Preparing shaders...

[Falcon]

Why does the game have to prepare the shaders on EVERY SINGLE STARTUP???

Takes ages!

[Lowlight]

PREPARING SHADERS.

[yogisgoat]

So, in other words, it's compiling the shaders. That's literally what you just described.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by yogisgoat:

So, in other words, it's compiling the shaders. That's literally what you just described.

Try deleting the precompiled shaders and you'll notice the difference. Compiling the shaders involves running a HLSL[en.wikipedia.org] compiler, which causes 100% CPU activity on all available cores for several minutes.

What happens at the Preparing Shaders screen is loading these compiled shaders into RAM from disk and then sending them to the GPU. You can tell that this is not when the shaders are being compiled because the CPU load is low.

[400g]

Originally posted by yogisgoat:

So, in other words, it's compiling the shaders. That's literally what you just described.

No. preparing and compiling are 2 different things. Just as heating up a meal is not the same as cooking a meal.

[catch22atplay]

All newer games have the exact same issue. Starfield, cp2077, any new unreal engine game, The last of us, and so on and so on. It would greatly help people that do not have sufficient cooling for their cpu to program the game to use less cores while compiling. But looks like nobody is doing that yet. There are some settings though i've no idea what hogs uses.
WorkerProcessPriority=-1 is below normal. Some are set to 0 for normal priority.
PercentageUnusedShaderCompilingThreads is another and lower values increase thread usage. Probably other settings as well.

If the game can't start because cpu overheats when compiling just change your power plan options/cpu/max%=80% or some such. Preferably make the changes to Balanced or power saver plan. Then switch back and forth between performance and whichever of the other 2 you changed before and after compiling.

[Pharaoh]

Takes less than 30 seconds for me, but I also have 64 gb of ram which could make a lot of difference. Most standard issue laptops come with far less let alone custom built pcs where consumers build the cheapest thing possible. Upgrade the RAM And make sure the GPU ALSO has a lot of ram. My gpu has 12gb of vram as well. Very important. Fast gpu and cpu combined obviously helps, good cooling as well, and just a little patience. Plan booting in; be creative, prepare your coffee or hot pockets while it's loading!

[catch22atplay]

Originally posted by CymTyr:

In this day and age, when you can get a decent Wraith cooler or Intel equivalent for $20-$30, there's really no reason for your cpu to overheat.

If you're using that cheap of an air cooler to where your cpu overheats on compiling/preparing shaders, you probably don't have a good enough computer or cpu to run this game properly.

Don't think you understand how it works. It's actually the newer cpus that are having the issue. My 13yo cpu has zero issues. But a i7 14900 is a furnace that easily hits 100c. It'll take more than a cheap $20-$30 heatsink/fan to help. ANd the game after compiling with that cpu it's probably only running at 25% usage. It's just compiling where it uses 100%.

[Snooker1982]

Same prob here. Everytime I'm starting the game.. Shader compilation..... Please give us a fix... It's such a great game (my op)

[loki66998]

Originally posted by weiss:

Originally posted by Falcon:

Why does the game have to prepare the shaders on EVERY SINGLE STARTUP???

Takes ages!

the first time takes a bit, yes. after that is it manageable. detroit become human did this aswell, same like CoD like Deuce said already. ya would sit even longer on the CoD one when you start the game for the first time.

Absoutly detroit become human did NOT do this, because I beat that game. I cannot stand this just like OP.

[loki66998]

Originally posted by catch22atplay:

All newer games have the exact same issue. Starfield, cp2077, any new unreal engine game, The last of us, and so on and so on. It would greatly help people that do not have sufficient cooling for their cpu to program the game to use less cores while compiling. But looks like nobody is doing that yet. There are some settings though i've no idea what hogs uses.
WorkerProcessPriority=-1 is below normal. Some are set to 0 for normal priority.
PercentageUnusedShaderCompilingThreads is another and lower values increase thread usage. Probably other settings as well.

If the game can't start because cpu overheats when compiling just change your power plan options/cpu/max%=80% or some such. Preferably make the changes to Balanced or power saver plan. Then switch back and forth between performance and whichever of the other 2 you changed before and after compiling.

The Last of Us does it ONCE after installation. Thats it. Hogwarts does it EVERYTIME YOU START THE GAME!

[loki66998]

Originally posted by Pharaoh:

Takes less than 30 seconds for me, but I also have 64 gb of ram which could make a lot of difference. Most standard issue laptops come with far less let alone custom built pcs where consumers build the cheapest thing possible. Upgrade the RAM And make sure the GPU ALSO has a lot of ram. My gpu has 12gb of vram as well. Very important. Fast gpu and cpu combined obviously helps, good cooling as well, and just a little patience. Plan booting in; be creative, prepare your coffee or hot pockets while it's loading!

Are you kidding dude? This just does not need to happen. Plus it is not covered anywhere letting the customer know that this will happen.