Futuremark Adding DX12 Test To VRMark November 22

Futuremark's upcoming VRMark Cyan Room update includes a new test that measures your PC’s performance with the more efficient Direct X 12 API. The company said that it created a “pure DirectX 12 engine” for the new test, which allowed it to create a “large, complex environment” with the many visual effects enabled.

Last year, Futuremark released the VRMark VR performance evaluation software, which enables you to test your PC’s theoretic performance in VR experiences. The original release of VRMark featured two rooms: the Orange Room, which measures how well your PC would handle the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive headsets, and the Blue Room, which renders the scene with advanced lighting effects at 5K resolution to simulate the performance needs for future VR headsets. The upcoming Cyan Room provides an example of how developers can build VR experiences with impressive visuals “even on modest PC systems.”

VRMark is primarily for benchmarking your computer hardware, but the software includes an Experience Mode that allows you to wander around and explore the test environment at your own pace. The original release featured experiences for both the Blue and Orange rooms, and the Cyan Room update lets you explore the detailed DirectX 12 environment from the new test. The experience mode doesn’t give you a performance score at the end, but it enables you to adjust the resolution and detail settings so that you can get a sense for how different settings affect performance, and how you (as a participant in a VR experience) react to those changes.

Futuremark said that the Cyan Room would be available on November 22 as a free update for VRMark Advanced Edition and VRMark Professional Edition. The Basic Edition, which is available for free on Steam, is limited to the Orange Room test.

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Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years.