Microsoft today released DirectX Shader Model 6.9 alongside a host of new Direct3D 12 enhancements. The company had been previewing SM 6.9 since 2025, which now attains general release. Microsoft released the update as part of Agility SDK 1.619 and the complementary DirectX Shader Compiler (DXC) version 1.9.2602.16. The company also released Agility SDK 1.719-preview, which introduces a fresh set of experimental features. At the heart of the Agility SDK 1.619 release is Shader Model 6.9, bringing powerful new processing tools to graphics developers. A standout new feature is "Long Vector" support, allowing developers to load, store, and seamlessly perform element-wise operations on HLSL vectors up to 1024 elements in length. The update also extends specialized HLSL functions, such as IsNan, IsInf, and the newly added IsNorma, to fully support 16-bit floats. Lastly, previously optional hardware capabilities, like 16-bit and 64-bit shader operations, are now strictly required.

Besides Shader Model upgrades, some key DirectX ray tracing (DXR) 1.2 features are officially exiting preview, such as OMM and SER. Opacity Micromaps (OMMs) enable hardware to handle complex alpha-tested geometry far more efficiently, bypassing costly shader invocations. The feature was announced way back in 2022 with NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace architecture. Meanwhile, Shader Execution Reordering (SER) empowers applications to dynamically sort rays for highly optimized parallel execution. Microsoft has directly addressed developer feedback by integrating several targeted quality-of-life updates. Highlights include Revised Resource View Creation API, as well as new CPU Timeline Query Resolves that eliminate unnecessary GPU overhead. The table below compares hardware support for Shader Model 6.9 across the three GPU brands.