[Update]: Two years after its original launch, Horizon Forbidden West is coming to PC on March 21st.
The launch version of Horizon Zero Dawn on PC was a bit of a mess, and that's putting it lightly. The game suffered from performance issues, random crashes, mouse sensitivity problems, and most hilariously of all, a bug that made it so your character always walked at a very slight angle.
Over time time Guerrilla Games have managed to fix all of these issues, and so Horizon Zero Dawn is now a remarkably solid game on PC. However, this doesn't seem to have slowed Guerrilla Games down even slightly as they are still releasing new updates! In fact, a brand new one only just arrived with a new batch of visual and performance improvements!
Since the patch notes are fairly descriptive, here's a brief rundown of everything that has been changed with Update 1.11:
Graphical Improvements
• Added Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology.
• Added AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution, replacing FidelityFX CAS.UI Changes
• Adjusted settings screen to facilitate the addition of DLSS and FSR.
• Render Scale option has been removed but same result can now be accomplished by adjusting setting Upscale Method to Simple and adjusting Upscale Quality.Performance Improvements
• Improvement to the shader management system. This will result in a few noticeable differences:
- There is no longer a shader pre-compilation step on startup. The game will always compile shaders during loading and in the background.
- Stutters during gameplay that used to occur due to background shader compilation have now been significantly reduced.
- Because shader compilation is still happening in the background you may notice the game having a higher CPU utilization while that is happening.
- Loading screens will wait for the required shaders to be fully compiled. This may cause loading screens to take somewhat longer on certain systems.
- On higher spec machines with faster CPUs the loading screens will typically be shorter, due to more efficient shader compilation that better leverages high-end CPUs.
Given the quality of these updates time after time, I must admit I now have extremely high hopes for the upcoming sequel - Horizon Forbidden West. The currently unannounced PC port will likely take a fair bit of time to arrive since the PlayStation version is only launching this February, but if the current state of Horizon Zero Dawn is any indicator, it'll be well worth the wait.
Whatever the case may be, I'll make sure to let you know once we have more information. Until then, you can read a little bit more about this update, and Horizon Zero Dawn in general, over at Steam.