Microsoft: DirectX 12_2 brings a massive leap in functionality over DirectX 12_1

Microsoft's latest blog post reveals that the new DirectX version, "12_2," will bring a significant expansion of features to the company's established API.

• DirectX raytracing – a unified ray tracing pipeline (DXR);

• Mesh shaders – allows more flexible geometry calculation modification operations;

• Variable rate shading – a technology to save graphics card resources when rendering peripheral objects and areas;

• Sampler feedback – a function for collecting and recording information about texture sampling and their location;

The more interesting and quite intriguing change is that DirectX 12_2 will only be compatible with DirectX 12. Microsoft might be trying to motivate game developers to abandon the outdated DirectX 11 API this way.

"D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_12_2" is already available through the Windows early access program (SDK (software development kit) and Windows build version 20170, or a newer build).

You can find a complete overview of the new technology via this link in the official Microsoft blog (English knowledge required).

Source: Microsoft Blog