Stalker 2 compiling shaders

We have waited the best part of 15 years for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl and, to be honest, none of us want to wait another 15 years for the shaders to compile before we can play it.

As time has gone on more and more games make us wait longer and longer before we can jump in as the shaders compile before we can start. If they say you spend a third of your life asleep, I reckon the vast majority of another third of my life has been wasted waiting for shaders to compile.

Speaking of which – Stalker 2 – boy do these shaders like to compile.

Being an Unreal Engine 5 game there is always going to be an element of suck it up buttercup. Shaders gonna compile no matter what you do. Stalker 2 though has to compile shaders, albeit less intensively than the first run every time you load the game. I remember Call of Duty MW2 doing that an awful lot in the beginning and it is maddening. But what does it actually mean? Is anything broken and can you speed it up?

What is shader compiling?

Shader compiling in a video game refers to the process of translating shader code—small programs that control how graphics are rendered—into a format that the GPU can execute. Shaders define visual effects like lighting, shadows, reflections, and surface textures, playing a critical role in creating the game’s visual fidelity. During development or when a game is first launched, the shader code written in high-level languages (like GLSL or HLSL) is compiled into machine code tailored for the specific hardware. This process can cause stutters or delays if done on the fly during gameplay, which is why many games opt for pre-compiling shaders to ensure smoother performance.

In games such as CoD and Ghost of Tsushima if you played while the shaders were compiling it was was a stuttering mess, so best to just leave it.

Can you speed up shader compiling in Stalker 2?

You are going to have to live with the big first-time shader compilation, even if it seems at times the game may have frozen. It likely hasn’t. Go and get a coffee and come back in a bit. You have waited 15 years for this moment. Enjoy it.

If you want to attempt to trim down the length of time subsequent shader compiles take you can tweak the shader cache size in your GPU’s control panel.

If you have an Nvidia card:

Open Nvidia Control Panel
Open Manage 3D Settings
Now go to Shader Cache Size and change to a larger size if it is on driver default. If it is disabled. Try turning it to Driver Default

Nvidia released a new set of Game Ready Drivers for Stalker 2, make sure you have those installed too.

If you have an AMD card:

Open the AMD software and choose Gaming
Head to Global Graphics
Change (or check) Shader Cache is set to AMD Optimized

Patches

Each time the game gets a new patch – and Stalker 2 has had about four today at the last count – you will have to compile shaders again, but that’s life unfortunately. Shader compilation is a necessary evil of modern PC gaming, it’s just that like a lot of Stalker 2, it’s not best optimized here yet it seems.