Unreal Engine 5.8 adds Advanced Shader Delivery support

Unreal Engine 5.8 now includes a dedicated tool for Microsoft’s Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD), giving developers a way to prepare shader data for precompilation before players launch a game. The change targets one of PC gaming’s most persistent irritations: the stutters and long first launches caused when a graphics driver compiles shaders on demand. ¹

Epic’s ASD Tool builds a State Object Database (SODB) from a cooked Windows Direct3D 12 build. Developers can collect compute shaders from the build’s shader archives and graphics or compute Pipeline State Objects from bundled pipeline caches. Stores then use that data to create hardware-specific Precompiled Shader Databases (PSDBs), which can be downloaded alongside a game. ¹

That does not mean every Unreal game will instantly become stutter-free. Epic says ASD applies to Windows D3D12 Shader Model 6 builds, and ray-tracing PSOs are not currently supported. Older GPUs and drivers may not receive a matching precompiled database, while missing PSOs can still fall back to runtime compilation. Developers are therefore expected to keep PSO precaching and bundled PSO caches enabled alongside ASD. ¹

The tool is also not a plug-and-play editor feature. Epic’s documentation says developers need an engine built from source, then must build the ASD Tool before generating an SODB from a cooked game. That adds work for studios, but it also gives them a documented route to package the shader information storefronts need. ¹

Microsoft says Advanced Shader Delivery is already available through the Microsoft Store and Xbox PC app, with Steam and the Epic Games Store planned next. Its DirectX team says the system can reduce first-launch shader compilation from minutes to seconds in supported examples, while also reducing shader stutter and power use. ²

Our opinion

This is a practical improvement rather than a glamorous Unreal Engine feature, but it addresses a problem players notice immediately. The important detail is that ASD is an infrastructure layer: it cannot rescue incomplete shader coverage or unsupported hardware on its own. If Epic and Microsoft make the workflow easy enough for studios, however, precompiled shaders could become a quiet quality-of-life upgrade across a much wider share of PC games.