Microsoft has announced the availability of a preview version of Agility Software Development Kit 1.714.0 for developers, integrating API DirectSR support to simplify the integration of various scaling technologies into games. DirectSR, an extension of DirectX 12, was developed by Microsoft in collaboration with AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.
What is DirectSR?
DirectSR allows support for AMD FSR, Intel XeSS, and Nvidia DLSS to be added using a single mechanism, substantially cutting down the time and amount of work previously required for individual integration of each technology. In the past, each scaling technology had to be manually implemented using separate SDKs—game engines with special scaling plugins like Unreal Engine 5 being the exception. With DirectSR, all three scaling tools can be implemented simultaneously. DirectSR covers the crucial features inherent to all temporal scaling technologies, such as movement vectors, depth and color buffers, reactions labels, and exposure.
How Does it Work?
As DirectSR technically exists as an alternative method for integrating scaling technologies and combining DLSS, XeSS, and FSR, new Microsoft API should be supported at the graphic driver level for hardware scaling solutions. This means that current versions of graphics drivers, for example, with hardware support for Nvidia DLSS and XMX-compatible versions of Intel XeSS, do not yet support DirectSR. Users will need to switch to a driver version that has implemented compatibility with the new API.
Future Plans for DirectSR
Microsoft claims that DirectSR will eventually support scaling variants that are independent of the GPU used. In the released preview version of DirectSR, the company only added built-in support for AMD FSR 2.2. However, it is expected that Microsoft will add built-in support for Intel DP4a (which is needed for software implementation of XeSS, independent of the GPU used) in a future update, possibly in the full version of DirectSR.
DirectSR is not currently available in any games, but developers can now utilize this API through the preview version of the Agility SDK 1.714.0.
