Shader Complilation on PC: About to become a bigger bottleneck?

So I've played about 4 hours now... and... it's freaking amazing! Kudos to the team at Jetpack Interactive, and those from Sony Santa Monica Studios who brought this port to life. You can tell immediately that this is a quality product.

I really hope Jetpack gets more work from Sony for PC ports, because I'm loving what I'm seeing so far here. Having another studio they can rely on to create high quality ports would be awesome for them, and us.

I also mentioned it before (perhaps on another forum though) but Jetpack Interactive is also working on God of War: Ragnarok, as per one of their member's Linkedin profile. So it's very likely they are working on the PC port of Ragnarok in tandem with the games development for console. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony ends up acquiring them in the near future as well.

 

Ragnarok will likely come to PC but not for at least a year IMO. Jetpack is more likely helping port to base PS4 and/or contributing to the art workload.

 

Most likely yes. GoW for pc was a long time ago in development (two years?), the expanding to the pc platform has been started while ago at Sony. Their doing quality stuff regarding that, cant wait for future PS5 titles to arrive on pc.

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/v...ctionality-with-developer-requested-features/

(It's mostly an inclusion of previously added extensions into the core VK spec though. So not really new stuff.)

 

@Dictator good call on getting involved with Linus about these issues and making a video on it! I still hope you have your own far-more in depth video coming in the future.. but with Linus' reach, that definitely helps get the message out to a wider audience. It's definitely a good start!

 

Sounds like Elden Ring on PC has terrible stuttering issues... A few reviewers have corroborated what another person has said. They said they feel like Digital Foundry is going to tear the game apart on PC when they analyze it.

I'm going to be so pissed if that's the case. Not sure if it's compilation related.. but the game is a DX12 game.. so it wouldn't surprise me. Console versions are apparently fine...

I'm so done with this crap.

 

From engine is like that, and consoles are rarely "fine" with it.

 

Nah. The engine is great on PC. Never had any issues since DS2.

This is their first DX12 game.. which could explain it.

 

So after reading through this UE4 PSO caching overview: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/SharingAndReleasing/PSOCaching/

I feel that it 95% all boils down to the amount of effort developers are willing to put in to capture the data necessary to build a proper pipeline caching system in UE4. I mean, it seems like the mechanisms are there to do it... just that developers put in varying amounts of effort when it comes to creating their PSO Caches and setting up the game to utilize those caches correctly.

Developers can create caches by playing through their game's levels. The more they do this, the better the data they have to build the full PSO cache... Of course.. EXACTLY LIKE EMULATORS.. Here's the thing though, unlike emulators.. developers can also build "PSO caching" levels which essentially are like "time-demos" of old where they've set up a level which spawns and creates all the things they need it to, and it runs through it generating the caches needed.

We already know they can do this. So why aren't more developers doing it properly? Does it come down to Unreal Engine's method of capturing that data being annoying? If so, then why aren't Epic working to improve this to make it easier for developers?

I saw this..


It would be possible for players to generate PSO data and send it to the developer, however there are no frameworks in place to allow this. Maybe it's time Unreal Engine builds the framework to support this?


I feel like there are all these different possible avenues that can be taken by developers to generate the data they need, and for us as users to generate that data as well to be compiled by our machines... that we could remove 95% of hitching and stutters that happen in games these days... but for some reason developers just haven't been taking it seriously at this point. (I feel)

You have developers like The Coalition, Sony Bend, and a couple others, who OBVIOUSLY take the time to ensure that everything is done properly. Those UE games have very minimal, if any at all, shader/PSO compilation hitching. I totally understand indie developers may not have the resources.. but it's getting to the point where something has to be done with Unreal Engine to ensure that developers are doing it properly. What we NEED is developers to allow us to pre-compile this stuff beforehand. Make a quick level that generates all this stuff, and have it run in the background to compile everything that's needed.

 

Some devs just aren't good enough to make good optimizations (avoid stutters, improve loadings, threading, etc) in a realistic amount of time, even if they know what the problems are.


EDIT : btw, I don't want to diss any devs. I'm just saying that good to elite devs are a rare ressources in the industry.

 

Well, I'm starting to get over the "not wanting to diss developers" phase... because the simple fact is that as a baseline we should expect that our games don't hitch and stutter. That's not an egregious expectation. I don't need to understand how difficult it is for developers... I don't care how much work they have to put in so that it's not an issue. Just like I don't care about all the people who create other products that I use every day which I expect to work properly.. As a consumer, I ask that my product work properly. I'm very understanding that some issues come with the territory.. just like I understand some other product I use might not work correctly due to outside forces. However, within reasonable expectations, I should expect that if I'm using the product correctly, and taking care to ensure that outside forces aren't impacting the products ability to function... it should work properly.

I don't need the game to be optimized to the heavens... because I don't give a damn about that little fps number and how high it goes. Framerate can fluctuate.. that's understandable. Having the game hitch and stutter isn't. In King of Fighters 15 which just released, running on UE4.. you perform a climax move (the games version of a flashy super move) and it hitches HARD... same when doing other moves for the first time as well.

It's just incredible to me... that ANY developers.. would allow their games to release in such a state. And as I've said before, I'm at the point with it now where I don't want to hear excuses... I'm paying $80CAD for some of these games. Something HAS to be done to address this growing issue. Do they not play through their game on regular PC, fresh install, to see how it performs? How do you allow something like FF7 Remake, to release? Like lmfao.. the only answer is that they don't give a damn... and they wont give a damn unless enough of a stink is made about it.. then they MIGHT put in some work to fix the issue.

Why should I care about developers where it's obvious that's their tactic?

I heard about Elden Ring having bad stuttering/hitching on the PC version, and today, right now, streamers are playing the game through a Red Bull event, and you can see it. I can't be sure it's "compilation stuttering" or some other reason... but it's terrible. Perform a backstab? Hitch. Running around the world, random hitches. Enemy attacks you, hitch. I'm looking at it like... WHY would they even release the game in this state?

And the worst part about it.. and the reason why developers can get away with this garbage, is because PC gamers will always blame it on their rig, or driver, or x,y,z... You post about stuttering issues and you're met with "oh it's perfect for me! Maybe you need a new PC"...

PC gamers need to have higher standards than they do.. We should NOT have to put up with this while consoles are relatively smooth sailing in this regard. If you're making a game... it should not release until these issues are fixed. Plain and simple. I'm tired of being nice to developers about it.

 

Ok, now I realize this doesn't seem to be "compilation stutter"... but look at this. I just clipped this from Asmondgold's Elden Ring stream... look at the performance here. He's on a 3090 and a high end CPU...

Check this out

Look at what developers are willing to put out there for us to play...

WHO tested this game? WHO decided it should release in this state?

They need to be held accountable.

 

oooofff ffff.. i preorderd on PC because thats where my friends would be.

hopefully this gets cleaned up, or gsync can clear it out somehow lol. not likely though. that's a heavy dip.
I don't think he has the latest drivers that should cover Elden Ring? Hopefully that release comes soon.

 

Yep. As it stands right now.. I'm going to play 1.5h of this game, and if it does any of that junk... I'm refunding it.

Enough is enough.

 

Hang 'em high.

 

Omnipotent is a FROMSOFT insider, and he said he's spoken to some people at FROM and they're aware of the issue and looking into potential fixes for a future patch.



While that sucks that it's going to be an issue for launch.. hopefully they are able to resolve it soon enough, and the PC version can shine as it should.

I'm sure they're going to have no choice but to address it because I have a feeling they're going to get overwhelmed with reports about it haha. 50% of them coming from me alone

 

If just some studios get rid of this issue, others could follow. Sony generally does a good job in porting their exclusives, could be an example for other studios.

 

Yep, agreed. Honestly the communities just need to push back on this stuff when it happens. At the same time, lift up the developers who do put in the hard work to continually optimize their games and reduce these issues to essentially nothing.

The main thing, is that QA in these dev teams should be catching this stuff, and it shouldn't be ok to release it in that state. Take the time to get it right, then release it.

 

Time is not the realistic solution to everything. They need "low level" skills to dig deep in the code.

 

I agree with this. Many developers don't know how, it isn't just a matter of publishers not giving enough time allotment.