Microsoft has introduced a preview of two DirectX Raytracing tools intended to make detailed, changing scenes less costly to update. Microsoft engineer Amar Patel describes Clustered Geometry and Partitioned Top-Level Acceleration Structures (PTLAS) as part of a unified, GPU-driven API. They are available in Agility SDK 1.722.0-preview.
Clustered Geometry breaks the structures used for ray tracing into reusable chunks. Each cluster can contain up to 256 triangles and 256 vertices, letting developers assemble existing clusters instead of repeatedly building geometry from triangles. PTLAS takes a scene-wide approach: It focuses updates on regions that changed while retaining structure data elsewhere. Developers can use the two features separately or together.
In a Microsoft development sample on an AMD Radeon RX 9070, a scene ran at 1.2 frames per second with traditional acceleration-structure rebuilds and 79 FPS with Clustered Geometry, VideoCardz reporter WhyCry reports. The reported comparison also puts total acceleration-structure memory at 7,519 MiB versus 774 MiB. These are sample results, not expected gains in existing games. VideoCardz notes that performance depends on the scene, configuration and GPU, and that temporary memory needs during builds increase.
Trying the preview requires matching Agility SDK preview headers and runtime, a supporting driver, and Windows Developer Mode. Microsoft lists support for all NVIDIA RTX GPUs, AMD Radeon RX 9000-series GPUs, Intel Arc B-Series graphics and specified Core Ultra processors. Qualcomm targets Snapdragon X2 driver support for the first half of 2027. Microsoft says the features need no new hardware capabilities beyond existing ray-tracing support, but availability depends on vendor drivers.
