I really wish I could boost off the planet in 20 seconds to find a new one sometimes..
In general, it's.. for example... like a light-blob with a particular gradient depending on some nearby factors. Compiling a shader like that is generally fast, but it takes time (and more importantly, it spends traffic and interrupts on the pci-bus). So fetching a pre-loaded shader can save a lot of context switches, which then will speed up the time to render each frame.

...or more practically, that stutter you get every time you turn a corner only happens once, for example.

Buut... the shader-cache in NMS isn't actually connected to the driver-layer shader cache. It's something else, with a different kind of logic. And they've tweaked this setting along with the various other surface filters several times. Although the official/major versions have the full Instagram and Sony browngrim filter + grain, etc. And the filters are put in before the rendering context is passed to the graphics driver context.

In other words, the "main version" of this game runs best on a ps4, in 720p@30fps. Pretty much exclusively thanks to the surface filters and the way the game forces a specific rendering pipeline. Essentially, you need to be running a Celeron or something like that to not have enough cpu to run this game at full "generation detail". In fact, if you can remove the Sony Suicide Squad filters, forced ordering/depth highlight/depth-blur (this is a surface effect, not a rendering context based effect - it's essentially a photoshop blur-filter that simulates dof), you don't get the insane slowdowns from when the per pixel filters start struggling with the fade-popin (i.e., more irregular lines and pixels, and the bigger performance hit you get). And of course without a forced anti-aliasing filter alone, the framerates won't be halved when increasing the resolution to the double.

So best performance you can get out of this game is on Gog's experimental branch + the instagram filter remover mod, on one of the later nvidia drivers, for example.

....

Seriously, I want to rip someone's head off at Sony right now. They know they've fucked over every PC owner who wanted to run this game at higher resolutions. They know they've forced their training wheel flat-earther universe on the PC version as well. They know on beforehand that even if their PS4 customers may only be slightly pissed off, that no one on PC wants this crap. And they're untouchable. HG folks probably can't spill the beans on the process without losing their jobs. Sony folks need to shut the hell up to keep their jobs. Incompetent people in Sony are still incompetent in their jobs. And no one is going to believe this without "proof", in the form of Shuei Yoshida admitting to doing all of it on purpose because he hates PC-owners while committing seppuku on live ps4-stream.

Please go and die Sony.

Also inclusive manual deletion by windows explorer:

In Gog:

%programfiles%\GOG Games\No Man's Sky\Gamedata\SHADERCACHE\

or

X:\GOG Games\No Man's Sky\Gamedata\SHADERCACHE\

X is Hard disk drive, such as C or D

and press CTRL + E and delete clicking RMB ->"Delete" or press "SUPR" in keyboard, and MUST BE
EMPTY THE RECYCLE BIN

In Steam:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\No Man's Sky\Gamedata\Shadercache\

or

X:\Steam\SteamApps\common\No Man's Sky\Gamedata\Shadercache\

X is Hard disk drive, such as C or D

and press CTRL + E and delete clicking RMB-> "Delete" or press "SUPR" in keyboard, and MUST BE
EMPTY THE RECYCLE BIN

¿Did you remember in the DOS (like MS-DOS commands) terminal as: DEL, DELTREE, MKDIR commands? use in DOS Terminal (CMD):

Start->Run (Execute) -> type "CMD" and press "OK"
NOTE: Mus be RUN as ADMINISTRATOR

- Firstly, go to directory installed No Man's Sky installed GOG or Steam with CD commands.

DEL * and press enter and then pressing "y" for yes or "N" for no (all data will be erased/wiped within above folder as SHADERCACHE)

in the entire folder:

DELTREE SHADERCACHE * and press enter and then pressing "y" for yes or "N" for no (all data will be erased the folder as SHADERCACHE, including all data will be ERASED/WIPED).

To create directory, use: MKDIR SHADERCACHE and press enter and then DIR to check folder directory created the foldername SHADERCACHE by MKDIR command in the DOS terminal

Administrator Account in Win7/8.1/10/10 Anniversary:

1.- Open Start->Search->Type "CMD" (without Quotes) and then RMB as "Run as Administrator" and execute

C:\> net user administrator /active:yes (...if you're in english.)
C:\> net user administrador /active:yes (...if you're in spanish or portuguese.)
C:\> net user administrateur /active:yes (...if you're in french.)
C:\> net user администратор /active:yes (...if you're in russian and bielorussian.)

2.- Be sure a "Administrator" account with password

3.- Log off session your actual account to back to Log on session

4.- Click "Administrator" and type your password to open

5.- Enjoy; installs: games, mods, apps, etc., gaming with administrator account mode.

Languages in administrator:

net user administrator /active:yes <-Toggles to english
net user administrador /active:yes <- Toggles to Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, etc.
net user administrateur /active:yes <- Toggles to French, Occitan, etc.
net user администратор /active:yes <-Toggles to Russian and Bielorussian.