Guerrilla Games continues to work on eliminating Horizon Zero Dawn crashes on PC. The developer rolled out a new update this morning, version 1.03, which brings even more crash fixes. The patch also fixes a few other, non-crash-related problems, such as a bug that caused snow deformation to not trigger, and another that prevented Concentration (slow-mo) from working for some players. My favourite is a fix for a bug where players were stuck playing as kid Aloy, unable to transition to her adult self. Unfortunately, most of the known issues from patch 1.02 remain. The developer has also seemingly not made any improvements to performance problems such as stuttering, unreasonably low framerate in some instances etc. That said, there are a couple of improvements to do with running the game at 4K, which sometimes caused the game to simply render at a lower resolution. The patch notes also mention making the framerate limiter “more accurate,” though it’s not clear what actually means.

Read on below for the full change log: Crash fixes

Fixed a GPU resource leak which could build up over time and cause instability. Fixed a GPU hang that caused a crash that could occur when Asynchronous Compute was used. Fixed a crash when AI would try to aim at an invalid position. Fixed a crash that could occur when sound obstruction was calculated in highly detailed areas. Fixed a crash that would occur when moving the game to a monitor with different DPI settings while in the menu. Fixed an issue where some players would crash on startup due to incorrect memory allocation. Fixed a GPU hang that would occur when the window was resized to a very small size.

Progression issues

Fixed a progression issue where some players would remain a child and not transition to adult Aloy.

Functionality issues

Fixed an issue where snow deformation was not working correctly in the Frozen Wilds area. Fixed an issue where the Concentration skill could stop working.

Other improvements

4K Scaling - Fixed an issue where the game wouldn’t render at 4K properly on boot. Frame Rate Limiter - Improved Frame Rate Limiter functionality to be more accurate. Localization - Localized specific error messages. Windows Version Check - The game checks if Windows 10 Build 1809 or above is used (lower versions cause instability in DirectX 12). Minimum Spec Warning - Improved minimum spec warning message and options. Saving Issue Warning - Clarified text that is displayed when you do not have access to your My document folder or enough disk space. Player Profile Validation - The player profile is now validated and corrupt profiles (caused by manual editing or tweak tools) rejected.

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.