At the end of May, a new version of SDK Agility 1.616.0 became available for DirectX game developers, which brought with it support for Opacity Micromaps (OMM). This feature is designed to improve the performance of ray tracing in games running on the DirectX API.
What are Opacity Micromaps?
Opacity Micromaps is a feature developed by Microsoft to improve the rendering efficiency of 3D objects with complex geometry that have transparency in ray-traced scenes. Objects such as foliage, opaque windows, and others that are neither fully transparent nor opaque can now be rendered more efficiently.
How does OMM work?
- OMM optimizes the handling of geometry with transparency.
- Significantly reduces the load on the GPU.
- Improves overall rendering efficiency.
Implementation and support
OMM support in Agility SDK 1.616.0 is the fulfillment of a promise made by Microsoft back in March of this year at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). However, gamers still need hardware support to appreciate the benefits of the new product.
Hardware support
- NVIDIA already offers OMM support for its RTX series cards.
- AMD plans to implement support for Radeon cards in the second half of the year.
- Intel hasn't made any promises regarding Arc graphics cards yet.
Prospects and Conclusions
The introduction of OMM support in DirectX is an important step towards improving ray tracing performance in games. However, you shouldn't expect immediate performance gains. Game developers and hardware manufacturers need to work together to ensure that gamers can fully benefit from the new technology.
In the future, we can expect OMM to become more widely adopted and adopted in the gaming industry, leading to improved graphics quality and performance in ray-traced games.
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