DirectX 12 “Agility” with Shader Model 6.6 will be shown in April

Game Stack Live runs between April 20 and 21 and is an annual conference for game developers focusing on development for Windows and Xbox. This year’s sessions include graphics, multiplayer modes, game releases, and system tools.

Windows Central reports that Microsoft has already started talking about the next generation software development kit (SDK) for DirectX 12 with the nickname “Agility”. As the name suggests, flexibility is on the schedule for the update, which will make it easier for developers to implement modern and future technologies in their games and game engines.

Among other things, Shader Model 6.6 is mentioned, which Microsoft already described on its blog in November last year. The development kit is already in use in a preview version of developers at Epic Games and Microsoft’s own studios Turn 10 and 343 Games. The company summarizes the list of news as follows:

expanded atomic operations, dynamic resource binding, derivatives and samples in compute shaders, packed 8-bit computations, and wave size

Even if you are not convinced by expanded atomic operations, the conference will include other useful food for game developers. For example, Microsoft will talk about Directstorage, the company’s solution for eliminating bottlenecks in communication between system memory and graphics circuits. Nvidia and AMD will also attend the conference to talk about ray tracing.

Are your resources dynamically bound and how hard do you pack your calculations?