Here's what you need to know about the new DirectStorage API that will be coming soon to Windows games. (File) Microsoft has announced that Windows Games can soon implement support for the DIrectStorage API. The API, which first appeared on the Xbox Series X/S consoles, will allow PC games on Windows to utilise the full speed of modern NVMe SSDs and reduce loading times significantly.
Microsoft had announced the API back in September 2020, but it is only now being made available to developers to add to games. Previous APIs allowed games to load assets from your PC’s drive by performing a single I/O request at a time, each of which would have to be completed before another could be processed.
This didn’t really make the most out of newer NVMe SSDs that are capable of multi-gigabyte read speeds, which meant loading times for games didn’t really see much improvement. Moreover, the games we play often contain compressed data in assets, which need to be decompressed before loading.
Microsoft’s DirectStorage API addresses this shortcoming by allowing the use of multiple I/O processes at a time along with using decompression technologies. This, as you probably guessed, allows games to load much faster. This also allows developers to load bigger assets for the games as players will not be waiting due to the faster speeds.
As per a report by XDA Developers, the benefits of the new API will come to anyone using NVMe SSD storage, and will be even more significant if you’re on Windows 11.
Microsoft hasn’t revealed what games will support the feature yet, but it is safe to assume that any title that makes use of DirectStorage on Xbox will do the same on Windows, but after an update that developers will likely push out soon.
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