Microsoft releases Agility SDK 1.722-preview with new raytracing features

Microsoft released Agility SDK 1.620 retail and Agility SDK 1.722-preview on October 28. The 1.722-preview update introduces DirectX Raytracing (DXR) features called Clustered Geometry and Partitioned Top-Level Acceleration Structures (PTLAS). These features are designed to make scene updates more efficient. Clustered Geometry breaks animation and generated geometry into small, reusable clusters containing up to 256 triangles and 256 vertices. PTLAS allows ray tracing to focus update costs on specific changed regions of a large world while keeping other acceleration-structure data.

Image: DirectX Developer Blog

Applications can use these two features together or separately. Reports say that testing Clustered Geometry on an AMD Radeon RX 9070 resulted in nearly 90% VRAM savings and frame rates up to 66 times higher, though real-world gaming improvements may only be a few percentage points.

AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA provide day-one support for these features, while Qualcomm support is planned for 2027. Hardware compatibility for older raytracing graphics cards remains subject to further evaluation.

The 1.620 retail release includes DirectX Dump Files, Fence Barriers Tier 1, Batched Asynchronous Command List APIs, and Partial Graphics Programs. Shader Model 6.10 remains in preview but is planned for the 1.621 retail release in early December. Tier 2 support for Fence Barriers is still restricted to preview SDKs.