Whenever Call of Duty updates on PC,Modern Warfare 3and Warzone players need to wait for their shaders to pre-load to ensure a smooth experience. It’s an annoying process, and it gets even worse if you encounter the bug that causes shader pre-loading to get stuck.
It’s a frustratingly common occurrence for PC players, but there are a few things you’re able to try to kickstart the shader compilation process so you can get into MW3 or Warzone faster. Some players are reporting that their shader pre-loading is stuck at 0%, others have shader pre-loading stuck at 3%, and there are all sorts of similar shader compilation roadblocks that you can run into when playing MW3 on PC.
If your shader pre-loading is stuck in Modern Warfare 3 or Warzone, the easiest solution is just to wait. It may seem like shader pre-loading is stuck at 0%, but in reality,it just takes a really long timefor shaders to compile sometimes.
Some players have reported thatit can take 20-30 minutes for shaders to pre-loadafter major updates, so that might be the case for you. It’s hardware-dependent, but even powerful graphics cards still have long wait times for shader pre-loading.
If your shader progress doesn’t go up after a while, though, then head to the settings menu and find the option torestart shaders pre-loading. This will delete the shader cache and start the pre-loading process over from scratch, which should eliminate any problems that were holding the process up. You’ll need to restart the game for this to work, and it’s best to just leave the game at the main menu after rebooting to give the shaders time to load.
If that doesn’t work, thenchanging your graphics settingscould help. Head to the Display section of the Graphics settings menu and then change some options. Make any change to a random setting like Gamma and then click apply settings. For some reason, this can force your shader pre-loading progress to start climbing.
Related:Is Modern Warfare 3 (MW3) down? Server status, explained
As a last resort,completely rebooting your PC and restarting Call of Dutycan help. While a full system reboot may not be necessary, closing and reopening Modern Warfare 3 or Warzone can force the shaders to start pre-loading correctly. If it worked, the percentage should start climbing noticeably faster than it was before.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to get around shader pre-loading if you’re playing Call of Duty on PC. Every time you update your drivers or update the game, you’ll need to wait for them to pre-load before playing if you want a smooth experience. If you don’t, you’ll run into performance problems orother MW3 issues.
Diego Perez
Currently serving as a Senior Staff Writer at PC Invasion, Diego Perez has been writing about video games since 2018, specializing in live service games like Destiny and Final Fantasy XIV. His work is featured at publications like Game Rant and Attack of the Fanboy (where he served as Associate Editor), but PC Invasion is home to his best work. When he’s planning content or writing guides, he’s yelling about Ape Escape or grinding Lost Sectors in Destiny. Plus, he has a Bachelor of Science in Telecommunication Media Studies for Texas A&M University.
