Microsoft Agility SDK for DirectX To Deliver Improvements with Path Tracing.

Microsoft’s updated Agility SDK for DirectX’s new features could radically improve the performance of path tracing when implemented correctly.

Picture of the DirectX 12 Ultimate API — The DirectX 12 Ultimate API (Image via Nvidia)

Microsoft revealed some key features that could shape the future of ray tracing and patch tracing during the Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2025 event. The Redmond giant announced that a new Agility SDK preview for DirectX would be released by the end of April 2025, but it was later delayed.

On May 30, 2025, Microsoft finally released the Agility SDK preview for DirectX to developers to test these technologies in their game engines or games. According to Microsoft, the new features in this SDK can boost the path tracing performance by up to 2.3 times.

In this article, we will discuss everything new in this Agility SDK release and how it could affect the future of gaming and game rendering technologies.

Note: Some aspects of this article are subjective and reflect the writer’s opinions.

Microsoft Agility SDK for DirectX: Here’s Everything New

Picture of ray tracing on vs off in Ghostwire: Tokyo — Ray tracing on vs off in Ghostwire: Tokyo (Image via Intel)

The new Microsoft Agility SDK includes some new features and updates to existing ones to deliver even better performance in ray tracing and path tracing rendering techniques. Here’s everything new in the SDK:

1) Shader Execution Reordering (SER)

This is a new feature that will allow apps and games to notify the graphics driver on your PC how to sort and reorder GPU threads to increase execution coherence while minimizing performance penalty. This is achieved by decreasing the divergence and increasing the parallel processing. This feature alone can deliver up to two times faster performance in path-traced games when implemented correctly.

2) Opacity Micromaps (OMMs)

The Opacity Micromaps is another new feature in the DirectX Raytracing pipeline that can boost how efficiently rays get traced in environments with translucent objects and materials.

Current ray tracing algorithms lead to a lot of AnyHit shader invocations, which in turn decrease performance in games. When Opacity Micromaps is enabled, developers can minimize or fully eradicate AnyHit shader invocations when dealing with complex translucent scenes using hardware-accelerated alpha tests.

Games can achieve up to 2.3 performance improvements when using Opacity Micromaps with Shader Execution Reordering for path tracing in any game.

3) Cooperative Vectors

The Cooperative Vectors feature will allow GPUs to use Vector and Matrix operations simultaneously. This will allow graphics cards to perform a new type of hardware acceleration, necessary for neural rendering techniques to be directly implemented into the standard graphics rendering pipeline in real time.

Neural rendering and neural textures will be part of the future of graphics rendering technologies. In fact, Nvidia demonstrated neural rendering and neural textures can turn any scene more photorealistic. Therefore, accelerating this type of rendering technique is critical.

4) D3D12 Tiled Resource Tier 4

This feature will allow developers to create a tiled texture with an MIP chain, which was previously impossible. This limitation has been problematic, and developers couldn’t implement packed MIPS in arrayed tiled resources.

5) Direct3D Video Encoding Updates

The Direct3D Video Encoding feature will now utilize the DirectX 12 API when encoding videos. Therefore, this encoder would be as capable as NVenc, which is considered the best encoder for video performance and quality. Only RTX GPUs have NVenc since it’s a proprietary Nvidia encoding technology. On the other hand, the Direct3D Video Encoder will be available for all modern graphics cards.

Therefore, Nvidia GPUs won’t be the only option for game streamers and video editors to achieve the best encoding performance.

Final Thoughts

Most of the features mentioned above in the new Agility SDK for DirectX are available for Nvidia and Intel GPUs with proper driver support. Developers with AMD cards will have to wait a little longer to get an updated SDK in the future.

However, keep in mind that many of these features are still in preview testing, so games with ray tracing and path tracing coming out later this year may not magically have these features. Game developers must manually upgrade their games and implement these features to get performance improvements.

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Microsoft Agility SDK for DirectX To Deliver Improvements with Path Tracing.