DirectX just got an update that will massively boost ray tracing performance in games

It's taken a few years, but real-time ray-tracing is now common in modern AAA games. Path Tracing or Full Ray-Tracing is set to be the next game-changer for in-game visuals - as seen in Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, Indian Jones and the Great Circle, and others. Path Tracing is only possible thanks to technologies like DLSS Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and Frame Generation, as it just requires a lot of raw GPU horsepower to run.

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As seen with the arrival of the GeForce RTX 50 Series, the next step toward making Path Tracing a reality will arrive through new rendering technologies that include Neural Rendering. So far, we've seen what this can do in titles like Alan Wake 2 and Half-Life 2 RTX, where Neural Shaders and other tech can boost Path Tracing performance.

The good news is that this isn't limited to NVIDIA hardware. Microsoft has also partnered with AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm to develop DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2, which can boost Path Tracing performance by up to 2.3X through the deployment of Opacity Micromaps (OMMs).

On Friday last week, Microsoft released DirectX Agility SDK 1.616-retail and Agility SDK 1.717-preview for game developers to leverage these new technologies in their games. Agility SDK 1.616-retail includes Opacity Micromaps (OMMs), which take "advantage of hardware-accelerated alpha testing during raytracing workloads" to process "complex transparency" more intelligently. This alone can deliver up to a 2.3X boost to full ray-tracing performance.

In addition, Agility SDK 1.717-preview introduces support for "Cooperative Vectors" to open the door to new neural rendering. NVIDIA showcased this during its big GeForce RTX 50 Series reveal at CES 2025 earlier this year, where AI will be used to render complex environments, compress textures, and enhance the quality of lighting and materials. Agility SDK 1.717-preview also adds Shader Execution Reordering (SER) to its feature set, again, a technology NVIDIA debuted with the GeForce RTX 40 Series - another tool to enhance path tracing performance.

With AMD's recent announcement at Computex that FSR 4 was getting new AI-powered technologies for path tracing as part of its joint software venture with Sony, it's safe to say that AI-powered Path Tracing is going to be a big part of the next decade of gaming - across PCs and consoles like the PlayStation 6.