DirectX 12 is Coming to Rise of The Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a spectacular adventure game which beautifully honours the series’ roots while adding a modern twist. The motion capture showcasing Lara’s subtle emotional changes is a sight to behold and almost defies belief. Originally, the game launched as an Xbox One exclusive, and caused a great deal of animosity from fans. This is because the Tomb Raider franchise traditionally released on various platforms including the PlayStation One, SEGA Saturn and PC.  The original reboot featured a fantastic PC version with superb optimization and an ample supply of visual settings. The developer responsible for this impeccable work is Nixxes Software and went onto product Rise of the Tomb Raider for the PC platform.

As you might expect given Nixxes’ reputation, the game is absolutely stunning, supporting various aspect ratios, advanced lighting effects, HBAO+, SMAA and more! This level of graphical fidelity does require a good PC with NVIDIA recommending a GTX 970 or above for the optimal 1920×1080 experience. At this time, the engine is based on the DirectX 11 API and does a good job of scaling across hardware. However, a recent finding by Reddit member ‘-Olek‘, suggests the latest low-level API, DirectX 12 will be implemented into the game fairly soon. To acquire the latest patch with DirectX 12 functionality, all you have to do is replace the game’s executable with the original .exe from the retail version. Steam users can perform this action by selecting the Beta update.

Please note, the DirectX 12 patch does not work at this time, but it shouldn’t be too far off as there’s an option for it in the revised menu. Additionally, it looks like the developer will add TXAA support which is another great inclusion. It will be fascinating to see the performance benefits moving from DirectX 11 to DirectX 12 especially when you consider how demanding the game is. This could be the first indication we have of the benefits of DirectX 12 in real world scenarios.