Microsoft announced at GDC 2026 that it will be launching its Advanced Shader Delivery program to Windows later this year. The program, or tool, will roll out via AgilitySDK 1.619.
One of Microsoft’s aims in bringing its Advanced Shader Delivery program for Windows to PC gamers is to fix the common shader-related stutters and, more importantly, reduce long load times in PC gaming. Many of you would most certainly be familiar with the latter issue: most titles you play pre-compile shaders and textures, a process that typically takes anywhere from a handful of seconds to a minute or two, even if the game is technically installed on that brand new PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 SSD you just purchased.
Worse yet, this pre-compilation isn’t a one-and-done scenario, and occurs every time you load up the game.
How It Technically Works
Through the Advanced Shader Delivery, Microsoft says that the tool could help developers generate a “state object database (SODB) file” and then use an “offline compiler to compile the state objects into a precompiled shader database (PSDB).”
“Long shader compilation times and in-game shader stutter for D3D12 apps are two of the biggest problems in PC gaming. These problems are caused by compiling shaders at runtime. Unlike console, PC games do not have a fixed driver and GPU environment, and precompiled shaders need a way to be delivered to a large matrix of drivers and GPUs in the Windows ecosystem.”
To put it in layman’s terms: pre-compiled shaders would be downloaded for specific GPU models as part of the full-game installation, which, on paper, should significantly reduce shader compilation downtime and get gamers diving face-first into gaming.
The good news is that, so far, two companies will be supporting Advanced Shader Delivery when it rolls out. NVIDIA says that it will ensure that its GeForce RTX Series GPUs will support it, while Epic Games says that the feature will be integrated into Unreal Engine, should the tool go mainstream. “As Unreal, we’re excited about supporting advanced shader delivery in the ecosystem. We’ve been doing early testing and explorations on SODB and PSDB generation, and will have more details coming soon,” Mihnea Balta, Director, Rendering Engineering at Epic Games, said.
