Battlefield 1’s Alpha Build Suggests DirectX 12 Support

Just in case you’re not already aware, Battlefield 1 is currently going through a closed multiplayer alpha phase that gave us an opportunity to find out more about its graphics settings and API. Well, it looks like the next big installment in the Battlefield series has a good chance to use the new DirectX 12 API, but it is worth noting that right now this particular option is toggleable, which means that Battlefield 1 will run in DX11 by default. EA DICE has confirmed DX12 support for its Frostbite engine about a year back, and even though nothing official has been announced just yet, the advanced graphics settings in the alpha build include an option to change the game’s API.

Other available settings relate to texture quality, texture filtering, effects, lighting quality, mesh, terrain, post-process, anti-aliasing, ambient occlusion, and undergrowth, not to mention the  resolution and UI scale sliders. Apparently, the native resolution is displayed at 50% on the slider, which means that cranking this up to 100% on a 1440p display would basically mean rendering at 5K, at least according to the game’s creators. Not too long ago, the game was shown running maxed out at 1440p on a GTX 1080 and an Intel Skylake i7 CPU with a resolution scale of 100%, and the gameplay appeared quite smooth. This means that Battlefield 1 will probably be very well optimized, and that’s definitely good news.