Feature levels in the world of Direct3D 12 are like extensions in the world of OpenGL / Vulkan. A feature level defines an additional set of functionalities and capabilities implemented by the graphics hardware.
In this article, Microsoft has introduced the new feature level 12_2 (or D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_12_2 for developers). This new feature level 12_2 is the official feature level of DirectX 12 Ultimate (see HERE and HERE).
A feature level 12_2 graphics hardware has the following capabilities:
and
The feature level 12_2 will be supported by the following hardware:
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX and NVIDIA Quadro RTX GPUs
- AMD RDNA2 GPUs (not yet released!)
- Intel upcoming discrete GPUs
For developers: to check the support of the feature level 12_2, you can use the following code:
D3D12_FEATURE_DATA_FEATURE_LEVELS feature_level{};
feature_level.NumFeatureLevels = 1;
D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL requested = D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_12_2;
feature_level.pFeatureLevelsRequested = &requested;
d3d12_device->CheckFeatureSupport(D3D12_FEATURE_FEATURE_LEVELS, &feature_level, sizeof(feature_level));
if (feature_level.MaxSupportedFeatureLevel == D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_12_2)
{
// D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_12_2 is supported.
}
where D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_12_2 = 0xc200.
The feature level 12_2 is available in the Windows 10 SDK version 20170 and later (current SDK is 19041). The SDK 20170 is currently available via the Windows Insider program.
The public/official Windows 10 SDK can be downloaded from this page.
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