Horizon Zero Dawn PC Patch Improves Performance Up To 10%

Horizon Zero Dawn launched on PC little over a month ago with numerous performance and technical issues, which developer Guerrilla Games has been chipping away at. While the last patch fixed a bug that kept you as a baby Aloy forever, the latest update is all about performance increases.

Patch 1.04 address multiple reported issues across the game but is headlined by a CPU optimization that Guerrilla says could increase performance up to 10% on some systems. The change also helps the performance during cutscenes and dialogue transitions, which could often see the frame rate dip incredibly low in pivotal story moments.

Elsewhere the patch touches up banding issues that players using HDR were reporting, as well as a fix for mouse sensitivity that would go out-of-sync with the setting when the frame rate was not stable. Fixes for issues around aiming bugs and geometry pop-in have also been included, with Guerrilla keeping tracking of existing issues and asking players to keep the team updated on new ones they might be encountering. You can read through the full patch notes below.

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of Sony's best first-party titles, which was previously exclusive to the PS4. Sony has committed to more PC support in the future. Its upcoming first-party titles, including Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, have only been announced for the PlayStation 5.

Horizon Zero Dawn PC - Patch 1.04

Known Issues

• Some players are experiencing an out of memory error during the game optimization process.
• Some players are experiencing graphical settings issues, such as Anisotropic Filtering or HDR not working correctly.
• Some players are experiencing performance issues on specific GPUs or hardware combinations.
• Some players are experiencing issues with Aloy's hair when the game is running above 30 FPS.
• We're aware of and continue to investigate issues that are not yet solved on both the player-compiled lists by u/EvilMonkeySlayer and u/Rampage572 - thank you!

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.
• 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).
• 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.