Question How difficult is Direct Storage to implement in game coding?

Not sure where this belongs so will just try here. It's been said that implementing FSR isn't that difficult yet it's still taken months to finally see it implemented in existing popular titles (RDR2, Flight Sim for instance).

I'm curious because Direct Storage does seems to make a significant difference in playability with Forespoken. Although it's difficult to say since there's no way I know to easily turn it off and achieve a controlled "apples to apples" test with all else the same. I'd have to run it off an HDD and that's hardly a fair comparison to even an SSD with out Direct Storage. So would like to know if there's any chance we'd see it in existing popular titles, or even future titles if it's a bear to implement.
 

USAFRet

Titan
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Not sure where this belongs so will just try here. It's been said that implementing FSR isn't that difficult yet it's still taken months to finally see it implemented in existing popular titles (RDR2, Flight Sim for instance).

I'm curious because Direct Storage does seems to make a significant difference in playability with Forespoken. Although it's difficult to say since there's no way I know to easily turn it off and achieve a controlled "apples to apples" test with all else the same. I'd have to run it off an HDD and that's hardly a fair comparison to even an SSD with out Direct Storage. So would like to know if there's any chance we'd see it in existing popular titles, or even future titles if it's a bear to implement.
I can't imagine it is "difficult".

Rather, the question would be....does the game creator want to, and have, the necessary resources to put on the problem?
And is there a large enough user base to warrant those resources?

How many gamers have the relevant hardware to take advantage of it?
If only 1% of your user base has the necessary hardware, and plays games that could take advantage of it...budgeting for a team to implement might not be in their interests.
 
I can't imagine it is "difficult".
....
Well..that's the question, and would like some explanation why it is, or is not, difficult.

Requirements have been changing though...all it requires is a GPU that's DX12U capable and an NVME SSD (it used to be a PCIe 3 NVME) on Win10 or Win11. Even the 1TB capacity requirement has been lifted. At the rate people have been (or had been through the pandemic) upgrading I'd have to think there's a large base with the hardware to take advantage of it, although some much better than others of course. Almost certainly so considering the eagerness with which developers have pivoted to ray tracing which has exceptional hardware demands and is not so easy to implement well (or so I've been told).

I can see why there's not going to be a clamor to implement it, though, as with ray tracing. Mostly because, Forspoken aside, there's been no way to demonstrate it's effectiveness. Even with Forspoken there's no way to compare...and I tend to doubt it's going to be that popular of a game. Not with the reviews it's gotten that are mostly deserved, IMO.
 
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