Because it is important: What we’ve seen of Cyberpunk 2077 looks amazing, with gorgeous graphics and real-time ray tracing, but beauty comes at a cost: the PC version will be an exclusive DirectX 12 title. That means bad news for those with graphics cards. old or still using Windows 8.
The news came from CD Projekt Red’s lead graphics developer Marcin Gollent during an interview with German tech site PC Games Hardware.
DirectX 12 support, which enables variable-speed ray tracing and shading, was added to Windows 7 last year, despite the venerable operating system reaching its end of the January extended support date. Gollent said the company continues to test Cyberpunk 2077 on Windows 7 to find and fix any bugs. The operating system is found on 27 percent of PCs, while Windows 8, which does not support DirectX 12, has a 3.5 percent market share.
The other potential problem with DirectX 12 exclusivity is that those with older graphics cards are out of luck. Anyone with a card from the past five years or so should be fine, and most seniors that age would have a hard time playing Cyberpunk 2077, anyway.
Gollent said there were two reasons why the game became DirectX 12 exclusive: “First, it’s the standard API for Xbox platforms, and with the game also coming to Xbox One, we naturally wanted to implement it as soon as possible. . Second, it is DXR’s birthplace, and since we had plans to invest in DXR from the start, that made choosing DX12 quite easy. “
Focusing on a single graphics API might seem like a good idea, and should allow CD Projekt Red to push DirectX 12 to its limits. But we have seen games with DirectX 12 issues in the past, and no DirectX 11 or Vulkan API compatibility, hopefully the launch goes smoothly. But given the extra time spent on its development, and the fact that this will be one of the biggest games in years, it would be surprising if there were major issues related to DirectX 12.
