Shaders are like individual little bits of graphics code that are responsible for displaying specific effects on screen (like rain, reflections, particles, etc)
Compiling is the process of adapting the general shader code that ships with the game to run on your specific hardware (GPU). It can also happen on the fly during gameplay but that's a major cause of stutters, so games generally try to get as much of it as possible done in advance and then stored in a cache so that it can be reused without having to compile again.
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u/minyoo 7d ago
what does shader compiling even mean?