Soon, Windows PC games will be able to be played with graphics enhancers. DirectStorage was the first step in the effort to improve game load times. It is one of Microsoft's most requested features.
The work that needs to be done to decompress assets in games can be done by the graphics card. Massive amounts of assets are included in modern games to reduce the total size of the game.
According to a senior program manager at Microsoft, compression formats have historically been only used for the most powerful machines in the world. The alternative method in DirectStorage 1.1 is called GPU decompression, and it involves moving the assets to the graphics processing unit.
The processor is freed up for other game tasks with the help of the graphics processing unit.
Load times can be greatly reduced in games if you move this workload to a graphics card. It can be as much as three times faster, according to Microsoft. DirectStorage 1.1 is expected to kick off a new journey for game developers to make full use of gaming hardware and speed up load times for PC games over the next few years.
Improvements will be available in both Windows 10 and Windows 11. Microsoft says that Windows 11 users will be best served by the IO stack's additional optimizations.
Ahead of Microsoft's final release later this year, compatible DirectStorage 1.1 drivers will need to be released by the manufacturers of graphics cards. DirectStorage has the promise of blazing-fast load times, but we haven't seen many PC games use it yet. It was supposed to be the first big game with DirectStorage support, but it was delayed.
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