Topic: Why is there no external solution for shader compilation stutter?

I've been wondering for a while why there isn't an external way to compile shaders for a game—either for individual games, as a mod, or as a tool for specific graphics engines. I'm not aware of a single example where this is possible.

Why is that? We see complete graphics and gameplay mods, UEVR mods, and similar things. But no options for shader compilation.

I don't have much knowledge about the technology, so I'm very interested in understanding why this has not been possible so far.

@alex-battaglia often mentions that even with hardware power, nothing can be done about it. It would be really interesting to understand why we seem so helpless when it comes to this issue.

There is Alex's Shader Butler concept, which Valve apply a version of for the Steam Deck and Intel plan to roll out something similar for their GPUs later this year and consoles ship with fixed shaders so never need to compile on the fly.

There is essentially no technical reason why Epic could not make it easier for devs to assemble the list of shaders to compile on startup/after a driver update, or devs could be more diligent in doing a shader pass, or Nvidia or AMD to fix this at the driver level for games. The reason it has not been done at scale yet is because there has not been a big enough financial incentive for anyone to do it.