Wondering why STALKER 2 is compiling shaders all the time? You can't start the game on PC without the message, and it leaves you waiting until it hits 100%. So what's going on exactly?
Well the short answer is when STALKER 2 is compiling shaders it's taking a bunch of graphical tricks and turning them into something your PC can use. Shaders are basically fancy maths that can move and change pixels on the screen to create different effects, and covers everything from fancy lighting effects to moving plants around as you walk through them. It's basically an extra layer on top of basic shapes and lights that makes things look good.
However, to run STALKER 2 smoothly these things need to be converted into as simple a form as possible, and specifically to your set up - different PC components, GPUs, drivers and so on mean a unique compiling process. Because it can take time, games often choose to do it all at the start, rather than try to compile things on the fly which can cause stuttering and slowdown as everything gets worked out.
So STALKER 2 compiling shaders at the start is technically making things smoother when you play. Although, admittedly, it isn't great it's doing it every single time. It's more usual to do it once and store the information on your system to avoid endlessly redoing it at every startup. But, for whatever reason, Heart of Chornobyl isn't doing that. Yet, at least - hopefully a patch will fix things eventually.
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