Submitted 2 days ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to gaming@lemmy.zip
Advanced Shader Delivery uses precompiled shaders for “console-like load times” across PC hardware.
Yeah. That’s the real problem microslop. The shader wait times. We all love copilot and the death of an OS. But these wait times is where we all draw a line.
“Oh no, the game with awesome graphics I spent money on to run on my awesome graphics card I also spent (way too much 😭) money on now wants to optimize its performance for my configuration specifically!? The audacity!”
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
40 minutes??? Wtf?
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The developers know it’s bad, and the game’s next mega-patch is focused on fixing all the tech debt they’ve accrued during Early Access. You can already choose to play while the shaders are still compiling, but that slows down compilation multiple-fold and you’ll be missing features such as lighting until it’s finished so it’s barely playable (especially considering how ridiculously atmospheric the game is - there’s a reason the shader load is so heavy and it’s totally worth it).
It’s also probably nowhere near as bad a wait for most players. Shaders are compiled on the CPU and which shader paths are compiled is based on what your GPU supports. I have a relatively new GPU (4060) and a fifteen year old CPU, so it’s compiling the fanciest of shaders on an ancient four-threaded relic.
The game itself runs fine - 60 FPS at 1080p on my ancient machine. It’s just getting to play that’s annoying.
Randelung@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I have a Skylake CPU. I know if Microslop goes through with this, it’ll just be another “oh sorry, can’t run this software on your hardware. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Please buy a new computer. Also SafeBoot and Intel for some reason.”
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
Not played enshrouded in a while, should play again sometime. Ideally play some coop too
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Enshrouded, Grounded, and Abiotic Factor have been my favorite games of the past few years, and all are even better in co-op.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Only got better 😍
SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 2 days ago
Every driver update? There goes my idea to compile while the game is downloading.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Lol.
I am now trying to imagine like…
A torrent client, that is JIT Lua, and you just ‘stream’ the game, as you download more of it.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
… forty minutes?
Good lord.
I think the longest amount of time I’ve spent compiling shaders on a Steam Deck is for Cyberpunk 77, and it can’t have been much more than 5 minutes.
… Either that or trying to get a Switch emulator to properly pre-compile shaders.
But anyway: This is an unaviodable thing that has to be done when the game relies so heavily on GPU shaders.
You have to actually generate those shaders, before you can use them, and that’s gonna be specific to your hardware.
So what MSFT is doing here is just pre-compiling them for I guess … every game they offer, with every Nvidia GPU/driver update, and then having a cloud system that allows you to download them instead of compiling them on your end.
So basically its kinda like downloading a game + hardware specific driver, sort of.
Also, I… I’m not sure, but I don’t think Steam does this.
Yeah, its indicated that shader compilation is happening in the ‘Download’ section, but so are ‘File Operations’ - aka, cleaning up loose files and doing memspace management …
I am pretty sure you are just actually compiling the shaders on your own hardware, its just visualized to the user as a step in the ‘Download’ section, to get across the idea that the game isn’t ready to be played untill all those steps are complete.
Or, you can change a setting somewhere, and it just skips that step so that it isn’t part of the initial ‘Download’ process, and instead occurs the first time you hit play, or, after any game/driver update that has delta’d the shader code.
anguo@piefed.ca 2 days ago
Shaders are definitely downloaded on the Steam Deck. Don’t know about other hardware though.
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s in Options - Downloads - Shader Pre-Caching.
It’ll download shaders matching your card+driver and (if you’re the first with that specific config) upload your own compiled shaders for others to use.