“We continue to innovate DirectX to make Windows the best gaming platform out there,” claims Microsoft vice president of Windows Antoine Leblond. At the company’s Build conference in San Franciso, Microsoft have been showing off the power of DirectX 11.2 and how its new abilities can create “unprecedented amounts of detail.”
The new graphics system will utilise ‘tiled resources’ which will allow your main system RAM to be used alongside your graphics card’s RAM to improve texture detail. The above video shows Leblond demonstrating the technology on sequences involving up to nine gigs of visual data.
The new features will only be available for a very small sector of Microsoft’s user base though, with DirectX 11.2 exclusive to Windows 8.1. Roughly 12% of Steam users have Windows 8 as their OS, so only a small amount of gamers will have access to these features. Will the promise of better texture handling prompt people to upgrade to Windows 8.1? We’ve seen things with better odds.
DirectX 11.2 is coming to next-generation consoles too, though, so there’s always that option if you want to see all the rivets on that plane.
Cheers, VG247