Directx 12 - when?

When it’s done.

Better question is what if any, Tangible benefits will DX12 bring?

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I seem to remember at one point (a long time ago) Seb commented that DX12 should help those of us with low VRAM.

This is certainly one of my problems (GTX1050Ti with 4Gb), so I was quite hopeful at the time, but in the light of experience I’ll believe it when I see it.

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Xbox version is on DX12, the difference is the scope of testing, given the vast amount of configurations on PC’s compared to Xbox. Hence it takes longer to implement.

Absolutely yes. But surely this woulnd’t have occured to Asobo mere weeks before they said they were going to release it, right?

Compare in other games there arent much differents in the FPS and ms. For my opinion it makes more sense to implement the amd fidelity function.

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Full disclosure, I know little to nothing about this.

But putting aside the performance question; I understand that DX12 gives developers more tools with graphical effects. So I was hoping DX12 might get rid of a few annoyances like grainy clouds, low texture quality trees, blocky watermasks (see Lake Ontario near Toronto), blocky cloud reflections, etc.

Even more wild speculation: I think they might be holding off on fixing a few bugs because DX12 could change a lot of code anyway - so instead of spending time fixing DX11 related code, rather fix the issue in DX12. But as I said, pure speculation.

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Thats a good one :thinking:

I certainly got the impression from reading I was doing on the subject, that there would be little, if any performance gains. I also got the impression that we may see a few improvements to lighting and clouds when it is released.

Nothing is concrete until ASOBO confirm though really.

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Yea yea I see

Agreed. There may be some marginal improvements with DX12 for those with lower end systems. DX12 can slightly improve CPU thread management as well as VRAM management. But I’d be surprised if the vast majority of end users see any real tangible performance gains.

What DX12 will do is open the door for better visual effects at lower processing / GPU cost down the road rather than immediate improvements.

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Ray Tracing?

Yeah ray tracing is the big feature DX12 can bring. Asobo haven’t spoken much more about that recently as far as I can see. It’l be interesting to see what its like in the sim.

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Is ray tracing something that would jump out at us as an improvement in MSFS?

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Depending on how its implemented it could make a big difference yeah. Its worth knowing though that its only possible with more recent GPU’s. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but as far as Nvidia are concerned you need a 2000 or 3000 series RTX card for it to work.

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2000 series can do it, but depending on what’s implemented, can introduce a huge fps hit. 3000 series are greatly improved in terms of RT core performance. There’s still a performance hit, although less severe.

As an example, I’ve been playing Far Cry 6 since it was launched last week. It uses ray traced shadows and reflections only. This is running on an RTX 2080.

I’m running all ultra, no FidelityFX, 3440x1440

Without ray tracing, I’m getting 85-90 fps at all ultra in the benchmark
With ray tracing, I’m getting 65-70 fps.

Someone with a 3000 series card will likely see less of a drop due to more efficient RT cores.

AMD 6000 series cards are about the same efficiency as the 2000 series in terms of RT compute, so expect similar results from that.

So while ray tracing may add visual flair, it does come at a pretty significant compute cost. But it also depends what features of RT they choose to implement…

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The improvement they talked was lights, all reflection type and better FX, I don’t remember if there was others. There could be more added, but maybe in long run.

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I have a 3090. we will see

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I am eager for DX12 because of things I know I’ll never see implemented under DX11. I don’t expect much to be different simply by using DX12 the day it’s released. It’s an indication various things can move forward. DLSS, ray tracing, and the big one for me, proper multi monitor support. Other sims have had advanced multi monitor support in DX11, but I don’t think we’ll see that. I believe they said as much in one of the roadmap videos ages ago. It just opens a lot of possibilities for the graphics engine going forward.

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I am grateful that they make it optional to use DX12 and do not force it on us immediately, we have enough problems as it is with DX11.