DirectStorage, a DirectX 12 Ultimate API announced by Microsoft in 2020, may now be used in PC games. Faster loading speeds and enhanced textures and drawing distances are expected as a result of this new feature.
Xbox Series X/S already supports DirectStorage, and Microsoft said in June that the technology will be included in Windows 11. Through faster asset introduction and more realistic virtual environments, the storage acceleration API should enhance the gaming experience. If you have an NVMe SSD and a PCIe 3.0 or PCIe 4.0 system, you may bypass the CPU and transport data straight from the NVMe SSD to your graphics card.
Microsoft said today in a developer blog post that it will make DirectStorage available via a public SDK and remove it from the developer preview stage.
In the beginning, Microsoft said that DirectStorage would not be supported in Windows 10, but subsequently changed its mind. On its blog today, Microsoft attempted to persuade computer gamer to switch to its operating system Windows 11, claiming that it “has the latest storage optimizations built in.”
DirectStorage is not yet supported by PC games, although AMD and game developer Luminous Productions have demonstrated Forspoken using the functionality. On October 11, the game is scheduled to be released. Microsoft’s blog stated that further information concerning DirectStorage-enabled PC games will be released “in the future.”
The functionality is expected to be included in additional games. The PlayStation 5’s Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart has already shown what a fast NVMe SSD can achieve for gaming with its quick-loading universe-hopping. While many PC gamers have upgraded from SATA to NVMe PCIe 3.0 or later SSDs, not everyone has done the same. Previously, Microsoft said that NVMe SSDs are important because they “can have numerous queues, and each queue may hold several requests at a time, making [them] a suitable match for today’s gaming workloads that tend to be parallel and batched. “
