What is shader precompiling good for? TURN IT OFF.

[Kenjjoo]

Title.

I turned it off with a command, the game loads up in the matter of few seconds (from desktop to the actual gameplay) and it's still running as poorly as before. I have a feeling that the shader precompiling doesn't even work, it just takes up time.

The game still stutters in NPC populated areas, the framerate is still bad, I have no visual bugs - all of these things I compared with shader precompilation ON & OFF.

So, if you can, just turn it off. Here's how.

Go in: C:\Users\........\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Config\Windows
If you have an Engine.ini config, open it and add this line at the bottom:

[SystemSettings]
r.PSOWarmup.WarmupMaterials=0

Save it and open the game. Enjoy.

If you do not have it, create one and paste the line in. Again, save it, open the game & enjoy not waiting 30 minutes for shaders to compile on a good pc.

[Alias]

Originally posted by Kenjjoo:

Originally posted by Alias:

It is not pre-compiling, it only does that once. It is checking the files, that why it is shorter on subsequent loads. Maybe look up some basics.

Maybe they shouldn't make it take so long on an nvme m2 7000/7000 read/write drive? It does not make sense to take almost half an hour to check the files.

Shader pre-compilation & checking after every start of the game is just lazyness from the dev's side.

Presuming lazyness from the devs in a little unjustified. I do dot presume to know their overall work effort or the circumstances they faced.

Please remember that when the shaders are getting checked, 30 secs to 2 minutes is really not a big deal. Maybe start S2, them make a cuppa.

[JanPlayerll]

Try opening UE5 editor and modify any BP... You have to precompile almost everything.

btw 30 minutes for shader precompiling is wild! (unless you're just exaggerating a lot) Try manually maxing GPU and CPU cooling.
In my case it's 15 seconds on max fan speed or 2 minutes on automatic cooling.

[Momowz]

If it is taking half an hour to warmup the files you might have an issue with your shader cache configuration. It may be too small so the game recompiles them every time ?

[Alias]

Originally posted by xXPudzianXx:

Try opening UE5 editor and modify any BP... You have to precompile almost everything.

btw 30 minutes for shader precompiling is wild! (unless you're just exaggerating a lot) Try manually maxing GPU and CPU cooling.
In my case it's 15 seconds on max fan speed or 2 minutes on automatic cooling.

Indeed. I believe the hyperbole is pretty strong in this post.

[AllanWake™]

"enjoy not waiting 30 minutes for shaders to compile on a good pc."

Who you bs gen-z?

It takes less then 5min on SSD + i7 6700k (at first launch or GPU driver re-install).
AND about 30 sec every time after first.

SO 30sec is 30min for gen-z?

f out of here.....

p.s. its not recompiling shaders every launch, its verifying. Text doesnt state correctly. And you can turn that off, but if shaders got damaged in anyway, you WILL get crashes and massive stutters. Because you turned off "if everything is good" check.

[Kenjjoo]

Originally posted by AllanWake™:

"enjoy not waiting 30 minutes for shaders to compile on a good pc."

Who you bs gen-z?

It takes less then 5min on SSD + i7 6700k (at first launch or GPU driver re-install).
AND about 30 sec every time after first.

SO 30sec is 30min for gen-z?

f out of here.....

p.s. its not recompiling shaders every launch, its verifying. Text doesnt state correctly. And you can turn that off, but if shaders got damaged in anyway, you WILL get crashes and massive stutters. Because you turned off "if everything is good" check.

You realize the game is behaving differently for everyone, right? Stop talking like a teenager and use your brain.

Great, it takes you and some other people less than five minutes. It takes a lot longer for the rest of the community with me being one of the unlucky people that this happens to.

This is not an issue of a weak pc, overheating, blotware on my system, poorly managed drives, outdated drivers or anything of that sort. I know how to take care of my stuff, the fact that devs can't properly optimize their games and rely on AI upscaling to fix sh-t is the issue here.

[Kenjjoo]

Originally posted by Momowz:

If it is taking half an hour to warmup the files you might have an issue with your shader cache configuration. It may be too small so the game recompiles them every time ?

Set it to 100gb, there's no difference.

[Kenjjoo]

Originally posted by xXPudzianXx:

Try opening UE5 editor and modify any BP... You have to precompile almost everything.

btw 30 minutes for shader precompiling is wild! (unless you're just exaggerating a lot) Try manually maxing GPU and CPU cooling.
In my case it's 15 seconds on max fan speed or 2 minutes on automatic cooling.

It's not an issue of high temps. My CPU and GPU both don't go over 55 celsius.

[zpc]

Not really a problem IMHO. I start Stalker 2 once and let the shader compilation check run - it only takes 2 minutes on my ancient i7-9700K.

Tips like this can lead to far more problems when people forget about them hacking their game configuration and then getting issues because of the missing shader checks - all the while coming here and complaining about said issues (which they might not have if they just would let the software do what the techs want it to do).

[Kenjjoo]

Originally posted by Alias:

Originally posted by Kenjjoo:

Maybe they shouldn't make it take so long on an nvme m2 7000/7000 read/write drive? It does not make sense to take almost half an hour to check the files.

Shader pre-compilation & checking after every start of the game is just lazyness from the dev's side.

Presuming lazyness from the devs in a little unjustified. I do dot presume to know their overall work effort or the circumstances they faced.

Please remember that when the shaders are getting checked, 30 secs to 2 minutes is really not a big deal. Maybe start S2, them make a cuppa.

30 seconds to 2 minutes isn't an issue. God d-mn 20-30 minutes is.

[AllanWake™]

Originally posted by Kenjjoo:

Originally posted by AllanWake™:

"enjoy not waiting 30 minutes for shaders to compile on a good pc."

Who you bs gen-z?

It takes less then 5min on SSD + i7 6700k (at first launch or GPU driver re-install).
AND about 30 sec every time after first.

SO 30sec is 30min for gen-z?

f out of here.....

p.s. its not recompiling shaders every launch, its verifying. Text doesnt state correctly. And you can turn that off, but if shaders got damaged in anyway, you WILL get crashes and massive stutters. Because you turned off "if everything is good" check.

You realize the game is behaving differently for everyone, right? Stop talking like a teenager and use your brain.

Great, it takes you and some other people less than five minutes. It takes a lot longer for the rest of the community with me being one of the unlucky people that this happens to.

This is not an issue of a weak pc, overheating, blotware on my system, poorly managed drives, outdated drivers or anything of that sort. I know how to take care of my stuff, the fact that devs can't properly optimize their games and rely on AI upscaling to fix sh-t is the issue here.

I dont believe you, the PC i stated is my old PC with 1080ti. The one i tested this on just out of curiosity, because latest dragon age ran amazingly. And guess what? its running stalker 2 as smooth as my 4090 pc (both running on 60fps cap epic preset). BUT shader compiler time is the same on both. Installed steam versions and GOG and gamepass, all the same speed.

You have bloat on your pc, or some CPU or SSD driver problem, because there is no reason for my i7 6700k to compile shaders faster then your what? 12gen CPU?
logically is the user problem not the games. Otherwise i should have ran into this problem at least once.

Clearly you dont "take care" of your PC as you believe, there is no logic that a 2015 PC does things better then 10th gen +

+ try turning antivirus off when playing an offline game. You would be surprised that it helps.

+ why do you think AI is the focus? consoles my guy, consoles........ you aint the main character with your PC, people on consoles are. Thats why everyone is recommending running with AI frame gen ON, its smoother and more optimized, cause of consoles, and it does wonders for PC as well.

[JanPlayerll]

Originally posted by Kenjjoo:

Originally posted by AllanWake™:

"enjoy not waiting 30 minutes for shaders to compile on a good pc."

Who you bs gen-z?

It takes less then 5min on SSD + i7 6700k (at first launch or GPU driver re-install).
AND about 30 sec every time after first.

SO 30sec is 30min for gen-z?

f out of here.....

p.s. its not recompiling shaders every launch, its verifying. Text doesnt state correctly. And you can turn that off, but if shaders got damaged in anyway, you WILL get crashes and massive stutters. Because you turned off "if everything is good" check.

You realize the game is behaving differently for everyone, right? Stop talking like a teenager and use your brain.

Great, it takes you and some other people less than five minutes. It takes a lot longer for the rest of the community with me being one of the unlucky people that this happens to.

This is not an issue of a weak pc, overheating, blotware on my system, poorly managed drives, outdated drivers or anything of that sort. I know how to take care of my stuff, the fact that devs can't properly optimize their games and rely on AI upscaling to fix sh-t is the issue here.

The last statment is very true.
However the issue might be the UE5 itself. I mean compiling shaders in Unreal is a joke - there was even some girl who printed out the UE5 splash screen with shader compiling stuck at 2% as a haloween costume :D
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/1gfhm1w/scariest_of_halloween_costumes/

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/ue5-compiling-shaders-on-every-startup/520971/12

The forum link above seems to confirm that on some old versions of UE5 shaders can compile up to 30 minutes. This would make sense since Stalker 2 is on on version 5.1 of the editor, which did have some shader issues.

[Mervin]

Originally posted by Sharkon:

takes about 35 sec upon launch on my end. not that big of a deal.

I'm around the 40 second mark. All good. Just enough time to squeeze a couple of nice farts out before playing

[königplatzen]

Originally posted by Momowz:

Don't forget to activate the shader compilation when you update your graphic drivers then, or when the game gets a patch.

The first pass is to generate the cache, all the other passes when you launch the game are just a check, nothing is generated so it is faster.

It takes a minute to do so i'm keeping it.

This.
I would also add, that I had the delete the shader cache on last update to 1.02. it worked, but started to stutter horribly after 30 min. After deleting and rebuilding I could play without stutter for 3 hours

[Kenjjoo]

Originally posted by AllanWake™:

Originally posted by Kenjjoo:

You realize the game is behaving differently for everyone, right? Stop talking like a teenager and use your brain.

Great, it takes you and some other people less than five minutes. It takes a lot longer for the rest of the community with me being one of the unlucky people that this happens to.

This is not an issue of a weak pc, overheating, blotware on my system, poorly managed drives, outdated drivers or anything of that sort. I know how to take care of my stuff, the fact that devs can't properly optimize their games and rely on AI upscaling to fix sh-t is the issue here.

I dont believe you, the PC i stated is my old PC with 1080ti. The one i tested this on just out of curiosity, because latest dragon age ran amazingly. And guess what? its running stalker 2 as smooth as my 4090 pc (both running on 60fps cap epic preset). BUT shader compiler time is the same on both. Installed steam versions and GOG and gamepass, all the same speed.

I don't give a f-ck if you believe me. What am I supposed to do, record it for you? Why in the f-ck would I lie about stuff like this? Dragon's Dogma 2 - High preset, 100 fps. Wukon - Epic, around 80-90fps, RDR2 maxed out with graphics mods - around 70-100. This game is poorly optimized, not my fault you're too blinded by worshipping the devs to accept it.