Nitrous Engine Devs Wishes To Drop DX11 To Maximize DX12’s Potential, Talks DX12 Adoption Rates

DirectX 12 is no longer an API that’s seemingly on the horizon – it’s out and about with Windows 10. The question is – how many developers are making games to take advantage of it? It will be a while before every single developer hops on board but GamingBolt had a chance to speak to Oxide Games, creator of the Nitrous Engine and Ashes of the Singularity, one of the few DX12-supported games on the market, about the API’s adoption rates.

We asked Dan Baker, Tim Kipp and Brian Wade of Oxide if their close relationship with Microsoft for DirectX 12 could provide any information on the adoption rates of the API and feedback from devs that have used it so far.

They stated that, “We have a pretty good relationship with Microsoft. I actually worked on DirectX years ago, so I know those guys personally. We gave Microsoft out entire Mantle station and said, ‘have at it.’ We worked back and forth with them for a year. They helped us a lot with the initial implication. We’ve learned a lot. The difference between DX12 and the previous API is that the previous API was designed by Microsoft and they threw it over the fence and hoped it worked. This time around we actually had everything working and prototyped before the API was finalized. We’re pretty sure that everything works great. That’s a huge change from the previous ones.”

Right now, the adoption rate for DirectX 12 is fairly positive and there’s a desire to drop DX11 support in order to make full use of its potential.

“Consumer adoption seems pretty positive. DX12 works with a vast majority of GPUs. We’re not at a point yet where we would drop our DX11 support. We wish we could. Wish we could because we can’t completely take advantage of all of DX12 until we kill our DX11 version. We’re pretty happy with the adoption. To some extent whenever you’ve got something new like DirectX 12, you need people to pioneer the way. Once they prove that it works then you start to see a greater adoption. It’s an exponential growth. Somebody’s got to start somewhere. I’m really glad we’ve got such a good working relationship with Microsoft and Nvidia and AMD because trying to pioneer a new engine on top of a brand new graphics API and a brand new OS is definitely challenging for everyone involved.”

What are your thoughts on DirectX 12 and its current state in the industry? Let us know in the comments below. Stay tuned for our full interview with the developers next week.