It appears that Nixxes is currently working on a DX12 update for the PC version of Rise of the Tomb Raider. As you may have heard, a DX12 .dll file was included in the PC version of the game. And while the game does not currently support Microsoft’s latest API, the first PC patch that was recently released added a hidden new DX12 option to the game’s launcher.
For what is worth, the DX12 option does not currently work. Our guess is that Nixxes included before adding support to DX12, meaning that a later patch will most probably enable DX12.
The above results can be achieved by replacing ROTTR.exe with the original executable from the retail version. Steam owners can do so by opting into the Beta branch.
Moreover, it appears that Nixxes will add support for NVIDIA’s TXAA anti-aliasing option. The game currently supports FXAA, SMAA and SSAA. Our guess is that a future patch will also add NVIDIA’s TXAA.
Rumour also has it that NVIDIA’s VXAO will be added to the game, though both Nixxes and NVIDIA have not commented on this yet.
Kudos to Reddit’s member ‘-Olek‘ for finding it out!
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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Ha! …and people told me that it wouldn’t happen. Its the least that Crystal Dynamics can do for not releasing a Tomb Raider “Definitive Edition” on PC.
That Definitive Edition is not the Definitive Edition of the game. Lara looks ugly in that version and the original PC version still looks way better overall.
Crystal Dynamics went for a younger look with Lara and that is the same look used in Rise of the Tomb Raider. I hope that you’re not going to wait for a cracked version of ROTTR to apply a face mod, lol.
How old is lara in ROTR?
Perma-Death Endurance Mode….. As a DLC.
Nice.
Let’s hope that the DX12 mode won’t be a DLC.
ssssshhhhh. don’t give them ideas
…never happen before that just API change/update (not platform) would require additional purchase.
It’s not a difficulty setting as I previously thought. It’s a large Siberian map with tons of tombs. Would have been better as a difficulty option.
I wouldn’t want to play that mode anyway. There were multitude of platforming puzzles with obvious solutions on where Laura is supposed to go next, and instead she derp jumped into a chasm or bounced off a clearly climbable ledge for some unknown glitchy reason. There were only a few instances where I had legitimate deaths due to my mess ups, but many more because of glitches.
I still have to finish the game (28 hours played) . I’m at 79% trying to get all the stuff from each map and I’m really close to the ending probably but don’t want to finish it yet! It sure has some “re-playability” with those cards and such, so if that DX12 patch comes out after I finish it I will be trying it out for sure.
Saw that thing about enabling the Beta version but going to wait for the actual patch if it comes of course.
And hope it improves the visual quality a little bit more since the AA in this game is garbage (SMAA x2 and x4 drops frames and looks awful at 1080p like it doesn’t work at all…had to use FXAA…) and also improves performance by just a little bit in those areas where frames drops. (Geothermal Valley and some areas at the Soviet base)
Good point, definitely not if nvidia is involved. Nvidia generally supports only in-house effects that cripples perfomance of others.
AMD users don’t need to use effects NVIDIA provide, it’s a choice but you still find ways of moaning about it.
Well thankfully, nobody forces you to use these “said” options. People always want better graphics and better effects. When the game end up lagging, they rant about how unoptimized it is. Could it be “sometimes” that the effects take too much horsepower ? Gamers want the best graphics but it must run on a NVIDIA 6600GT.
This would be awesome, at least Nixxes is giving us options for the PC that tax out systems and look far better than the XB1 version.
Hope that proper Async support will arrive as well. TXAA and VXAO would be nice too.
NVIDIA GPUs not having Async compute hardware support might not be such a big deal as well, we will just have higher CPU overhead which shouldn’t be an issue for i5/i7 CPUs, apparently it really depends on the workload of the Async Compute. NVIDIA will use HyperQ in their driver for Async Compute.
NVIDIA said that they will add Async Compute via drivers.
Yes using their HyperQ.
Well that entirely depends on the workload like you said but in all honesty having driver overhead is not ideal in itself. Reducing CPU overhead is one of the prime reasons why low overhead APIs are introduced and if we don’t have supporting hardware for them and use software instead then what’s the point for saving extra resources for other stuff ?
That being said AMD, should also adopt what they are missing like Conservative Raster and Tiled Resources. Right now both sides are lacking in DX12.
VXAO would be nice. But TXAA? lol nope. I would rather see SMAA fixed then TXAA put in.
I’d rather have a choice of both.
…. TXAA is just a joke… Always had been and only looked good in Titan fall. And VXAO is gonna hurt a lot of feelings and that is why Nvidia is being hush hush about it for Rise of the tomb raider
Thankfully that’s just your opinion, I’m not going to rant and rave about a choice of graphics options. Use it or don’t.
no need to rant a rave… we all know TXAA is junk.
By your logic, so is TAA which is an open AA tech but it’s blurry as hell in Fallout 4. You’ve got to realise it’s temporal AA and all the solutions have more of a soften, blurry effect.
Yeah my logic since I seen it since day 1… And it has only looked good in Titan Fall. Everything else it has been a joke. Nvidia should just scrap it and come up with something better. They had their day in the sun with FXAA but that was then and TXAA is bad just like MFAA is a joke since more and more games are staying away from MSAA.
Nvidia just needs to start from scratch with a AA option.
We will probably get something better with DX12, consoles are getting a low level AA solution which Ubisoft is implementing in that new Farcry game.
low lvl AA solution… WTF are you talking about. It does not work like that at all.
All it is… Is a form of AA for the games engine. Has nothing to do with only working on DX12 or a specific API.
AA solutions can be hardware or software, HRAA is going to be used in Farcry Primal.
Yeah and it’s dealing with the games engine… has nothing to do with the API. Besides all these so called DX12 features are not even DX12 API related. They are all DX11.2/11.3
I never said they did, I said we may get a better AA solution with DX12 being used. DX10/DX11 actually changed the way AA is used.
Ether way we are going to see a lot of upset people with a patch soon for Tomb Raider. Seems M$ paid S/E to use DX11.2 / 11.3 features and put them under DX12. Which means only Windows 10 users can use them…
You mean like DX10 Crysis, well let’s see, I think it’s too early for conspiracy theory’s.
TXAA actually looks good in ACS though in some games like WatchDogs, it’s absolutely horrible.
you think it looks good in ACS? hmmm I don’t know I guess I will have to reload the game and give it a go…
thankfully, no one asks your permission to implement temporal AA.
couldn’t care less about your broken SMAA. you should be able to inject this sh*t anyway.
+1 To hell with that joke TXAA!
To bad this game dont do old msaa, thats a f*ckn joke :/
smaa in this game is borked. once they fix it. It should look good.
Yeah I know, to bad. So lets hope they doin it fast enough.
Well the more AA solutions the better. I personally dislike MFAA more than TXAA because TXAA at least enjoyed some degree of success in games but MFAA was a total failure in terms of support and compatibility with Nvidia’s own most important feature (SLI), but like you said it will be great if they fix the existing AA solutions as well.
Most likely will not happen till Pascal cards come out. Since TXAA started with Kepler. I hope TXAA ends with Maxwell since to me it’s just a waste of time to keep trying to make it better when it’s not good at all.
I just figured something out. What they are adding can be done under a combination of DX11.2 as well as 11.3. Only if they are told aka Paid to use it under DX12 it would mean only Windows 10 user’s could only use these “DX12” features. M$ is being sneaky.
Since the game has a uber rebate on windows store, i wouldn’t be surprised if they were paid to implement 0.1 feature of DX12 just to call the title DX12 compatible lol… And yea to keep it on win10.
DX11.3 won’t happen.
It should be fine, Async is only used for the volumetric effects in ROTTR on XB1 anyway, people seem to assume Async Compute will be used for everything. They use it to speed up expensive graphical effects, i.e volumetric effects.
Exactly and that’s the reason why RoTR enjoys such expensive lighting even on XB1. On PC it’s achievable with the hardware we have but having this on XB1 is indeed an achievement of Async. Hope it can help improve performance on PC version to some extent.
Yes, it is really a shame that Xbox One version is more advanced with Async and DX12 and on a PC with far more powerful hardware we got DX11 port… They should fix it as soon as possible.
I don’t know. Even at current Patch everything about the PC version looks better then the Xbox1 version.
PC version of course looks better, if you have good enough hardware. But still, it could scale a lot better for weaker GPUs.
I would have to bust out my 750 TI since I currently still have it in the box lol XD
It’s used in the XB1 version because the volumetric effects are very GPU intensive on it’s weak hardware, something the PC doesn’t need to worry about so much. PC games have used volumetric effects right from Crysis in 2007.
My point was it still can be improved on the PC. If console can run on modern API, PC gaming should not be left behind.
PC isn’t being left behind, they just did it to the XB1 because it’s underpowered. The PC version has better quality effects anyway.
Yes it’s about time we see some benefits on DX12 using a real demanding game.
Xbox One version more advanced?? What a joke. The Xbox One version is almost unplayable due to extremely high input lag. I’m glad Nixxes took a vastly different approach, resulting in a PC game which is almost completely free of input lag.
If it was not advanced, low-level optimized, no way it could run on that weak hardware.
Don’t you think the Xbox360 version is already more advanced?? Sure, it looks a bit worse. But it runs very well on extremely weak and old hardware, with much less input lag as the Xbox One version.
Thing is you make the assumption worthy performance gains will be worth the time, they just might not be, that’s why ASync is used on very expensive effects.
Purehair isn’t expensive on the GPU any more though, just like HBAO+ isn’t for a superior effect.
Heh, DX12 support would be sweet.
Too late. I already finished the game on Friday. I have the Baba Yaga DLC to do but i can not currently buy it so… I am at 58% when i finished the game. Maybe i might consider do the other 42% when the DX 12 patch releases
HYPE!!!
And by the way, Olek is a reader of DSOG and you didn’t mention it, John.
I posted the whole thing on DSOG comments before going to reddit.
I hope they’ll deliver it. This could finally kick off DX12 competition.
I never been a fan of TXAA but I sure hope SMAA is fixed because I hate having to inject something into a game that needs to be fixed in the 1st place.
As for VXAO Nvidia is being hush hush about for a reason. HBAO+ works well on both Nvidia and AMD gpu’s. However VXAO uses Conservative Raster as well as volume tiled resources which currently runs well under Maxwell GPU’s under Nvidia’s “12.1” spec. Which is more like DX11.3 since I don’t see this game having a CPU overhead update since it is not CPU bound at all.
If you’re talking about Async Compute, it’s actually not a requirement for the DX12 spec.
Nothing about my Comment has anything remotely related to Async compute.
Yea wtf lol…
That’s why I said “if”, I thought you were talking about the “12.1 spec” and how you said 11.3 is more like it.
TXAA is totaly worthless for me, hate everything blurry and thats what TXAA is = msaa+FXAA, or something close like it. So no TXAA crap for me, I take SMAA or MSAA + nVidias MFAA, thats the best!!
MFAA is a total waste as well. They still have not got it to work with SLI anyways. Besides it only works if a game uses MSAA anyways. Other then that it’s not all that great next to MSAA.
Aah alright I see.Well I just come back to pc gaming with my skylake 6600k and gtx 970, and have just learned about this AA method in GTA-V 🙂
To bad about the SLI as you said tho, for those that do SLI!
But for those game it works is doin really good.Read an article from guru 3d about it!
I read them all… I been doing this PC thing since 1986…..
Good bro, you are a veteran then 🙂
GT is leaving the business… Sad day in gaming…
Uhh come again ?
GameTrailers… one of the best in the business without a crew of sell outs for their video’s.
Aah okey I see!
Remembering checking out that site long ago.
So they have closed down, sad to hear :/
MFAA seems to work well only on foliage…with a single GPU anyway.
TXAA is MSAA+FXAA+ multiple-frames taken into account to make better judgments about edges and how they should be smoothed. That temporal part is key. Shimmering is one of the main issues that temporal sampling helps solve without require vast amounts of sub-samples.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVdp2B7cG-o
TXAA has temporal filter.
This Tomb Raider needs SMAAxT2 asap because the edge shimmering is unbearable in many places. It ruins the otherwise gourgeous visuals of the game.
Indeed it does. I just wonder who is really running the show for all these “features” being put in.
I would say that except for lara’s hair the game does not look so beautiful at all…maybe the only cool effect is the snow; water, sky, foliage or even rocks look like they are in a 720p low res.
VXAO = VXGI right ? Or will it only do AO and no IL ?
Voxel-based Ambient Occlusion, unfortunately John didn’t explain what VXAO is or what it stands for.
Why does that person have only 1x AF on?
If you look closely all the options are out of place anyways… They patched it soon after. But hey at least I can Alt Tab out on Windows 10 now without the game going into perma black screen.
don’t care, not using W10 unless I have to.
What? Exclusive fullscreen is just their name for fullscreen.
One is borderless windowed.
this game sucks that’s why i got 2 gtx 980Ti to play a f console port but the gfx’s cost me around 1700% it’s very cheap. it’s like getting it for free guys..
The 1st was amd evolved and was a perfect pc game.This Nvidia involved and its unoptimised as hell.Damn.
:)) gameBREAKS
I wish they would just announce when they are releasing DX12 so I can just wait for it, I’m not into replaying games and once I’m done with the story mode I doubt I will play the game again.
I hope this somehow means Vram sharing for those of us who have still have a separate card for Physx but not SLI.
I just got the game and was hoping to use DX12 damnit lol
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