shader compilation Archives

AppWizard

August 12, 2025

Monster Hunter Wilds PC performance will continue to get updates beyond winter as Capcom ‘proceeds with caution’

The director of Monster Hunter Wilds, Yuya Tokuda, announced that performance updates are planned for winter and beyond due to ongoing issues reported by players since the game's launch in February. The forthcoming version 1.021 update will address performance challenges, with Title Update 2 released on June 30 fixing shader compilation bugs, reducing the impact of anti-cheat measures by 90%, implementing support for DLSS4 and FSR4, and improving texture loading processes. Title Update 3 is expected by the end of September to enhance NPCs and Seikret mounts. Concerns about CPU strain during gameplay were acknowledged, particularly for players with unstable CPUs, and adjustments will be made cautiously in the fourth title update. GPU load reduction will also be approached carefully. Critics, including Digital Foundry's Alex Battaglia, have expressed significant concerns about the game's performance.

AppWizard

August 4, 2025

The ‘Compiling Shaders’ screen is the worst screen in gaming: here’s how to make it suck less

Developers are now compiling shaders before gameplay, leading to a shader compilation screen that displays a progress bar with potentially tens of thousands of shaders. This screen can frustrate players, who are left with nothing to do but watch the progress. Suggestions to improve this experience include integrating gameplay tips with the loading screen, using entertaining phrases during loading, compiling a single large shader instead of many small ones, introducing "No-Shader Saturdays" for gameplay without shader compilation, and allowing players to participate in the compilation process.

AppWizard

June 30, 2025

Monster Hunter: Wilds patch finally fixes the game’s inexcusable performance woes on PC

Capcom released Title Update 2 for Monster Hunter: Wilds, addressing a shader compilation issue that caused high CPU loads and performance problems for PC players. The update shifts shader compilation to the initial launch phase, improving performance without requiring manual shader cache deletions. It also introduces two new monsters and follows previous updates that increased game difficulty and included a crossover character, Akuma from Street Fighter 6. Despite earlier negative feedback and performance issues, the update has led to a resurgence of player interest and returning players.

AppWizard

June 16, 2025

Stutters and hitches in Unreal Engine 5 games should become rarer over time due to Epic’s continuous updates, but we’ll still see them for a while because of the way games are made

At Unreal Fest in Orlando, Epic Games showcased new features for Unreal Engine 5 through a tech demo of CD Projekt Red's Witcher 4 and hosted training sessions for developers. Key topics included shader compilation stutters and performance issues in Unreal Engine games, with a focus on optimization methodologies rather than the engine itself. Insights revealed persistent performance optimization challenges, particularly with shader compilation and traversal stutters. Developers were encouraged to implement PSO precaching in Unreal Engine 5.2 or newer, although neither solution is perfect. Obsidian's game Avowed began development in Unreal Engine 4 before transitioning to version 5.3.2, while aiming for specific frame rates on Xbox Series S and X. The team size for Avowed was 140, with only 15 in technical roles, which may have limited their ability to fully utilize new features. Unreal Engine 5.6 offers performance enhancements that require strategic implementation by developers. Attendance at Epic's sessions was high, indicating a growing awareness of performance issues among developers. The hope is that future titles will leverage the latest engine version to address these challenges effectively.