In an interview with PCGamesHardware, Marcin Gollent, Lead Graphics Programmer at CD Projekt RED, revealed some new interesting tech details about Cyberpunk 2077. According to the developer, Cyberpunk 2077 will only support the DirectX 12 API. Moreover, it will only work on Windows 7 and Windows 10.
When asked about the PC operating systems for which Cyberpunk 2077 will be available, Gollent said:
“Thanks to the introduction of DX12 support for Windows 7 SP1 that Microsoft introduced last year, the game will run on this system. We do, and will continue to, test Cyberpunk 2077 on Windows 7 in an attempt to iron out any edge-cases that might arise. Unfortunately, Windows 8 didn’t receive its variant of DX12 libraries.”
So yeah, those that are still using Windows 8 will not be able to play the game. This is crucial to note as there won’t be any DX11 fallback API.
Gollent also shared some details about DX12 Ultimate. As the developer claimed, the game will work with any DX12 GPU. However, those supporting the extra features of DX12 Ultimate may get some additional enhancements.
“Regarding DX12 Ultimate, Cyberpunk 2077 will work absolutely fine with all DX12-compatible GPUs. What the “Ultimate” feature set does is it allows us to do more if the hardware allows for it. We opted to go with DX12 for two main reasons. Firstly, it is the standard API for the Xbox platforms. With the game also coming to Xbox One, we naturally wanted to have it implemented as soon as possible. Secondly, it is the birthplace of DXR, and given we had plans to invest in DXR very early on, that made the choice to go with DX12 a pretty straightforward one.”
Unfortunately, Gollent has not stated whether Cyberpunk 2077 will support any of the DX12 Ultimate features. Thus, we don’t know whether the game will support Variable Rate Shading, Mesh Shaders or Sampler Feedback.
Still, we can assume that Cyberpunk 2077 will support DXR 1.1. As we’ve already reported, CD Projekt RED will be using Ray Tracing for Diffuse Illumination, Ambient Occlusion, Reflections and Shadows. You can take a look at some RTX screenshots here and here.
Cyberpunk 2077 releases on November 19th!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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