One of the most anticipated, and unfortunately delayed games of the year is Cyberpunk 2077. We have had our eyes glued to the screens as we wait for any and every bit of information about this game since the viral announcement that involved Keanu Reeves. We had recently reported about the game having a “GTA” mode. A new reveal now says that Cyberpunk 2077 will be exclusive to DirectX 12 on PC. Read on!
Cyberpunk 2077 has displayed stellar visuals from what we have seen so far. Those graphics are thanks to the reliance on Ray Tracing. That is exactly the reason why Cyberpunk 2077 will run exclusively on DirectX 12 on PC. Marcin Gollent, the Lead Graphics Programmer at CD Projekt RED, revealed this in a recent interview with PC Games Hardware (PCGH).
The core reason seems to be the DXR libraries, which form the backbone for Ray Tracing support in Windows. The game will not run on DX11. This means that you can only play the game on Windows 10, and Windows 7 with SP1 installed. Windows 8/8.1 never got support for DX12. NVIDIA had released a deep dive demo video of the game on Ray Tracing:
Gollent said:
“We opted to go with DX12 for two main reasons. Firstly, it is the standard API for the Xbox platforms. With the game also coming to Xbox One, we naturally wanted to have it implemented as soon as possible. Secondly, it is the birthplace of DXR, and given we had plans to invest in DXR very early on, that made the choice to go with DX12 a pretty straightforward one.”
He also clarified that the choice to go for DirectX 12 Ultimate will not cause any restrictions:
“Regarding DX12 Ultimate, Cyberpunk 2077 will work absolutely fine with all DX12-compatible GPUs. What the “Ultimate” feature set does is it allows us to do more if the hardware allows for it. We opted to go with DX12 for two main reasons.”
So if you have been planning on getting CyberPunk 2077, make sure you update your PC with DirectX 12 before the game releases on November 19, 2020.
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Via PCGH
