Can you play without building shaders?

[Tommy]

I'm waiting here in the main menu for 40 minutes now and building shaders only went from 3% to 16%. Should I give the game a few hours more to finish building the shaders or can I play with lower quality already?

[Ghost_Leader]

The game will be much more unstable if you don't wait and performance will likely be worse. Just let the shaders compile. Also, keep in mind that every time you update your GPU driver or the game gets a new patch, you will have to compile shaders again.

[Shock_&_Awe]

You're gonna have worse performance issues if you play before they finish compiling. Fwiw, I haven't had performance issues, but I'm only running it on 60fps on High settings.

[Ultradad]

Yes - DO NOT try to play while the shaders are compiling.

Note that for many people once it gets near around 60% it will go much faster.

How much free space do you have on your boot drive? If it's really limited try freeing some up.

[IPlayGamesOnPC]

Technically, you can... but you will have greatly degraded performance as well as visuals because the shaders will compile in the background. Put on a pot of coffee.

[Tommy]

Okay, then I will wait a few hours. I didn't expect these kind of problems as the Uncharted PC port that was released last year ran very smoothly on my PC.

[PsionicDiamond]

Mine crashes every 20 minutes just for being in the menu while the shades download

It’s not worth it. Just wait until they patch this

[K1NG]

If you have problem with shaders cache, just delete psolibs folder, use oo2core_9_win64.dll v2.9.5 to shader cache again, its only take 40 minutes to make 11.5gb cache (dont play when creating shader cache), games run perfect no crash with 12900k, 3060 12gb, 128GB ram.. but gpu usage is 99%, but i have no crash, running smooth with 70-100fps with high setting, dlss balance, just applied new update, games run perfect..

[EuerDickerFreund]

just chill and wait till its done

[The doctor is in]

while you can
it is not recommended
you may encounter problems
you certainly will have constant stalls
so wait until shaders finish building

[Star Taker]

i dont understand whats witth this shader buildup nonsense? ever in my entire 7 years of gaming i never had to compile shaders for entire hours before playing my new game so often, this feels like a complete downgrade in quality and maybe this kind of tech theyre using shouldve been in the oven for longer to mitigate this

[vikus]

Originally posted by Tommy:

Okay, then I will wait a few hours. I didn't expect these kind of problems as the Uncharted PC port that was released last year ran very smoothly on my PC.

This isn't a problem, Uncharted 4 coincidentally also had shader compilation. It's a feature that greatly enhances performance and visuals. Shader compilation is very common in gaming now, even CoD has it.

[L8knight]

Really sucks that this patch has caused another hour long wait for this shader nonsense. I was fine with it yesterday but to have to do it again today, something needs to be done.

[vikus]

Originally posted by L8knight:

Really sucks that this patch has caused another hour long wait for this shader nonsense. I was fine with it yesterday but to have to do it again today, something needs to be done.

Weird, my game didn't do that. Did you update your drivers or something? Because that does require rebuilding of the shaders.

[Grubbs008]

You should just start playing the game without building the shaders, then when the game runs like crap and crashes a bunch make a negative review on steam.

That's what 80% of the other users are doing.

[TimmyP]

Originally posted by Seanayy Shelby:

i dont understand whats witth this shader buildup nonsense? ever in my entire 7 years of gaming i never had to compile shaders for entire hours before playing my new game so often, this feels like a complete downgrade in quality and maybe this kind of tech theyre using shouldve been in the oven for longer to mitigate this

Its explicitly due to different hardware configurations. Consoles dont have the issue because they are fixed hardware (all are same), and can share shaders between systems.

It sucks, but its the way UE4 works. I myself have the biggest problem with shaders in HZD, which forces you to compile first. I never had a problem with stuttering or anything in games like High on Life or Sackboy (which compile as you play).

This game actually does it the best, because you can wait, or play while its compiling. It does force you to stop and load though, should the next area not have all its shaders compiled.