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

Tbf it was/is a problem in other engines too. But yeah, problem is the most used engine has this problème...

Give me back 20-60s initial load time if this mean shader compilation during this time...

 

Yea there certainly are people like that, which doesn't help things. I get quite annoyed when I go onto forums to give feedback, and predicably have the "it's your computer" crew immediately chime in who never seem to have any issues ever. They're so ignorant.. and it's quite frustrating because it diminishes the ability to provide proper feedback when you constantly have to argue with many of these people. I mean, that's what game specific forums are mostly for.. In the end, when we give feedback, we're just trying to improve the product for everyone.

However, there's a very thin line between constructive criticism, and outright harassment. No matter how bad the situation gets on PC, I'd never condone singling out and harassing developers over technical issues.. and that seems to be a real issue with gamers unfortunately. This current situation isn't any one persons fault, and nobody deserves that. No developer actually wants their games to have performance issues. We all know there are very real hurdles and complexities to development, so some level of understanding is necessary as a baseline. That's why its important to discuss and engage with developers, and for developers to engage with their communities as well. For me, I can immediately tell and appreciate when a developer is outgoing and engaging with the community. It gives me far more confidence to provide better feedback (to actually want to take the time to do so) and help make things better, and I really appreciate those developers which do that.

And that's just it.. I'm not asking for anything unreasonable when I ask for games to not hitch and stutter all the time. I expect a game to perform properly the first time I experience it, as anyone should given the requirements are met. As someone who has a little more understanding of the complexity of the platform and its intricacies than the average person, I'm understanding if there needs to be a pre-compilation process that takes some time. If that improves the situation, then I don't just accept it... I expect it.

So I feel that if I'm willing to make that compromise, I absolutely should expect better from developers to put in that work to ensure this issue is as mitigated as possible.

Yes, of course. There's plenty of games in other engines which have this issue. It's not a specific engine/API issue. But yea, as you said, UE is fast becoming the defacto engine for not only AA and Indie developers, but AAA developers now too. So it's naturally going to be the focus. I also find that UE does it in such a predicable way that I can tell when it's Unreal Engine just by how and when it hitches.

And yea definitely, I will always prefer a long initial load, or pre-compile process, if it means a smooth experience. These pre-compilation processes times will likely shorten further as CPUs become faster. A Threadripper chews through many of these pre-compilation processes compared to lower end CPUs with less frequency and cores.

 

Watching now.




Slower shaders at first for faster upfront compile. Compile optimized pipeline after the fact on background thread.

I'd rather have a slightly lower framerate until shaders are compiled and cached, than stutters and hitches

 

A new RC of Godot Open-Source Engine released with "Ubershaders" (Asynchronous shader compilation + caching) system implemented

https://godotengine.org/article/release-candidate-godot-3-5-rc-1