Below are a few recommendations from us about what you can do to optimise your Horizon Zero Dawn PC experience. As always, your feedback and support is so appreciated!
Updating the Latest Video Drivers
Please ensure you're using the latest graphics drivers available for your card. Older drivers may cause graphical glitches or stability issues:
NVIDIA: 451.67
AMD: 20.7.2 ("Optional" / non-WHQL) or newer
Look out for new drivers released around launch that may offer further benefits for Horizon Zero Dawn on PC.
Initial Shader Compilation
In order to improve performance during play, we've implemented a one-time initial shader compilation before the game starts for the first time. This can take an average of 10-15 minutes for most systems to complete. Once it's completed, you won't have to do it again unless you make a significant hardware change or update your video drivers. We're looking into ways to further optimize this process.
Known Issues
- Anisotropic Filtering settings are not working. This is a high priority issue for us to resolve.
- Some systems may experience a brief stutter during general world traversal, UI updates, quest updates, or camera swaps in cutscenes. This is a high priority issue for us to investigate.
- Some animations are designed to only refresh at 30fps even if the game is running at a much higher frame rate. We are exploring how we can improve this with a future update.
- Shader Compilation process does not properly verify remaining storage space on user PC and can result in crashes if the user's storage drive is low on space (compilation process requires additional ~2GB storage space).
PATCH NOTES
NOTE: This list contains some spoilers for quest and character names, as well as in-game locations!
Crash/Hang Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the game would crash in the control mapping menu screen when moving the game window to a second screen using the Win Key + Arrow Key combination.
- Fixed several other crashes
Performance Issue Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the framerate would behave incorrectly in Ultimate Quality with a 3840x2160 display resolution.
- Fixed an issue where the game would have performance issues when running in High End 4K display resolution.
- Fixed an issue in the main quest "The Point of the Spear" where the game would have performance issues during the fight with the Sawtooth.
- Fixed an issue in the side quest "Fatal Inheritance" where the game would have performance issues when entering the house.
- Fixed an issue in the DLC expansion quest "Firebreak" where the frame rate would drop in certain places.
- Fixed an issue where the framerate would drop on a path to in-game location Pitchcliff.
- Fixed an issue where the game would encounter streaming issues on buildings when the player was near Mother's Cradle.
Graphics Issue Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the game would have graphics issues when approaching the Battery Facility and Firebreak.
- Fixed an issue in side quest "Sunstone Rock" where there was a graphics issue behind Janeva near Sunstone Rock.
- Fixed an issue where a flicker would occur when changing the Render Scale.
- Fixed an issue where the Crafting sub-menu image would show a compressed image in different aspect ratios.
- Fixed an issue with overlapping UI in Quest menus when using Mouse and Keyboard.
- Fixed an issue where the extended blurred side bars for cutscenes and conversations did not display when in Borderless Mode.
Streaming Issue Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the game would encounter streaming issues when using specific Adaptive Performance FPS settings.
Functionality Issue Fixes
- Fixed an issue where a notification after a crash disappears before the user can accept the request.
- Fixed an issue where an option in the Audio Output Device list did not register as a valid option.
- Fixed an issue where the Audio Output Device can not be changed via the Settings > Audio page.
- Fixed an issue in the Benchmark Tool where music would no longer play on subsequent runs of the Benchmark Tool after running and cancelling the tool early.
- Fixed an issue in the Japanese SKU where the cross button is functioned as confirmation button when selecting choices during conversation and cutscenes instead of circle button
Localization Issue Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the first-time loading screen would show placeholder text in every language except English.
Other Fixes
- Fixed an issue where a user was not able to boot the game after closing it.
- Fixed an issue where the game would display debug names in some instances.
- Fixed an issue where several fonts were present in the Install folder of the game.
- Fixed an issue where the Horizon Zero Dawn logo would not be displayed correctly.
