14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest changes in technology that's coming this year is DirectX 12 and the new set of standards, which will be used on both Windows 10 and the Xbox One, could offer a boost to another emerging trend in gaming: virtual reality.
Elijah Freeman, an executive producer at Crytek, is quoted by GamingBolt as saying that his team might benefit from the fact that better optimization will be possible, which in turn will make it easier to run consistently at high-frame rates.
He states, "Everything which helps to make drawcalls more efficient is highly useful, so DX12 with its reduced API overhead and better parallelization capabilities can definitely play a part in helping us create more complex VR worlds than before."
DirectX 12 is supposed to introduce a wide variety of improvements, and Microsoft has not yet offered a clear launch date for it.
Another piece of tech that has received a lot of attention recently is the cloud and the way it can be used to boost the quality of graphics for a title or to enhance its gameplay.
Freeman believes that it will have a smaller impact on virtual reality gaming because minimum latency is required.
If DirectX 12 offers a solid boost to VR, it will be a little ironic, given that Microsoft is not working on a solution in this field.
Virtual reality devices are coming in late 2015 and early 2016
The first solution to become commercially available is supposed to be the Vive, which was created by Valve in conjunction with HTC, but so far no price for it and no release date have been offered.
The Oculus Rift is at the moment set to arrive in its final version for consumers in early 2016 and it might be the one to benefit the most from any sort of performance boost delivered by the DirectX 12 tech.
The company is owned by Facebook now and has solid long-term plans to further enhance the hardware and to deliver third-party apps and games for it.
Sony is also working on Project Morpheus, coming in the same time frame, but the headset is only set to arrive on the PlayStation 4.
Microsoft is currently working on HoloLens, which will be an augmented reality solution and will be initially targeted at corporate customers.