[promo title=”Xbox One owners may feel a little sore in the ribs”][/promo]
Hardly a surprise after the near-constant kicking they’ve been getting from articles and analyses, which have explained in very careful and unambiguous terms how Microsoft’s next-gen console is out-performed by the PS4. Want some ointment for those bruises, chaps? Well, at Build 2014 last week a group of developers and tech heads gathered in San Francisco to talk about the latest advances in coding, processing and all things conducive to Making Games Look Pretty and Play Well. DirectX 12 was one of the biggest pieces of news to come out of that discussion.
DirectX is software used to process Windows graphics on a number of devices, including tablets, phones and – of course – the Xbox One. Currently, we’re using DirectX 11, which handles things a little like this:
What the coloured bars represent are basically different drivers within a game using processing threads in the DirectX software. Notice how the starting thread, ‘Thread 0’ (in layman’s terms, the player who kicks off), is doing most of the work? This is because DirectX 11 doesn’t make full use of a CPU’s multiple cores, distributing the work unevenly. Imagine, if you will, a team of four people lifting a heavy beam of wood. Three of those people aren’t putting in as much effort as they could be, meaning the fourth individual is forced to compensate, tiring out quicker in the process. That’s what’s going on here.
In terms of the Xbox One (and other Microsoft devices), that ‘tiredness’ manifests as graphical compromises having to be made during game development. In other words, making that wooden beam a bit lighter so our team can lift it more easily. This means things like the now infamous 720p resolution. But now DirectX 12 has been showcased at Build as a potential solution to the Xbox One’s under-performance. It isn’t a case of the hardware not being up to scratch, rather an issue of processing. Behold, the DirectX 12 solution:
DirectX 12 ‘corrects’ the processing distribution by getting the CPU’s multiple cores to work in tandem with each other. Again, if we look at our wooden beam analogy, this means our team of lifters are now all putting their backs into it; notice how the driver bars are looking more even. What does this mean for the Xbox One? Well, according to the CEO and Founder of Stardock Corporation, Brad Wardell, the DirectX 12 software “effectively gives every Xbox One owner a new GPU that is twice as fast as the old one.” (Quoted from Neowin)
The downside? More CPU cores working harder means more heat (yes, that ancient enemy of graphics processing) being generated. The Xbox One will be sweating with the effort of handling such a climb in its performance and it will be interesting to see how the current Xbox One hardware changes to compensate in future iterations of the console.
Microsoft are expected to showcase this technological breakthrough at E3 2014 in June. With the new graphical processing power available to the Xbox One, developers will be able to make more demanding games for the console running at a full 1080p resolution. This is by no means an ambrosia for Microsoft’s next-gen machine, but it’s certainly what one might confidently label as progress and – if veteran Wardell’s praises are anything to go by – it’s something we should all be very excited about indeed.