When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. DirectX Raytracing gets performance boost with Opacity Micromaps, now in Agility SDK 1.616 Paul Hill Neowin @ziks_99 · May 31, 2025 07:44 EDT Back in March at the Game Developers Conference 2025 (GDC 2025), Microsoft unveiled DirectX Raytracing (DXR) 1.2, which introduces Opacity Micromaps (OMM). The Redmond giant has now announced the Agility SDK 1.616-retail, which includes support for OMM. You can grab it at the Agility SDK downloads page right now. What are OMMs? The new Opacity Micromaps (OMM) feature has been designed to improve the efficiency of rendering objects such as foliage, fences, transparent features, and other complex alpha-tested geometry (objects with transparent parts that aren't fully opaque or transparent) in ray-traced scenes. The main performance boost comes from reducing the need for “AnyHit” shaders, which require lots of computation and can slow down raytracing. The performance improvements from OMM are not just theoretical, either. At GDC 2025, Remedy Entertainment showed off the performance wins it had using the technology in Alan Wake 2. When will we get OMM support? In terms of support for OMM, Nvidia already has it activated on all Nvidia GeForce RTX GPUs, AMD is planning to make it available during the summer, and Intel is still evaluating the technology and “looks forward to supporting the feature in the future.” Before users can unlock the performance boosts associated with OMM, developers will need to start building with tools such as the new Agility SDK, which was released on Friday. Aside from performance boosts, it could also unlock new artistic possibilities and reduce development hurdles. How do OMMs work? In ray tracing, when a ray hits alpha-tested geometry, the graphics card runs an AnyHit shader to determine if the part of the object the ray hit is opaque or transparent. If it’s transparent, the ray keeps going until it hits another object. As mentioned, using the AnyHit shaders can slow things down, so they’re best avoided as much as possible - this is where Opacity Micromaps comes in. These OMMs are essentially a pre-check for AnyHit shaders. They first try to determine if an object is opaque or transparent, and only if they aren’t sure will AnyHit shaders be run. This process is much more efficient than running AnyHit shaders in every situation. Going forward The option to use OMMs in games via the Agility SDK is a big step forward in ray tracing performance. However, end users will need to wait until developers have started building with it in their games and support by hardware manufacturers like Nvidia and AMD is also key. Developers can head to the Agility SDK downloads and grab version 1.616 to get started. Tags Report a problem with article Follow @NeowinFeed