DX12 Won’t Change Xbox One’s 1080p Issue, But Devs Will Be Able To Push More Triangles: Witcher 3 Dev

Witcher 3′s lead engine programmer Balazs Torok on DirectX 12′s impact on PC and Xbox One’s performance.

Continuing our month long coverage of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, GamingBolt asked the game’s lead engine programmer Balazs Torok about his thoughts on the upcoming DirectX 12 and whether it will have an effect on the games development scene on the PC and Xbox One, specially the latter for the 1080p issue.

“I think there is a lot of confusion around what and why DX12 will improve. Most games out there can’t go 1080p because the additional load on the shading units would be too much. For all these games DX12 is not going to change anything,” Balazs explains. However he thinks that DX12 may allow to push more triangles but again developers won’t be able to shade them.

“They might be able to push more triangles to the GPU but they are not going to be able to shade them, which defeats the purpose. To answer the first question, I think we will see a change in the way graphics programmers will think about their pipelines and this will result in much better systems hopefully.”

GamingBolt thinks that this may be an architecture level issue, similar to what we had during the PlayStation 3 era. However it is important to note that things are getting better with the latest June SDK update which has allowed games like Destiny to hit 1080p. But whether this was achieved with reduced effects and texture quality is an all together different topic.

Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is due for release in February and will only release on current generation consoles and gaming PCs. For more on the game check out our hub page here.

 

Source: http://gamingbolt.com/dx12-wont-change-xbox-ones-1080p-issue-but-devs-will-be-able-to-push-more-triangles-witcher-3-dev

Were people really expecting DX12 to change everything?

Didn't Phil Spencer already cover this a while ago? It did give me the opportunity to pop over to MisterX and find out if he's running this article. He's not but I did stray into a thread about how MS have upped the power via a firmware update (think that was the gist). Evidently lots of XB1 owners are convinced of this because they're 'fans' are louder ... I kid you not.

Power or not, the XB1 is a great console and will have lots of great exclusives, but as long as MS keep feeding sites with talk of cloud, DX12 or whatever else they can come up with, I'm afraid the whole 'PS4 is more powerful' narrative will never go away.

Agreed with all of this from top to bottom. If I was MS I would go out of my way to get all these sites to do writing about dx12, the cloud, etc. Just leave it  alone and focus on other things.

The DX12 talk really needs to die. The more it is mentioned along with the cloud and whatnot, the longer it will hurt the X1's image in terms of power.

People believe all kinds of bizarre things.

Nothing will ever beat the 2nd GPU stuff though. That was pure gold

More DX12 talk! Hooraaaaaaaay! >_>

I dont know why but I laughed when I read your comment.

The obsession with arbitrary numbers is detrimental to gaming. No matter the console. It's going to divert attention to graphics-at-all-costs even further, at the expense of gameplay and AI and all the other things that truly matter in games.

The five games a year that can have it all ill have it all, but it just encourages every dev to give up things in order to be able to check one box among the hundred boxes that make a game look/feel/play at a top level. While I agree that is the point of the game is visuals in large part - like, for example, the car porn games (Forza, GT, etc.) - then it matters. For most games there are things that matter way way more. Games can be beautiful in other ways. Look at some of the WiiU stuff, for example. Future Zelda looks amazing, and I sure ain't gonna skip it because it doesn't check off the 1080p box. So silly

DX12 will be huge for PC, and do next to nothing for X1. If you want to know why this is the case go look up the X1 architect interview from 2013, it talks about the initial API already being a very low level piece of work out of the gate with hardware draw calls available. Looking at a ~7750 with ddr3 memory, the existing X1 titles make perfect sense and I expect few improvements. 1080p AND high textures AND decent AA is just impossible for the X1, simple as that. It doesn't mean that pretty games won't be possible, but something will always have to give. The interesting thing is how they approach it for the big exclusives. Do they go the Ryse route and lower the res to keep the other areas high? Or will they turn AA or a combination of other things down and aim for 1080? And of course some will just aim too high and steer into choppy fps territory.