DirectX 12 support for Windows 7 brings ray-tracing to the old OS

A partnership between Microsoft and NVIDIA has provided us with a miracle: DirectX 12 and NVIDIA RTX Ray-tracing on Windows 7. This new DirectX 12 support for Windows 7 is a game changer for the aging software.

The former has already been utilised in the past. While surprising, Microsoft helped developer Blizzard bring a DX12 version of the classic MMO World of Warcraft to Windows 7.

With the introduction of DirectX 12 to the older OS, many are wondering whether or not RTX Ray-tracing will come to the platform. Yes, but with some caveats.

Detailed through Microsoft’s DirectX blog, program manager Jianye Lu explained that while Microsoft has released resources for developers to get their DX12 games on Windows 7, developers still need to support it natively.

“To better support game developers at larger scales, we are publishing the following resources to allow game developers to run their DirectX 12 games on Windows 7,” Lu wrote. “Please post technical question or feedback to our Discord channel at http://discord.gg/directx.

• Development Guidance Document – please read through this document before planning and coding
• D3D12onWin7 NuGet package, which contains header file, binary files, and license terms to unblock coding
• D3D12 sample, which runs on both Win7 and Win10 with the same binary

We would like to thank the development community for their help in evolving the DirectX 12 technology, and we have been so excited to work with game developers to bring the benefits of DirectX 12 to all their customers. Please keep the feedback coming!”

It’s an end-of-Summer miracle.