Fortnite is getting DirectX 12 support soon

Epic Games today announced that its behemoth battle royale title Fortnite is receiving DirectX 12 support in the upcoming 11.20 update, offering another option over DirectX 11. This is coming on the heels of the Fortnite Chapter 2 update, which brought in a wealth of new features to the title, including a new map.

Epic says in its announcement blog post that when using DirectX 12, Fortnite could perform at a "higher and steadier frame rate" on high-end graphics cards. "This is because DX12 delivers better CPU performance and allows for the distribution of rendering jobs across multiple cores," explained the studio.

The interesting bit comes later though, where Epic says it plans to add new features to Fortnite that will only be available to players on DirectX 12. While the developer doesn’t go into any details, this could be the first step in adding ray tracing support to Fortnite, a feature that would only serve up better visuals to those on DirectX 12 and wouldn"t impact players on DirectX 11.

Players with DirectX 12 supporting graphics cards were urged to test out the API when the 11.20 update is pushed out, letting Epic squash bugs before any of the new features are rolled out.