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PC Gamer
PC Gamer
Jess Kinghorn

Texture pop-in may be about to pop-out of existence thanks to even faster asset streaming ushered in by new Zstandard support in DirectStorage

Microsoft Nvidia AMD Xbox
A rendered image used to promote the DirectStorage feature test in 3DMark.

Back in my day, I would pass the time waiting for my Sims family to load back into existence by staring out of the window and appreciating all the natural beauty that surrounded my folks' place. Not so anymore—compression tech has gotten so good that the only fronds I have time to contemplate are the polygonal progeny of SpeedTree.

One may be forgiven for thinking load times can't get much speedier, but Microsoft has released further details about a swish new GPU decompression algorithm in DirectStorage 1.4, assuring that they can. The company first released these details at GDC 2026, during the DirectX State of the Union 2026: DirectStorage and Beyond talk.

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