A new Unreal Engine 5 update aims to further alleviate the bane of immersive gaming; stuttering that is caused by asset loading. The system 5.2 update builds upon a pre-caching feature called PSO Caching that was added in 5.1 and has been further improved upon. Highlights of the Unreal Engine 5 PSO Caching update include system stability improvements, objects are no longer drawn before PSOs are available, optimizations for the number of precached PSOs, and improvements to the previous manual method of PSO caching allowing it to be used with the new pre-cache system.
From Unreal Engine Public Roadmap:
A new PSO precaching mechanism was introduced as Experimental in 5.1 to improve PSO hitching in DX12 titles. Improvements to this system in 5.2 include:
- We’ve improved the performance and stability of the system. There were various corner cases that needed to be addressed.
- We now skip drawing objects if their PSOs aren’t ready yet. The system aims to have the PSO ready in time for drawing, but it will never be able to guarantee this. When it’s late, it is now possible to skip drawing the object instead of waiting for compilation to finish (and hitching).
- The number of PSOs to precache has been reduced due to improved logic that omits ones that will never be used.
- We’ve improved the old (manual) PSO cache system so that it can be used alongside precaching.
Gamers, and game developers are sure to appreciate the ongoing efforts to eliminate game stuttering. While this update will not completely prevent them it’s refreshing to see the Epic engineers continuing to put resources into addressing solutions for it. Who knows, maybe we’ll get to a point where day-one launches that result in “stutter-fests” could become a thing of the past at some point which would be a win-win-win for gamers, developers, and publishers.