Epic Games integrates new technology in Unreal Engine 5.8 to reduce shader stuttering

Epic Games has introduced a new developer tool in Unreal Engine 5.8 designed to mitigate shader-related stuttering in PC games. The tool supports Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) technology, which aims to move shader compilation processes to a stage before active gameplay.

By utilizing the new ASDTool, a database is created from a prepared Windows game build. Supported distribution platforms can then use this to perform pre-compilation, creating Precompiled Shader Databases (PSDBs) tailored to specific graphics cards and driver versions. This process is intended to reduce loading times and prevent the momentary interruptions in image output that occur when Pipeline State Objects (PSOs) are compiled during play.

Implementation requires Windows 11 (version 24H2 or later) and Direct3D 12 with Shader Model 6. Supported hardware includes NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards with driver 621.01 or newer, AMD RDNA 1 graphics cards with Adrenalin 26.6.1 or newer, and certain Intel Arc and Core Ultra graphics units.