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Hey, Legends.
Below are some details surrounding the DirectX 12 (DX12) Beta! Read on to learn more about the motivations for DirectX 12, where it will be taking place, and what you can expect moving forward.
Please enjoy the following notes from our awesome dev team. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
With the 18.1 release, the DirectX 12 (DX12) Beta is introducing a major update to our rendering engine, called the Rendering Hardware Interface or RHI. It is our new abstraction layer between the low-level platform rendering APIs (like DX12) and our platform-independent engine and game code.
WHAT IS THE MOTIVATION?
When Apex launched, we supported three platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and DirectX 11 on PC. Over time this has grown to seven different rendering platforms: the original three, plus Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5, Switch, and DirectX 12 on PC, each with differing low-level graphics APIs. Implementing rendering features, architectural changes, or even performance optimizations became overly burdensome. Sometimes new code would need to be duplicated up to 7 times, but more commonly, developers spent a lot of time dealing with bugs that might only happen on one or two platforms due to subtle differences in how the rendering backends were implemented. In addition, some architectural choices from the early days of the engine made adding or expanding engine features like multi-threading challenging. Those choices made sense back when typical PC and console hardware were much different, but as multi-core processors became the norm and GPUs became increasingly versatile and powerful, the engine had to change to fully take advantage of these new capabilities.
Fortunately, modern APIs across different platforms have become more similar to each other—which gave us more incentive and more confidence that a major architectural upgrade to the engine could be successfully done even on a live game like Apex. The result was the initiative to implement RHI.
WHERE IS THIS HAPPENING?
Initially, the RHI update will be rolled out in the Windows DX12 Beta only. This will allow us to test the new system with a much larger group of players, but still allow anyone who runs into issues to revert to the standard DX11 version of the game. Eventually, the RHI update will be rolled out to all of our other platforms.
WHAT CAN PLAYERS EXPECT?
Playing the new DX12 RHI Beta should be a similar experience to what you’ve already seen in the current DX12 Beta—the general visual look and quality will be the same. As far as performance, we do expect framerates to be slightly lower in this version compared to the previous Beta build. This is mostly due to the RHI system being so new that we're still working to optimize and improve how it integrates with the rest of the game code. Performance will absolutely be a focus for us on upcoming releases.
However, one thing that should be better is the VRAM usage. One big drawback of the previous DX12 implementation was video memory fragmentation compared to the DX11 version. The memory usage should now be comparable between the RHI DX12 and DX11 builds of the game.
Finally, as with any new major engine change, there is the possibility for issues that might affect performance or gameplay. If you encounter any issues, please reach out via our support or let us know in the comments below.
KNOWN ISSUES
We are aware that there’s one issue where the game’s performance will sometimes drop if the player makes changes to the graphics settings. The problem does not persist after a restart. We are looking into this, but for now the recommended workaround is to just restart the game, which will allow you to keep your settings and get back to normal performance.
HOW TO TRY DX12
A graphics card with a minimum DirectX Feature Level of 12_0 is required to launch the game with DX12. To determine your Feature Levels, open the Run dialog (Windows Key+R) and type “dxdiag”. Feature Levels are listed in the Drivers section of the Display tab.
EA App
From “My Collection”, click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the Apex Legends tile and select “View Properties”Add "-eac_launcher_settings SettingsDX12.json" in the text box under “Advanced Launch Options”Click “Save” and launch the game normally
Steam
From your library, right click Apex Legends, and select PropertiesAdd "-eac_launcher_settings SettingsDX12.json" to “Launch Options”Close the properties window and launch the game normally
May 2024 update for instructions:
EA App
- From “My Collection”, click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the Apex Legends tile and select “View Properties”
- Add "-anticheat_settings=SettingsDX12.json" in the text box under “Advanced Launch Options”
- Click “Save” and launch the game normally
Steam:
- From your library, right click Apex Legends, and select Properties
- Add "-anticheat_settings=SettingsDX12.json" in the text box under “Advanced Launch Options”
- Close the properties window and launch the game normally
For future updates, follow the Respawn Twitter account for the latest info or check out the Apex Tracker Trello for bugs or concerns we’re continuing to investigate. For additional information, please check out our latest blog post.
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