DirectX 12 Can Push 6 to 12 Times the Polygons of DirectX 11

Microsoft is eager to show the advancements made with DirectX 12 and so far, things have been exceedingly positive. We’ve seen that DirectX 12 can handle a lot more draw calls, more polygons, improved frame rates, more advanced graphical features, a list of benefits that just goes on and on. Now, at Microsoft’s Build 2015, they’re eager to show it off again.

The demo system was no slouch, a quad-SLI Digital Storm gaming PC, running the popular 2012 Final Fantasy Agni’s Philosophy technical demo. When this demo was run on DirectX 11 on the same hardware, it was impressive, no doubt about it, but DirectX 12 ran circles around it. The DirectX 12 version was able to run with 63 million polygons, which is between 6 and 12 times as many as were shown on the DirectX 11 version of the demo, dependant on which scene was being rendered at that time.

“As a part of a research project that studies a variety of next generation technologies, Square Enix conducted extensive research on real-time CG technology utilizing DirectX 12 in collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA Corporation.  Revealed today as a technology demonstration titled, WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry], the results of this research will be incorporated into Square Enix’s LUMINOUS STUDIO engine, and is intended for use in future game development.”

Not only that, but Microsoft were able to move freely through the scene in real-time, adjust the lighting, as well as show off the new 8K x 8K textures, which Microsoft said was “Significantly more than we were able to do [with DX11].” They were also keen to show off that “Every piece of hair that you’re seeing is being rendered as a polygon” while using more than 50 shaders for that effect alone; incredible!

WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry], has achieved some of the world’s highest-level quality of real-time CG. It portrays the human emotion of crying– one of the most difficult representations for existing real-time CG technology. The emotion is displayed in a level of quality which has never been seen before with a real-time CG animated character teemed with life.

WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry] was created mainly by the developers of AGNI’S PHILOSOPHY – FINAL FANTASY REALTIME TECH DEMO, a tech demo for LUMINOUS STUDIO revealed in June 2012. Square Enix research enabled the real-time CG to feature even more refined graphics and improved processing capabilities in WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry].

There’s just one thing left to add to this, HURRY UP AND RELEASE DIRECTX 12 ALREADY!