Often when I launch a game through Steam that "processing Vulkan shaders" window appears and loads for a couple minutes. Sometimes it takes no time, sometimes it takes several minutes. But then, for larger games like Dune Awakening or Outer Worlds 2, the game needs to sit and process shaders for another couple minutes anyway. But for some games, like Enshrouded, I can skip the Vulkan processing with no problems in the game (I do that because the Vulkan processing doesn't go anywhere). So what is that Vulkan processing for?

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[–] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

So how come this is not a thing on Windows? I switched to Linux earlier this year and I see this compilation prompt each time a launch a game. But I have never seen it on Windows.

It’s possible that I have this “use precompiled shaders” feature enabled on my Windows installation but not on Linux i guess. But I have literally never seen it on windows for any game on any launcher.

I am also curious as to why these shaders are not just compiled once with the first installation of the game (or once per update)

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  • [–] 18 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Actually, a lot of modern games on Windows suffer from micro stutters and frame hitching because it’s often compiling on demand if shader compilation isn’t built in upfront in the game. A lot of games run smoother on Linux with proton because of the shader precompilation.

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