s&box Update 26.08.05 adds Streamer Mode, DLSS and Vulkan 1.3

Update 26.08.05 went live in s&box on August 5, 2026. It introduces Streamer Mode, NVIDIA DLSS support, a Vulkan 1.3 baseline, faster package downloads, and a substantial Hammer/content-creation pass. Full notes are on the s&box blog.

• Streamer Mode gives everyone — including the streamer — a generic anonymous name and procedurally generated profile picture. It won't work for every game out of the box; developers can check Preferences.StreamerMode and make sure player strings/profile pictures are never networked when it's enabled.
• The friends list now groups party members and lets you invite players from the list row.
• The main menu front page was reworked to get players into a game as quickly as possible, with further changes planned.

• Package download cap was raised from 16 to 64 parallel connections, with HTTP/2 sharing those connections instead of opening 64 sockets. Small files now download about twice as fast, and files stream to disk instead of buffering in memory — a 610MB package's heap usage dropped from 739MB to 3MB.
• Steam Controller support is in, alongside a unique glyph library for Steam Deck and Steam Controller and Switch joycon support. Controllers now report their names properly.
• Mounted game maps now ship with thumbnails; mount developers can use SceneLoader's IThumbnailProvider and the mount_generatethumbs concmd.

• Minimum Vulkan is now 1.3, matching Minecraft's current baseline. No new settings, expected performance change, or hardware upgrade is needed.
• The shader compiler moved from DXC to Slang, the same compiler used in upstream Source 2. HLSL shaders remain compatible, compile times drop by up to 25%, and Slang adds generics/interfaces plus IntelliSense support.
• DLSS is now available alongside FSR3 as an optional temporal upscaler. Expect minor ghosting/artifacts, and there is no frame generation or plans to add it.
• A texture-selection bias fixes overly smooth textures when using DLSS or FSR.
• Specular is enabled by default in complex shaders. Most materials won't change, but materials that had specular off and no roughness texture may gain plastic shine; setting roughness to 1.0 or adding a roughness texture fixes it.
• Static shadow caching renders static geometry once and only re-renders dynamic objects; Bloom 3 is easier to configure, handles small bright details, and benchmarks about 25% faster; hair transparency now alpha-clips instead of stippling when MSAA is off; and a shadow-mask rework fixes the 1-frame VR delay plus shadow acne/quad divergence.

• Hammer map compilation now builds aggregate scene objects from meshes/props sharing materials, reducing draw calls. It's semi-backported from Source 2 upstream without meshlets or GPU culling for now.
• Open-world visibility uses Deadlock's proven cluster merging. Maps must be rebuilt to benefit.
• Hammer can highlight bad faces, temporarily hide mesh faces, and received a primitive tool UX pass.
• The create-model wizard now includes import scale with unit presets.
• ModelDoc auto-fills materials by bare name when unambiguous, and decals can be created from selected textures via the context menu using suffixes like _color, _normal, _rma, _emissive, and _height.
• Collision events are batched and faster, but collision update events no longer fire for sleeping contacts; PhysicsBody.AutoSleep = false restores the old behavior. Painted clutter on published maps now loads correctly via temporary GameObject overrides.

Other highlights include CSS isolation support in the UI/panel system, MCP compile status reporting, public Index on SamplerStates, Input.SetLastAction, fur shader tinting, Quake map 6-sided skybox thumbnails, multiple asset browsers, terrain grid options, and a large set of community-contributed fixes. The update also removes the DXC dependency, dead D3D11 backends, and the C++ ATL dependency.