Some PC players of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III experienced noticeably washed-out visuals, strong color shifts, or negative-like colors after installing the latest NVIDIA graphics drivers. Reloading shaders or deleting specific cache folders may restore normal display.
This title is one of the few games currently supporting Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery technology, which allows pre-compiled shaders to be downloaded with the game, reducing the wait time for local compilation before entering the game. Multiple players have reported color anomalies after driver updates, and the author who compiled these reports encountered the same issue.
Players encountering this issue can first go into the game settings, use the search function to find "Restart Shader Preload," then restart the game and wait for the shaders to recompile before entering the campaign to check if the visuals have been restored.
If the issue persists after reloading, navigate to the game's installation directory and delete the folder named "shadercache" within both the "sp26" and "cod26" directories, then restart the game and wait for recompilation. Only delete "shadercache"; do not mistakenly delete the entire "sp26" or "cod26" directories. The above methods come from player discussions and have been verified by the compiler, but there is no official explanation yet regarding the specific affected driver versions or the cause of the fault.