Why does the game compile shaders at every startup?

[flypirat]

I know shaders cannot be precompiled because every PC is different. But to everyone's surprise, I have not changed my hardware (nor done graphic driver updates) between playing yesterday morning and yesterday evening. I understand that you might need to recompile when the PC configuration changes, but it doesn't every time between game sessions.
I am not complaining, just trying to understand.

[potato]

should only do it on first launch and whenever you change drivers and/or gpu, i dunno

[Mako]

It tries to compile shaders each time. But if you havent changed anything they should compile almost instantly compared to 1st time, its just a quick check.
I would only worry if it takes a lot of time. But then its probably not a game's issue.

[Kamamura]

So that it can run very smoothly on most configuration - and thanks for that! Other developers should take note. Other games I remember that were doing that were Natural Selection 2 and Subnautica - also run very well, with even frame delivery.

[C1REX]

It looks like quick check rather than shader compilation. Only the very first one took longer than 10s.

[Shiver]

First launch is compiling the shaders. Each subsequent "Compiling Shaders" is verifying that each shader is correctly compiled. Unreal engine has a nasty problem with handling shaders that has been the source of sudden freezes/stutters in other Unreal games. Lies of P almost perfectly avoids that issue.

[flypirat]

That explains it, thanks!

[Grim@FU_BARRACUDA]

Originally posted by Shiver:

First launch is compiling the shaders. Each subsequent "Compiling Shaders" is verifying that each shader is correctly compiled. Unreal engine has a nasty problem with handling shaders that has been the source of sudden freezes/stutters in other Unreal games. Lies of P almost perfectly avoids that issue.

This even compliments their good work even more, thank you for the info ;-)

[Stojk]

does it have anything to do with crashing when trying to verify after the first launch/shader load, then getting error when trying to launch game again needing to verify integrity and redownloading a file, then steam disk write failing on that file, then realising that only disabling my AVAST for 10 min - no firewall whitelist would do it, just straight up disabling the whole damned thing?

Also, had same issue on Hogwarts Legacy when trying to jump back in last month where I found this "fix" for disk write error