The upcoming beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is set to address two significant technical hurdles that have long plagued PC players: the protracted "Compiling Shaders" wait times and the frequent "Update Requires Restart" prompts. Developers Infinity Ward and Beenox detailed these improvements in a recent blog post, highlighting changes designed to streamline the PC gaming experience.
Compiling shaders, a process essential for modern games to tell a graphics card how to render on-screen elements, traditionally results in lengthy waits for PC players, especially after initial game installations, GPU driver updates, or major patches. This issue is largely absent on consoles due to their standardized hardware and software, which allows for pre-compiled shaders to be included with downloads. Modern Warfare 4 aims to bridge this gap by enabling shader pre-loading in the background once a download is complete. While this feature is enabled by default on the Battle.net launcher for the beta, Steam users may still encounter a faster initial "Compiling Shaders" step, with subsequent launches benefiting from the background pre-loading.
The developers anticipate that the full release of Modern Warfare 4 will offer more substantial benefits, potentially requiring players to compile shaders only once rather than after each seasonal update.
Additionally, the beta will introduce a fix for the "Update Requires Restart" phenomenon. This issue, common in Call of Duty titles, forces players to restart the game multiple times to apply updates. The new system is designed to bundle more types of patches together, reducing the necessity for frequent restarts. While this will not eliminate all restart requirements, particularly if an update occurs mid-game, the aim is to significantly decrease interruptions. This improved update process is expected for PC players across all storefronts and for PlayStation 5 users. Xbox players will also see a reduction in required restarts, though the developers are continuing to work on further optimizations for the game's full launch. Unfortunately, Nintendo Switch 2 will not benefit from these changes, with restarts continuing to be required on that platform.
The first phase of the Modern Warfare 4 beta is scheduled to begin on August 21st, following the conclusion of the Call of Duty: Next live event. Pre-loading for the beta commences today at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm BST. PC players will need to ensure TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are enabled to participate.