Unity Technologies recently announced its complete support of DirectX 12 graphics API and Windows 10 operating system. What does this really mean for game development?
Unity Technologies recently announced its complete support of DirectX 12 graphics API and Windows 10 operating system. What does this really mean for game development?
Unity is offering support for the DirectX 12 graphics API, included as part of Windows 10. This is essential for PC game developers, who want to make games using the popular Unity Engine. Later the company will also provide DirectX 12 support for Unity Engine made for smartphones and Xbox One.
3DMark DirectX 12 Benchmark. Tested on GIGABYTE BRIX Pro (Intel Core i7-4770R + Iris Pro Graphics 5200). © blogs.unity3d.com
Unity reports that the support of DirectX 12 will come early in the Unity 5 cycle. It will happen just in time Windows 10 release. Unity Engine has been working for a several months on getting the engine to work with DirectX 12. The product passes 95% of its graphics tests. This is however only the first step. After finishing the implementation, developers will move to other features of Direct3D 12. Everything is going to be fully optimized.
The renderer will be further optimized to better use multiple cores, which will grant performance improvement. Of course, the real performance boost will only be visible after the release of Windows 10 DirectX 12 drivers. Unity is happy with the numbers they receive right now.
DirectX 12 will be only available as part of Windows 10. If you have Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on your PC, you will have to upgrade. Thankfully the upgrade is free.
Author: Michael Kim