One of our readers informed us about a possible rendering issue in the PC version of Horizon Zero Dawn. According to the report, the screen-space reflections are not being rendered correctly in 4K. And, after testing various areas, we can confirm that the screen-space reflections are bugged when using 4K resolutions.
Below you can find some comparison screenshots on Ultimate settings. On the left we have the 1080p and 1440p screenshots. On the right we have the 4K screenshots. Now as you can see, the screen-space reflections are “reduced” in the 4K screenshots. They are still there, however, they are not as profound as in 1080p or 1440p. We don’t know why this is happening, however, there is no visual difference between 1440p and 1080p.
In order to make it easier to spot the bugged reflections, I’ve decided to circle specific areas. I don’t know why this is happening, however, I’ve never noticed such a thing in other games. For instance, Death Stranding, a game that’s using the same engine, did not have this issue.
Resetera’s member BoredLemon offered a possible explanation.
“They’re probably doing SSR with simple ray-marching. And it looks like someone just hardcoded maximum steps along the ray *in pixels*, so with higher resolution, you’re getting shorter rays, which is leading to worse SSR coverage.”
This is another bug we can add in the list of Horizon Zero Dawn’s PC issues. A few days ago, we informed you about the lack of the snow deformation effects and Aloy’s hair bug at high framerates. Not only that, but as we’ve already reported, some animations are locked at 30fps.
Guerrilla Games has stated that it’s currently looking into fixing some of these issues. Unfortunately, though, there is no ETA on when the first PC patch will come out.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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