By Kosta Andreadis
Publication Date: 2026-03-16 04:01:00
Playing a modern PC game, we have all grown accustomed to the ‘shader compilation’ process, which can take seconds or several minutes to complete. This process, designed to minimize stutter that occurs when new shaders are compiled in real time, also increases the time it takes to get into the action. And it’s not always a one-and-done thing, as changes to settings and game updates can restart the shader compilation process.
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At GDC 2026, Microsoft announced that it’s bringing Advanced Shader Delivery for Windows to PC gamers, with NVIDIA confirming that it will be available for GeForce RTX gamers later this year. It’s an ambitious update that is rolling out via the latest AgilitySDK 1.619 release, where developers can generate a “state object database (SODB) file” and then use an “offline compiler to compile the state objects into a precompiled shader database (PSDB).”
Although that’s the technical summary of what’s involved, the good news for…
