PC gaming is wonderful. You can customize games as much as you desire, run them at high framerates, and enjoy all sorts of other useful advantages. But one really annoying part of gaming on a PC in 2025 is dealing with shader compilation. Thankfully, Microsoft is rolling out a solution, but it might take some time before you get to enjoy its benefits.
Over the last few years, game developers have started implementing shader compilation on PC. The idea is for your GPU to compile as many of the shaders that will be used during gameplay as possible ahead of time and limit how much stuttering you feel while playing. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a pretty good way to improve how well games play on your PC. But the big problem with compiling shaders is that it takes time, and you’re often left looking at a screen for a few minutes or more, depending on your PC and how many shaders the game needs to compile. In theory, you only have to do this once at startup. But in reality, you’ll likely do it a few times, as big updates or changes you make to the game’s settings can force another shader compilation. I have even run into games, like Borderlands 4, that compile shaders mid-game when fast-traveling for the first time. It’s all very annoying, but thankfully, Microsoft has a solution that is now in the wild.
As spotted by PC Gamer, Microsoft’s Agility software development kit, a collection of game development tools for DirectX, has been updated to 1.618 and now supports Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD). This tech, which was announced last month, is Microsoft’s plan to get rid of those annoying shader compiling screens. The basic idea is that instead of your GPU and PC compiling all the shaders at game boot, ADS will contain a large database of pre-compiled shaders for various hardware and API setups. So you download a game and it includes all the shaders you’ll need, already compiled offline and ready to go.
This is essentially how consoles get around having to compile shaders when booting up a game, but it’s much easier over there, as devs only have to manage a few setups. In the world of PC gaming, there are many, many different hardware configurations to deal with, making it trickier to pre-compile everything. But AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are all working together alongside Microsoft to provide devs and storefronts with everything they’ll need to pre-compile shaders for as many hardware variations as possible, and then offer these to consumers when they buy digital games.
For now, ADS is only available on Microsoft’s Xbox Store app and only when using the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds, which both launch on October 16. It’ll likely be a few years before ADS is a normal feature included in most big stores and games, but at least there’s hope. One day, not too far in the future, we’ll all be free from having to wait for every big PC game to compile shaders. Doesn’t that sound nice?
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