Microsoft Monday rolled out the much publicised ‘DirectStorage API’ which the technology giant said will lead to a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games

San Francisco: Microsoft Monday rolled out the much publicised ‘DirectStorage API’ which the technology giant said will lead to a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games.

The tech giant had given a hint about the latest roll-out 18 months ago.

“Starting today, Windows games can ship with DirectStorage. This public SDK release begins a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games by allowing developers to more fully utilize the speed of the latest storage devices,” reads the company’s blog post.

The roll-out of DirectStorage API came about 18 months after Microsoft revealed that one of the most important advancements in its new Xbox Series X console would be coming to PC — the ability to stream tremendous amounts of data from a blazing fast NVMe solid state drive to your GPU, instead of relying on your pesky CPU to decompress it first.

“In September 2020, we announced DirectStorage would be coming to Windows, and after collecting feedback throughout our developer preview, we are making this API available to all of our partners to ship with their games”, Microsoft blog post said.

While making clear that Windows 11 is its recommended path for gaming, Microsoft said DirectStorage API will work with Windows 10 and 11 both.

What’s New?

Microsoft will present an introduction to DirectStorage at GDC – along with some tips and tricks to get started – on March 22, 2022.

“DirectStorage is an API in the DirectX family originally designed for the Xbox Velocity Architecture to Windows PCs”, Microsoft said.

“DirectStorage will bring best-in-class IO tech to both PC and console just as DirectX 12 Ultimate does with rendering tech”, it said.

“With a DirectStorage capable PC and a DirectStorage enabled game, you can look forward to vastly reduced load times and virtual worlds that are more expansive and detailed than ever”, it added.

Microsoft said the two primary areas this new API is going to improve is reducing “frustratingly long load times” of the past and enabling games to be more “detailed and expansive than ever”.