Horizon Zero Dawn Crashes Targeted by Patch 1.04

If there’s a constant that Horizon Zero Dawn PC players can count on, it’s crashes. Ever since the game launched in August 2020, they’ve been an issue. So much so that two patches last month attempted to ward them off. Now 1.04 has arrived and, again, the bulk of the work attempts to keep the Horizon Zero Dawn crashes away.

Here are the official 1.04 patch notes from Steam. While the bulk of them are devoted to stopping Horizon Zero Dawn crashes, it also helps make things like aiming, cutscenes, and mouse controls better.

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
• Visibility – Fixed an issue which could sometimes cause geometry to briefly disappear after streaming

While there have definitely been issues, it seems Sony isn’t about to let them down. Following the Horizon Zero Dawn PC port and its sales, Sony said it is looking into porting more exclusives to the platform.

Horizon Zero Dawn is available for the PlayStation 4 and PC.