Smarter Graphics Rendering
On the Xbox One, DirectX 12 could bring about meaningful improvements to its games and the system as a whole. The Xbox One currently works through DirectX 11, with several tweaks made specifically for the system. In many ways, using the older API of DirectX 11 had limited the full potential of Xbox One, with developers being forced to using an older, less efficient API.
In particular, using DirectX 11 prevented the system from using Asynchronous shaders (or Async shaders), which spreads the graphical load across multiple threads, and lets the system compute it simultaneously, rather than having to wait for the graphics queue to finish up before moving to the next job. In theory, DirectX 12 could speed up the time it takes to usually render post-processing effects. Async Shaders are something that the
PlayStation 4 already uses in a variety of games such as
Infamous: Second Son (the Async shaders helped the PS4 render the particle effects seen in-game). A similar effect will likely come to Xbox One games utilising similar rendering methods. In practice, this means more rendering ability, potentially paving the way for enhanced visual effects.
