Apex Legends: DirectX 12 Beta Support Arrives on PC, New Class Passive Seemingly Leaked on Dev Stream

Apex Legends has introduced a new beta opt-in feature that enables support for DirectX 12 on PC.

As the developers implements the interface, they are asking for feedback from users to improve it. “We need your help to gather data and feedback for our initial DX12 implementation,” the developers wrote in a post on the game’s subreddit. “You may not see a difference yet, but we wanted to get it in your hands to try as many different hardware, software and streaming configurations as we can before rolling out to the whole community. Though this initial beta release may not have noticeable changes for most players, it’s an important step that lays the groundwork for future improvements.”

Apex Legends has used DirectX 11 since launch and the developers say implementing the next version “brings many exciting opportunities for the future of Apex Legends.” As the API’s implementation is still in beta, you can expect some bugs and glitches while playing the game.

When Apex Legends fully switches over from DX11, devs say they’ll be able to implement the following new features in the game:

• More parallelism. DX12 is designed to allow games to distribute CPU graphics code across multiple cores, which will result in a higher framerate
• More and higher fidelity visuals. Apex Legends has a lot of great art and stunning graphics, DX12 will give us more headroom to add even more amazing content from our artists
• New tech. We have plans for a bunch of new visual features and optimizations that are only possible with the power of DX12. More info to come in the future!
• Unified code. DX12 is similar to other platforms’ modern graphics APIs, while DX11 is quite different. Having more similar code across all platforms will speed up development and lead to fewer bugs.

You can see instructions on how to try out DX12 (or remove it) in the Reddit post.

New class passive seemingly leaked

While showcasing the new map Broken Moon that came with season 15 of the new battle pass, players saw some features showcased in the game that they haven’t seen before. As new features from the patch were being showcased, some spotted what looked like a new passive ability that support heroes could use.

In the dev stream, when the Pathfinder approached the blue bin, a text popped up on the screen saying that support bins can be used by support legends. The Pathfinder was unable to open the bin at all. This would make a decent buff to the support class, however, some online pointed out that this would be a nerf to Lifeline and seemed disappointed.