protonscr

[New UI] Bad user experience for launching any game (hidden shader processing)

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ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#9432 · opened 2023-05-01 by puttehi · updated 2024-05-22 · 3 comments · github
Pputtehi 2023-05-01 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1682634349
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS x86_64
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] Yes
  • Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

When launching a game, nothing happens except system starting to ramp up it's fans and temperatures.

Why?

When launching a game, Proton has to do it's shader pre-processing magic. This used to be visible as a separate window but is now almost completely hidden from the user. It is only visible as many fossilize_replay processes, a loud system with maxed out CPU and this spot in the GUI:
image

Additionally, this process now takes considerably longer than it used to. For some of the games it took ~5 minutes, it now seems to take 30-60 minutes.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Launch a game from the tray icon, dash icon, library, ...
Pputtehi 2023-05-01 github

I find it pretty amusing that the main use case for the software was never tested after reworking the UI/UX of the entire software :P

Rrobertc 2023-05-05 github

It used to be possible to cancel the shader processing, now all the time I could have spent playing is instead wasted watching the percentage slowly creep up.

Xxsnrg 2024-05-22 github

This ticket is about a year old, but still open and still relevant. I also searched and there are still about 7 tickets open of the same type. I chose this one as it is the most recent.

This problem still exists. A particularly painful app is 1203620, Enshrouded, where the shader cache processing takes a very long time on a AMD 3800XT cpu, 32GB RAM, Samsung M2 990 Pro 2TB, and nVidia 4700Ti machine. A section of the shader cache log looks like this:

[2024-05-22 07:30:57] Starting processing job for app 1203620!
[2024-05-22 07:30:57] CProcessShaderCacheJob done for AppID 1203620.
[2024-05-22 07:30:57] Setting MESA_GLSL_CACHE_DIR=/mnt/local/SteamLibrary/steamapps/shadercache/1203620 MESA_DISK_CACHE_READ_ONLY_FOZ_DBS=steam_cache,steam_precompiled,steam_precompiled_904f69d2b1b44b65,steam_precompiled_8a4a4e4e4fbadf5d
[2024-05-22 07:30:57]   /mnt/local/SteamLibrary/steamapps/shadercache/1203620/fozpipelinesv6/steamapp_pipeline_cache.foz.
[2024-05-22 07:30:57]   /mnt/local/SteamLibrary/steamapps/shadercache/1203620/fozpipelinesv6/steam_pipeline_cache.foz.
[2024-05-22 07:31:04] Still replaying 1203620 (0%, 0/194732).
[2024-05-22 07:31:14] Still replaying 1203620 (4%, 20318/206350).
[...]
[2024-05-22 08:13:12] Still replaying 1203620 (23%, 111303/235473).
[2024-05-22 08:13:22] Still replaying 1203620 (23%, 111395/235473).
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The process is running with 4 worker threads at 100% cpu.

This makes the title rather unplayable.

Launch options