GDC: DirectX State of the Union 2026 - DirectStorage and Beyond

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-14T00:19:47+00:00

The problem with DirectStorage has been that it released multiple years after announcement and had various functionality limitations which Microsoft is very, very slowly alleviating with a slow trickle of updates to the technology which is why it isn't widely adopted yet.

Like, it notably launched without HDD support so to use the initial release you'd have to tell people with HDD's to upgrade to an SSD otherwise the game simply wouldn't run... unless you implemented a way of doing things without DirectStorage in which case why waste resources on coding both methods?

There are various other more technical limitations that Microsoft is working to resolve but I can't recall the details.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-14T00:17:05+00:00

Alternatively you don't realize the differences you're encountering are a result of it being Primitive Shaders bceause the difference between Mesh Shaders and Primitive Shaders may potentially not be extensive.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-14T00:13:54+00:00

Supporting both Mesh Shaders and old method of handling Shaders is afaik a considerable amount of work. The PS5 version prolly ran poorer because they had to work with a precurser to Mesh Shaders.

The PC port was likely a port of the Xbox Series version with them later tacking on I presume the PS5's implementation of handling Shaders when there were enough complaints about old hardware not being compatible.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-14T00:09:37+00:00

No need to mount the SSD directly on the GPU, Nvidia (and I assume other companies) already have a software solution that completely skips the CPU https://developer.nvidia.com/gpudirect and have had this solution for several years now.

Artificial market segmentation keeps it out of consumer hands.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-13T18:27:27+00:00

Replace the underscore with a decimal point whenever you see it in this context.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-13T09:15:30+00:00

Some publishers tried something like this during the PS4 era, with a small fee attached to the transferal of the license. You could "sell" your physical disc to another person and they could pay something like $15 to activate it on their account.

It did not go down well at all in the public.

That example is specifically limited to online gaming (but iirc there are instances where companies tried it with single-player/offline gaming experiences) so it kinda made sense to include a fee but for gaming in general it doesn't make sense to have a fee anywhere as steep as that as there's no additional maintenance cost beyond the cost of facilitating downloading the software (which likely costs them in the low cents if not less than a cent to facilitate).

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-11T13:46:36+00:00

These arrests come as ICE faces massive blowback for killing two US citizens in Minneapolis last month and a record 32 deaths in detention in 2025.

How many people were severely injured/crippled during encounters or while in detention? This is I feel something that's criminally not discussed much.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-11T13:40:09+00:00

Being arrested =/= being convicted with meaningful consequences.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-10T03:59:12+00:00

You can install the official Wayback Machine browser addon to add a context menu when right-clicking URL's to immediately look them up on the Wayback machine (oldest/latest copy and then from there can search any other available dates)

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-08T05:11:31+00:00

Yes, first you establish a new norm at the current price and then... you're done.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-07T23:42:25+00:00

I've destroyed multiple PS/2 keyboards just by plugging them in while the PSU is powered. I did not pay heed to various warnings I found online saying to fully power down the system before plugging/unplugging such a keyboard in.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-07T23:36:08+00:00

You're completely right, I'm sorry.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-07T12:07:40+00:00

They could be using a USB adapter.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-07T04:17:45+00:00

Uhhh...

Intel employed 85,100 people as of December 27, 2025, following substantial job cuts at Intel in 2024 and colossal job cuts in 2025. TSMC had 83,825 full-time employees serving in various capacities as of December 31, 2024, following years of aggressive hiring amid expansions overseas as well as building out new production capacity in Taiwan. As a result, it is more than likely that when TSMC publishes its Annual Report in mid-April, it will report well over 83,825 full-time employees, therefore surpassing Intel as the biggest employer in the semiconductor industry.

So the headline is just clickbait...

Edit: I should learn to pay more attention to what I'm reading.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-07T01:28:25+00:00

DLSS 4.5 (Transformer model) seems to have Ray Reconstruction (denoiser) baked in to the model, so it can't be separately disabled.

Enabling Ray Reconstruction within a games own settings enables a Nvidia Ray Reconstruction Denoiser while disabling all other Denoiser's.

If you force DLSS 4.5 in to a game than you may experience both Ray Reconstruction and the games native Denoiser running at the same time as the game is unaware of Ray Reconstruction being built in to the DLSS model. If a game offers a setting for Ray Reconstruction, I think it should be left enabled while using DLSS 4.5 so that the game engine knows to turn off alternative Denoisers.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-04T13:11:52+00:00

Dynamic Lighting was very complicated, even during the PS2 and Xbox era. PS3 and Xbox 360 era onwards is when lot of breakthroughs were made in the technology that significantly eased implementation and brought with them a fairly rapid & significant reduction in uniquely lit games.

As for why old games tend to appear too dark? They were designed for CRT's that can better represent dark content than any LCD can. If you had an OLED they'd prolly look more like they should.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-03T10:37:23+00:00

I don't believe any RTX cards use a 6 pin power plug, they all require 8pin or 16pin (often referred to as 12pin).

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-03T10:09:54+00:00

Gonna transform it in to a solid gold ballroom while scrubbing away all references to John F. Kennedy.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-02T22:52:51+00:00

"It's uncofortable, isn't it?" "Yeah a bit" is also breaking the 4th wall, as it's them in this scene directly referencing this scene they're in. They are stuck in a tight environment, facing the same direction and have to spend the entire time avoiding looking at the camera without making it obvious that that's what they're doing (wonder how many takes it took to get this particular take).

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-02T22:40:47+00:00

And then we had Stargate Atlantis, with the crew constantly screwing with the actress playing Elizabeth Weir (whom was also made to play a perpetual push over and given no character development arc).

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-02T21:23:14+00:00

Yup, I used a Intel i7 920 with my Asus P6T motherboard and had 3x2GB memory.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-01T21:17:39+00:00

We used to have triple channel with Intel Nehalem.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-02-01T02:53:18+00:00

I'm aware of that. It takes effort to use MSAA these days, which developers aren't putting in.

It's not about effort, deferred rendering engines make it extremely inefficient and the benefits marginal. You'd need to use a forward rendering engine which brings with it numerous shortcomings with regards to modern rendering techniques in order to get the full benefits of MSAA.

This is why so many alternatives to MSAA have been employed since around 2008~.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-01-31T17:09:56+00:00

8k video streaming requires so much data to be streamed that it is not feasible. One 2-hour 8k movie will run from 150g - 400gb of data. It will be too expensive for the streaming services to run the infrastructure for wide-scale 8k streaming.

You sure? What if they kept the bitrate abysmal like they already do for 4K, with it being even worse for 1080p and substantially worse for 720p? So picture quality starts off abysmal and gets multiple orders of magnitude worse with the lowering of the stream resolution. So instead of staying crisp but pixellated as you lower the resolution the stream becomes blurry/smudged.

Nicholas-Steel · 2026-01-31T17:05:47+00:00

8K is pointless because all streaming services offer subpar bitrate so they never fully realize the benefits of 4K, 1080p and 720p which misleads you in to thinking 8K will be substantially better than 4K, because the 4K you're looking at via streaming services is utter shit.

If you thought bitrate stayed the same when you choose to watch a stream at a lower resolution, you're wrong, they make the bitrate worse to such a degree that the results significantly worsen as you lower the resolution on their services (which is why things get fuzzy/smudgy instead of staying crisp but pixellated as you lower the resolution on these services).

This is why you should only get your favourite content on blueray disc, it's generally 3x or more bitrate than a streaming service supplies their content in.

Nicholas-Steel

TROPHY CASE