The Horizon Zero Dawn 1.04 patch has been released for the PC version of the game. The patch has mostly been focused on making the PC port more stable. There are of course other additions as well. Guerrilla Games has included some very interesting changes to the PC version, so let’s see what they added.
Guerrilla Games and Virtuos did acknowledge that the game was having some problems. The performance of the port was rather poor. The Horizon Zero Dawn PC port when it launched was alleged to be a debug build of the game, with some optimizations missing altogether. This led to a lot of players reporting issues. Many claims were made that effects rendering with Aloy’s hair had a pretty profound effect on performance. It was also pointed out that the PC version does not feature the snow deformation effects that are present in the PS4 version.
This has been somewhat fixed in the new Horizon Zero Dawn 1.04 patch. there are also many fixes added that target various crashes as well as the performance changes. Fixes for memory corruption problems have also been added, reducing crashes.
As for the big hits, CPU and GPU handing by the game code has been given an optimization pass. This should make everyone making noise about bad performance a little happier. There were also some problems noted with cutscenes that have been dealt with too. Some problems with CPU processing that caused process hangs were fixed as well.
Check out the full patch notes for the game’s latest update below. The game should download the latest patch via the relevant launcher when you start it up.
Horizon Zero Dawn 1.04 Patch Notes
Crash Fixes:
- Fixed a crash that could occur when users would create a new game and their save game slots were full
- Fixed a startup crash related to temp folder
- Also fixed an AI crash that could occur during combat
- Fixed an AI crash in the EventMessageHandler
- Fixed a crash related to WorldData sampling (the callstack would end in WorldMapData::SampleAtPixel)
- Also fixed a crash when users would instantly back out when changing sliders in the Settings menu
- Fixed a crash that would occur when having the “Greetings” option open in photo mode and then exiting
- Potential fix for memory corruption in AI routines which could lead to crashes
- Potential fix for a GPU hang caused by a threading issue
- Fixed a mismatch that would occur on Shader Model 6.0 and 6.1 hardware which could lead to a crash
Performance improvements:
- General improvement to CPU performance (depending on CPU/GPU speeds, this can result in a 1-10% performance improvement)
- Improved performance of camera cuts in cinematics and conversations
Other Improvements:
- HDR – Fixed colour banding issues in HDR mode
- Mouse Controls – Fixed an issue where mouse sensitivity was incorrect when framerate wasn’t constant
- Aiming – Fixed an issue where Aloy was unable to shoot while being able to do a critical attack near a machine
- Cutscenes – Fixed an issue where geometry and textures would pop in after camera cuts
- Adaptive Performance – Fixed an issue where lighting glitches would occur when turning on Adaptive Performance
- Volumetrics – Fixed an issue which could cause blinking artifacts in volumetric effects, like fog
- Reverb – Fixed several issues where excessive reverb was noticeable in specific quests
- Visibility – Fixed an issue which could sometimes cause geometry to briefly disappear after streaming
