AstroQuest v0.8.8-experimental.1 - Experimental asynchronous shader compilation

Experimental PC VR build based on v0.8.7.

Experimental asynchronous shader compilation

Vulkan graphics pipelines compile on a background worker while the render thread prepares textures, buffers and attachments. Every draw waits for its pipeline to finish before rendering, rather than skipping an object or effect.

This is asynchronous graphics pipeline compilation, not a fully asynchronous shader translator. GCN shader translation and compute pipelines remain synchronous. First-use stutters can remain, and a gameplay performance improvement is not yet confirmed.

Includes all v0.8.7 fixes. Compilation uses a bounded queue and one worker, with completion waits during shutdown and live shader replacement.

Download and run

1. Extract AstroQuest-PC-VR-v0.8.8-experimental.1.zip.
2. Place your complete extracted game at games/<game-folder>/eboot.bin, or select it when prompted. Game files and saves are not included.
3. Start your OpenXR runtime and run Play Astro Bot VR.bat.

If installing over an existing copy, back it up and preserve games, pc-vr/user and your pc-vr/settings.txt. Crash-report ZIP collection is included.

Asynchronous compilation is enabled by default. For a synchronous comparison, add this line to pc-vr/settings.txt and restart:

env=SHADPS4_ASYNC_PIPELINES=0

Remove that line to enable it again. Logs record pipeline preparation, driver compilation and the remaining wait before a draw. Please include the crash-report/log ZIP, GPU, headset/runtime and affected scene when reporting results.

Validation and limits

Windows and ARM64 core builds and worker regression tests passed. A desktop smoke test compiled 21 graphics pipelines and shut down normally without pipeline-compilation errors; 9 pipelines were ready with less than 0.1 ms of bind wait. This is not a headset gameplay benchmark or confirmation of visual correctness in every scene.

This download is PC VR only. Existing Quest, PICO and Galaxy XR downloads remain on the stable v0.8.7 release. The stable release remains unchanged.