FIXED: Long "Preparing Shaders.."

[Ewoke]

There are three known to me solutions:

FIRST SOLUTION (worked for me personally)
It's been said on this hub before a couple of times, I just wanna highlight it, because it fixed the issue for me, I can't guarantee it will work for everyone, but it's worth giving a shot, because it's very simple to do, although the solution is so stupid I have no idea why it's affecting the loading times.

Link your account in-game. (ESC -> Options -> Account) Yup, that's it. I have no idea why, but it made the game load much, much faster. Before it took minutes at times, now mere seconds.

My guess would be that the shader settings are being saved into NX account, and it can't do it without linking, but it's just a wild guess, it's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

If for some reason you are interested in my hardware, it's ancient and not that great, i7-3770S, installed on 870EVO, so only SATA3, 1070ti. Sharing it because I've seen some folk talking something about i7s and i9s having issues with shaders, blah, blah, but it seems like nonsense to me now that I got the game working as intended.

WARNING: People are reporting that linking accounts when you've already made some progress is resetting them back to the state as if they just started playing, HOWEVER so far from all the people that mentioned it to me, NONE were actually affected by it, they just heard it from somewhere else, and I myself linked my account after 90h+ of playing, and no progress was lost. Personally I think it's just a rumor or a case of people wiping their accounts on accident, and shifting blame. I have no proof for either case, so just be aware that it may be possible, but personally I doubt it.

SECOND SOLUTION
1. Steam Settings -> Downloads -> Shader PRE-CACHING (Disable this and then re-enable it)

2. Go to the following folder: C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\NVIDIA and then delete the files that are INSIDE the GLCache folder.

Credit for this one goes to Noirfragment on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheFirstDescendant/comments/1e1sbla/preparing_shaders_solution/

THIRD SOLUTION

Originally posted by BuBaLoM:

Go to C:\Users\blabla\AppData\Local\M1\Saved\Config\Windows
open Engine.ini , add

[SystemSettings]
r.ShaderPipelines=1
r.ShaderPipelineCache.Enabled=0
r.D3D.ForceDXC=1

Pass that info around, help folks out.

[Ewoke]

Originally posted by justRAMEN:

My solution to this is by using this config: Unreal Engine 4/5 Universal Stutter Fix

I used the additional commands along with the config. This config also generates the following 3 files:

D3DCompute_V4318_D8726_S-2010247101_R161.ushaderprecache
Size: 285MB

D3DDriverByteCodeBlob_V4318_D8726_S-2010247101_R161.ushaderprecache
Size: 400MB

D3DGraphics_V4318_D8726_S-2010247101_R161.ushaderprecache
Size: 292MB

These files are the proper generated shader cache files, you will most likely not have any "Preparing Shaders" prompt with these as well. When the game updates I delete these files to let the game regenerate the shader cache.

The launch options I used are as follows:
-dx12 -novsync -useallavailablecores -notexturestreaming

The -notexturestreaming option forces the game to load all textures into memory at their full resolution rather than streaming them in and out based on the camera's position and the player's view.

The stutters still do occur (Developers have to fix it). Still messing with the config to see if I can change some stuff but in general this has worked well for me.

This looks interesting, I'm gonna check it out in a free time, thank you for sharing!

[UNCLE STINKFISH]

I would prefer the dev's fix this - not the community, it really is awful - waiting for the shaders every loading screen for 3 minutes. Then the event is over, or everyone wiped.

THIS GAME IS BROKEN...!!

Another gaming dev that has no respect for the gamer..!!

[Ewoke]

Originally posted by UNCLE STINKFISH:

I would prefer the dev's fix this - not the community, it really is awful - waiting for the shaders every loading screen for 3 minutes. Then the event is over, or everyone wiped.

THIS GAME IS BROKEN...!!

Another gaming dev that has no respect for the gamer..!!

It's really not a matter of respect, Nexon is just dogsh!t at tinkering in game engines of other developers. They did the same with Vindictus, a game on the Source Engine, in theory every modern PC should handle it no problem, yet NX made such a spaghetti out of its code that the interface alone eats up 40fps...

[ByteOfRamen]

Yes devs should be fixing this but this is also a side effect of having a great community. People want to see the game succeed. We want to help improve other peoples gameplay. Some of us will tinker with the engine configs to find out what works and what does not. It's nothing new.

[Jenno]

Everytime I added something in Engine.ini it just gets replaced to default. Seems like the game overwrites it everytime you reopen the game.

[Nombrey]

Already had my account linked since day 1, but second and third solutions worked for me - thank you!

[Ewoke]

Originally posted by Jenno:

Everytime I added something in Engine.ini it just gets replaced to default. Seems like the game overwrites it everytime you reopen the game.

Try setting it as "read only" in properties of the file

[RedFaster]

Wow! I wasn't really having cache problems before but I thought I should give this a try anyway.

I can change zones even faster now! Putting those values in Engine.ini made the nonsensical shader percentage numbers disappear completely. Legit!

[ByteOfRamen]

The only things i have noticed so far with my configs are:
- valby water effects are kinda invisible
- random shiny lights that go away extremely fast (guess based on camera positioning)
- Able to see the outlines of void fragments/outpost machines if broken (Really visible if using valby as it has a funny interaction with her effects that make it really visible.
- Tiny bit of shadows poping slightly in and out in the distance
- Some small rocks on the ground may pop in for a split second with their axis flipped the wrong way (like t-pose)

[ffrotty]

linked account: did nothing
clearing folder: didn't have the folder
ini file edit: better but is still very slow
upped cache in nvidia settings: did nothing

game is effectively unplayable since patch.

[Ewoke]

Originally posted by ffrotty:

linked account: did nothing
clearing folder: didn't have the folder
ini file edit: better but is still very slow
upped cache in nvidia settings: did nothing

game is effectively unplayable since patch.

Well, sorry to hear. At first my game was loading forever on EVERY loading screen, but linking the account made my game load long only during the initial launch, rest of the game was fine, and editing the *.ini file got rid of the initial loading.
Another this may be the nvidia driver, many people reported that the update messed things up for them, and it's better to rollback to the previous version. Tried that yet?

[ZeDouche]

Did 1 thru 3 and the third option fixed the issue for me. Thank you for a solution I would never figure out on my own

[Fyerfrog]

For me works completely now, also without any percentage loading shaders, using the extended fix

[Drunk †ArhAnGeL†]

I do not know if this advice helped other people, but it helped me a lot. Thanks

[BigCountry0420]

played last week when i first got the game, slow asf shader prep times, got a update recently and decided to play today and the shader prep time was about 20 seconds, i played for a good 30 minutes or so, closed the game out, opened it back up 10 minutes later and right back to slow asf shader prep times, this is a game issue and dev skill issue that needs to be addressed asap, and my pc specs are above what is required and recommended, iv seen people everything from intel and nvidia to amd and amd machines of all makes and models everything from 500$ to 5000$ is having issues with shader prep times and even crashes.......................... get this fixed ffs