Today we’re releasing the public preview of DirectStorage 1.4 and the initial public preview of the Game Asset Conditioning Library. Together, they introduce Zstandard (Zstd) compression as an option for game assets on Windows. This new support meets the needs of the gaming ecosystem, bringing an open standard that improves compression ratios, enables faster load times, and provides smoother asset streaming for content-rich games.

We shared this availability at GDC in DirectX State of the Union: DirectStorage and Beyond, along with how our GPU hardware and software vendor partnerships will help this work reach ecosystem scale. Read on to understand all the details!

DirectStorage 1.4 public preview is now available

DirectStorage and Zstd

DirectStorage 1.4 brings Zstd codec support to the runtime. Zstd is a popular and open compression standard that meets our key criteria for the next great compression codec for game development.

We evaluated codecs across the following key criteria: compression ratio and decompression performance, hardware and software availability, and existing adoption. Zstd stands out by delivering competitive compression ratios and decompression performance, broad availability on hardware and software across operating systems, and widespread adoption in OS, cloud, and web scenarios.

In this release, Zstd is added to our multi-tier decompression framework with support for CPU and GPU decompression. This lets developers pick the best execution option for their workload today, while our GPU partners work towards future hardware specific optimizations for Zstd.

We’re also open sourcing Microsoft’s Zstd GPU decompression compute shader on the DirectStorage GitHub as an early, working baseline that all GPU implementations can reference. The shader is in development and is initially optimized for content chunked to 256KB or smaller, consistent with modern game packaging patterns for streaming workloads. We plan to expand capabilities and continue improving performance of the shader over the coming months as these compression investments scale across the PC ecosystem.

Improved developer orchestration and control

DirectStorage 1.3 introduced EnqueueRequests, giving developers more control over how data requests are issued and synchronized with graphics work. DirectStorage 1.4 continues this investment by adding global D3D12 CreatorID support. Developers specifying a CreatorID via DStorageSetConfiguration2 associates a D3D12 CreatorID with internal D3D12 command queues that DirectStorage manages on a per-device basis. This enables D3D12 command queue grouping to properly account for DirectStorage workloads facilitating improved predictability and GPU execution scheduling.

Introducing the Game Asset Conditioning Library

As we invested in Zstd, we saw opportunity to further improve the compression ratio resulting in the Game Asset Conditioning Library (GACL). GACL is designed to work in your existing content pipeline delivering up to a 50% improvement in Zstd compression ratios for your assets, while keeping runtime decompression cost low when used with DirectStorage.

This initial public preview contains lossless and lossy conditioning techniques including:

• Shuffling: Transforms BCn bit streams to promote additional and lower cost matches for Zstd.
• Block-Level Entropy Reduction (BLER) and Component-Level Entropy Reduction (CLER): Early investments in using perceptual quality to guide entropy reduction techniques at the block and component level. CLER utilizes machine learning to improve outcomes.

DirectStorage and GACL are designed to work together. After a Zstd stream is decompressed at runtime, any shuffle transforms applied during content conditioning are seamlessly reversed by DirectStorage. DirectStorage 1.4 supports this post processing step for BC1, BC3, BC4 and BC5 textures. BC7 support and additional post processing performance improvements will arrive in a future DirectStorage update.

Building for the PC ecosystem with our GPU hardware vendor partners

We are co-engineering closely with GPU hardware vendors to ensure Zstd decompression performs well across the breadth of gaming hardware. We’re excited about the optimizations each IHV will deliver in driver updates later this year that will light up even better performance when using Zstd through DirectStorage.

AMD: “Aligning the industry on an open compression standard builds a foundation for future game titles to deliver immersive experiences with even larger worlds than realistically possible today. We plan to make optimizations for AMD GPUs available in a public driver during the second half of 2026 and look forward to seeing how developers use these investments to enhance the player experience.” – Daniel Staheli, CVP Software Development, AMD

Intel: “We’re co-engineering with Microsoft to tune Zstandard decompression through DirectStorage across our GPU architectures. We look forward to sharing our performance improvements in the months ahead.” – Lisa Pearce, Corporate Vice President, Software Group, Intel

NVIDIA: “NVIDIA is excited to bring Zstd support to game developers, with decompression optimizations tailored for NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs arriving in the second half of this year.” – Patrick Neill, Distinguished Engineer, NVIDIA

Qualcomm: “Before the end of the year, we’re excited to bring tuned driver updates that reflect our investments in Zstd decompression on our platforms. We look forward to these investments ensuring reliable, high performance asset streaming across Windows games.” – Nagendra Kumar, Senior Director of Engineering, Qualcomm

Get started with Zstd

Get started with Zstd support in DirectStorage 1.4 and Game Asset Conditioning Library 1.0 using the steps below. This public preview release is meant to let you start evaluating Zstd with minimal disruption in your existing content and build pipeline.

1. Download and try the DirectStorage 1.4 public preview to see Zstd support in action.
2. Download and integrate the Game Asset Conditioning Library 1.0 public preview into your existing content pipeline.
3. Run the new GameAssetConditioningDemo sample to see the recommended API usage and integration patterns. The sample starts with the asset content pipeline, uses GACL to shuffle and compress BCn textures at build time, and then loads and renders them at runtime through DirectStorage and D3D12.
4. Run the updated GpuDecompressionBenchmark sample, which now supports Zstd, to compare throughput and CPU overhead across compression formats on your target hardware.
5. Check out the Zstd GPU decompression compute shader to see how it integrates with DirectStorage and contribute improvements that scale across the breadth of GPUs.

We want your feedback as you explore these previews, especially around real-world pipeline integration, asset streaming behavior in production content, and what you need next from DirectStorage and Game Asset Conditioning Library. Feel free to open issues on the DirectStorage or Game Asset Conditioning Library GitHub, reach out over email at askwindstorage@microsoft.com, or use the #directstorage channel on the DirectX Discord.