the board.

DXR 1.2 features new technologies designed to optimize performance significantly. Key additions include:

Opacity Micromaps (OMM): This feature greatly optimizes alpha-tested geometry, resulting in performance improvements of up to 2.3 times in path-traced games. By intelligently managing opacity data, OMM minimizes shader invocations, enhancing overall rendering performance without compromising visual quality.
Shader Execution Reordering (SER): SER represents a significant advancement, enabling rendering performance enhancements of up to 2 times faster in specific scenarios. This technique organizes shader execution more intelligently to boost GPU efficiency, lower divergence, and enhance frame rates, creating smoother and more immersive gaming experiences.

NVIDIA has already integrated these cutting-edge features and is rolling out driver support across GeForce RTX GPUs. The company is also collaborating with AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm to promote broader adoption of these technologies.

Support for Cooperative Vectors and Neural Rendering Techniques

An exciting addition to Microsoft’s offerings includes the upcoming support for cooperative vectors, a feature set to be incorporated into Shader Model 6.9. This update enables developers to harness new hardware acceleration engines for vector and matrix operations, allowing for the direct integration of neural rendering techniques into the graphical pipeline.

All major manufacturers, including NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, are aligning with the advancements in cooperative vectors and neural rendering:

Neural Block Texture Compression: This technique significantly reduces memory usage while preserving high visual quality. Partners at Intel have reported up to a 10x increase in inference performance when leveraging cooperative vectors for advanced neural compression models.
Real-Time Path Tracing Enhancements: Immediate path tracing benefits are achievable through neural supersampling and denoising, combining these innovative techniques to deliver realistic visuals with optimal performance.
NVIDIA has announced its Neural Shading SDK, which will support DirectX and utilize cooperative vectors, giving developers the tools necessary to integrate neural rendering easily and enhance visual realism without a drop in performance.

Additionally, Microsoft has confirmed that DirectX Raytracing 1.2 will be supported from day one in their PIX debugger and profiling tools for Windows. This comprehensive toolset is set to debut within the preview Agility SDK in late April 2025, with various demonstrations showcasing Neural Rendering applications: