We need to talk about UE4 Shader compilation issues

It's irrelevant because this kind of bytecode -> machine code compilation is driver related and not engine, let alone UE related problem.

 

It is very much an engine and a game problem since this is what you'd want to request beforehand from your engine/game to not have a "hitch" otherwise.

 

Nonsense.

 

Creating caches has been simple solution for all kinds of performance problems by engine/game devs and regular devs for ages. Take for example Superfetch (now called SysMain service) for Windows. Its for uhh different thing but it too solves a problem, program startup speed. I guess one of the good solutions would be to find the source of this hitch and redesign whatever is causing it. I am sure Unreal had these kind of problems for ages and they have revamped this system multiple times. For example it seems Microsoft did that to solve infamous hitching for games during Creators Update days.

 

GTA4

 

If it doesn't have to do with the engine then why didn't it ever happen before UE4?

 

Your ignorance is quite large. Even DF reported this and described as a PC "pandemic" issue, also other people have talked about this, UE4 stutters because it compiles shaders on the "fly" and never compiles them, oh, but you know better, right? Just by saying "nonsense" everything is just fixed and you are completely right, lmao. I could even explain you more, extend myself, give you video proof comparisons, etc, but since it is "nonsense", I guess it is. You are an expert.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/Stutterstruggle?src=hashtag_click

 

You actually can, if you use dxvk libraries on UE4 games and let it compile the shaders for 1-2 minutes, most games that run on this terrible engine (at least when it comes to PC games) are free of nearly all shader compilation stutters. You can look into this, if you want.

 

It used to happen in UE3 as well, but to a lesser degree, but UE4 made the issue blatantly obvious. I have no idea how is this still a thing, this engine shouldn't be used for any game unless devs know what they are doing or just make it compile all shaders before you play a game.

 

That's not an engine doing it. That is a user hack and not even directly related to UE. DXVK does that for every engine. And the wait is caused by compilation of standard engine shaders, which are loaded on UE's start. That wait doesn't occur without DXVK simply because DX shaders are already precompiled.

 

Seems Tiny Tina game has almost no shader compile and asset streaming stutter, despite cheat engine hackers say it's still same engine version as BL3. So apparently game devs can do a lot of optimization.

 

DX shaders can only be "precompiled" if the engine requests such precompilation prior to loading of shaders for execution. Some engines (games to be more exact) does that explicitly, some do this as a background process, some don't do this and then compilation happens when the shader is executed - which is the main source of compilation stutters. All this is very much engine/game related. There's nothing a driver can do with how engine/game is using it.
You seem to not understand how shaders work on PC in general.

 

Yeah I read that game does not have this issue despite running in UE4, which means it can be done, but most devs seems not to care at all, which is a shame, because UE4 can generate amazing visuals, but seems it needs to be worked on, imo all it should be done is do shader compilation before you start the game, a lot of games do this, is not hard to do and I doubt most PC gamers care abour waiting a bit if the game will be stable.

 

I don't recall any stuttering in the vast majority UE3 games. Or any other games which used streaming, if anything the problem was often the opposite, the loading was so smoothed out you would see textures pop in late.

 

Hmmm maybe I am getting it wrong then, I only had a bit of stutter when I played Arkham Origins long ago in an old computer with a 9800GT, the game ran super smooth and could be I was confusing some fps drops with stuttering.

 

Older games didn't have much issues with shader compilation simply because shaders were a lot simpler back then and were compiled quickly enough for that to not be a visible issue.

 

Bloated ubershaders with hundreds of lines are hardly a new concept. And games like Crysis with comparatively expensive shaders did not stutter unless you deleted the precompiled shaders. You talk as if compilation doesn't get faster, or like this years PBR ubershader is that significantly more complex than last years. There are also more recent games with complex shaders that don't stutter. It's an engine issue.

 

Their size and amounts are exponentially higher than they were.

Crysis ran through the old APIs where all shaders were submitted beforehand to the driver which then used its "magic" to compile those which will be needed first etc. This "magic" is also the reason for the high driver overhead of such APIs which was the focal point of D3D12/VK and the solution was to remove this huge state submission and use PSOs/pipelines instead. These are being submitted as they needed (and are themselves simplified to a bare minimum) removing the driver processing overhead but the other side of this is that the driver doesn't know beforehand now what shader the app may request next and can't perform a pre-compilation of said shader.

It's an engine and a game issue but it is nevertheless an issue which has risen from the benefits of new "explicit" APIs which are a direct source of this issue basically.

 

WTF are you talking about? As I wrote here many times, DX shaders are precompiled into intermediate bytecode. And yes you need engine to do this, which UE does for EVERY SHADER VARIANT. UE does this during cooking. There is no shader precompilation in packaged builds in runtime at all because all shaders are already precompiled.

And if you believe that there is an DX API call, which tells drivers to defer a draw call until it has built it's internal driver-level shader cache, then you are mistaken. Or you know what... send me a link to this DX API call. I really would like to see it. Otherwise just stop posting your nonsenses or accusing people of "not understanding".