Elden Ring unplayable at launch due to flashing visual bugs

William Davis Published 24/02/2022

Elden Ring is finally out, but black bars and flickering screens are turning the game into a seizure hazard on PC.

Elden Ring is finally available on all platforms, but PC players are in for a nasty surprise. Even after the game’s day-one patch, Elden Ring is experiencing serious graphical problems including black screen flickering and bars around the screen. The issue seems to affect the open world segments the most. There’s no concrete solution for this problem, but From Software seems to be aware of these issues.

After opening Elden Ring for the first time and selecting their starting class, several players claim to see black bars taking up some sections of the screen. The issue usually goes away for the underground tutorial area, but the entrance to Limgrave triggers a massive number of graphical errors. Black screen flickering makes the game nearly unplayable. Elden Ring fans with epilepsy should be especially cautious about these errors.

WARNING: those fans with epilepsy or who become uncomfortable with flashing images should not view the following video.

Elden Ring’s black bars, flickering, and flashing seem to only trigger at certain points. The most common place to experience the issue is outdoors, which means it could be related to the high graphical load of the Lands Between. Looking down at the ground or up at the sky can also cause them to occur. This hints that the issue is tied to graphical performance. The footage captured above was recorded using a GTX 1080 graphics card that ran the tutorial at a smooth 60 frames per second.

Elden Ring PC graphic errors, visual bugs remain after day one patch

Elden Ring’s PC version is experiencing flashing errors even after its day-one patch.

As with any AAA video game release, Elden Ring came with a day one patch to fix bugs and improve online connectivity. This patch did not fix the black bars of flickering issues currently affecting the game.

According to gaming insider Nibellion, the issues could be caused by FromSoftware’s inexperience working with low-level APIs and DirectX 12. The flickering does not occur on the console versions of Elden Ring, which could be evidence for those claims. While many Elden Ring fans pre-ordered the game before its official release, it might be best for PC players to wait for FromSoftware to fix these issues before picking up the open-world RPG.

How to fix Elden Ring graphical, visual bugs

Users might be able to fix Elden Ring’s visual bugs and graphical issues by updating their drivers. Playing on lower video settings might also fix the problems.

Regardless of settings and hardware, Elden Ring players are reporting these troubles. Though there doesn’t seem to be any panacea to these problems, the standard fixes seem to help. A little bit, at least.

Lower graphical settings and up-to-date drivers seem to reduce some of these issues. Changes to companion programs such as GeForce Experience and AMD Radeon Software might also work.

There does not seem to be a complete fix, however. Players will need to wait for FromSoftware to patch things up.

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