Ray tracing causing the game to crash if Phantom Liberty is installed on 2.10, 2.11 or 2.12

[simon_93]

Hi y'all. I have nearly 300 hours of Cyberpunk from both 1.63 and 2.0 once PL is released. I had pretty much zero issues during this time. I took a break away from the game for few months, but since playing on 2.12, I've been getting so many crashes that it's making the game quasi-unplayable.

After 20+ hours of extensive testing, I found out that my game begin to crash whenever ALL of the following factors ARE TRUE.
- Ray tracing is turned ON (with or without path tracing);
- Phantom Liberty expansion is installed;
- Using patch 2.1, 2.11 or 2.12.

The game DOES NOT crash at all whenever ANY ONE of the following factors are TRUE:
- Ray tracing is off;
- Phantom Liberty expansion is not installed;
- Using patch 2.0 (have not tested with patch 2.02).


The crashes can happen anywhere during gameplay (but are extremely prevalent in some areas of Japantown). I have also found few sites where the crashes are 100% reproducible (so not random crashes) since if I save the game before getting the crash and going to the same area again, my game would crash just like before. The crashes happen both while free roaming, and doing quest (which makes it easy to test). One of such area is the notorious bend on Waterfront in Japantown, I would always get the crash when driving there. Another one reproducible crash is used for my testing as detailed below.

I am using the "send in the clowns" mission for testing purposes since the crash when all 3 factors are present is 100% reproducible, to ensure consistency.

Scenario 1
- clean installation of Steam ultimate edition, Phantom Liberty installed, patch 2.12, zero mods/cheats/commands used, all files integrity successfully validated
- fresh new save with PL start, progress to "send in the clowns" mission.
- saved the game before driving to the pick up location.
- If Ray tracing is ON, when Ozob Bozo enters my car at the pick up location, and I drive through the tunnel in Japantown, the game CRASHES 100% of the time with the "flatlined" message.
- If I turn OFF ray tracing, the crash at this spot does not happen anymore.

Scenario 2
- Clean installation of GOG BASE EDITION, NO Phantom Liberty purchased, patch 2.12, zero mods/cheats/commands used, all files integrity successfully validated
- fresh new save with 2.0 vanilla start, progress to Act 2 and "send in the clowns" mission.
- saved the game before driving to the pick up location.
- If Ray tracing is ON, when Ozob Bozo enters my car at the pick up location, and I drive through the tunnel in Japantown, the game DOES NOT CRASH.

Scenario 3
- clean installation of Steam ultimate edition, patch 2.12, zero mods/cheats/commands used, all files integrity successfully validated
- REMOVED "ep1" folder for Phantom Liberty from the game folder
- fresh new save with 2.0 vanilla start, progress to Act 2 and "send in the clowns" mission.
- saved the game before driving to the pick up location.
- If Ray tracing is ON, when Ozob Bozo enters my car at the pick up location, and I drive through the tunnel in Japantown, the game DOES NOT CRASH.

Scenario 4
- clean installation of Steam ultimate edition, zero mods/cheats/commands used, all files integrity successfully validated
- Phantom Liberty expansion INSTALLED
- ROLLED BACK to patch 2.0
- USING THE SAME SAVE from Test 1 before going to pick up Ozob Bozo
- If Ray tracing is ON, when Ozob Bozo enters my car at the pick up location, and I drive through the tunnel in Japantown, the game DOES NOT CRASH.

Scenario 5
- Clean installation of Steam ultimate edition, zero mods/cheats/commands used, all files integrity successfully validated
- Phantom Liberty expansion INSTALLED
- ROLLED BACK to patch 2.10
- FRESH NEW SAVE with PL start, progress to "send in the clowns" mission.
- If Ray tracing is ON, when Ozob Bozo enters my car at the pick up location, and I drive through the tunnel in Japantown, the game CRASHES 100% of the time with the "flatlined" message.

Here’s my PC info, which had no issue with the game with ray tracing on for 80 hours, and then 200 hours with path tracing on with patch 2.0 phantom liberty. It also has no crashing issues with other intensive, path-tracing games
- GPU: RTX 4090, not OCed
- CPU: I5-13600K, not OCed
- 32 GB of DDR5 RAM
- Game installed on SSD
- Factory reset PC with reinstalled Windows
- Latest Nvidia Gameready Drivers from April 11th
- Tried rolling back to 3 previous GPU drivers with DDU to no avail

The theory I get from my 20+ hours of testing is that something introduced after patch 2.0 that pertains to Ray tracing is causing my crashes. Phantom Liberty likely changed how things work with RT/PT, which is why its absence also prevents the crashes from happening even with RT/PT turned on with the latest patch.

since I honestly don't know much about tech/PC, I have no clue if this theory is actually sound. Curious if anyone else is encountering similar crashing issues, maybe these info can help you troubleshoot too.

 

[larrackell]

Tell me what this does for you: Open "show hidden icons" in the right side of the toolbar, by the clock. Right click and exit NVIDIA settings then go through a place where you 100% know a crash will occur and let us know what happens?

Even with mods this does the trick for me and the crashes stopped, so I'm curious if this will be true for you too.

 

[simon_93]

Tell me what this does for you: Open "show hidden icons" in the right side of the toolbar, by the clock. Right click and exit NVIDIA settings then go through a place where you 100% know a crash will occur and let us know what happens?

Even with mods this does the trick for me and the crashes stopped, so I'm curious if this will be true for you too.

Thanks for the suggestion. Exited NVIDIA control panel and made sure it wasn't running in the background. But sadly still got the crash where I always get it.

 

[Kain79]

Probably I'm in the same situation high end PC with a 4090. Crashes happens randomly sometime I can play for hours other times it crashes every 2 minutes of gameplay with various different crash errors. I didn't try to disable ray tracing which I will do but it's clear that I need to wait for a game patch as this is something related to the game itself and not to my PC. Sad cause the game overall now is amazing but I can't play like this.

 

[simon_93]

Exact same situation here choom. Also RTX 4090. Wondering if it could be hardware related, like something changed to PT in 2.1 that doesn't play well with the RTX 4090.

Btw, I began using a mod called ULTRA PLUS BETTER PATHTRACING which has an option that reverts path tracing back to the 2.0 version, and the frequency of crashing has drastically reduced. Like you, the random crashings were making the game unplayable. At first, it was only crashing once every 2-3 hours or so, then it started happening much more frequently. But now it is much rarer.

So maybe try that mod too and see if it helps you. I also miss the 2.0 days where I got no crashes at all (though there were other bugs).

 

[devivre]

In case you haven't done that already, you can also send your report to CDPR support:
https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/pc/sp-technical/issue/1700/my-game-crashes-7 (please click on "contact us" to send a ticket)

 

[simon_93]

In case you haven't done that already, you can also send your report to CDPR support:
https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/pc/sp-technical/issue/1700/my-game-crashes-7 (please click on "contact us" to send a ticket)

yup thanks, I already did that before I made this thread. Only just got a reply yesterday, and as usual, tech support can't tell me anything that I don't already know or suggest things that I already tried in 20+ hours of troubleshooting.

 

[juantimer]

Sadly I seem to have developed this issue as well after ~350 hours of play. Random crashes of various types, mostly exceptions.
tried DDU safe mode and driver reinstall, and a bunch of other troubleshooting. Ray tracing seems to be the culprit and the game runs without flatlines with it disabled.

hope this can be resolved in a future patch.

 

[-Nailes-]

I havent tried the Ozob job, but I have a 4090 and the game crashes a lot for me aswell.

I have, in total, some twothousand hrs in CP2077(though I initially had a 1080). I may have had two crashes in those (almost) five years. I have had atleast a dozen in the last ten hours of playing.

One crash when I was simply driving a bike through Japantown, one was simply in photomode. Played great with 2.0 and PL, now the latest patch, its become a real, recurring problem.

I'll try turning off raytracing, but its not right. Hope it gets fixed.

 

[socokid]

RTX 4090, also crashes a LOT now, did not before. Interesting...

Crashes a lot around autosaving too, which is odd ( have cross platform turned off), but randomly crashes all over the place in any case. I've re-installed the game, re-installed Nvidia drivers, etc.

14900k running 100% stock.
Samsung 990 Pro SSD
32 GBs of 6400 Mhz DDR5 RAM

 

[simon_93]

Hey guys. I've tried using a mod on Nexus called "Ultra Plus Better Path tracing" which offers an option to use the 2.0 PT instead of the 2.1 (apparently something was changed between the two versions), this has drastically reduced the frequency of crashes I get.

This basically aligns with my testing results and my theory that something from Phantom Liberty and the post 2.0 updates changed something to path tracing that is causing the crashes. I really hope CDPR can try to find the issue but given that there isn't a large number of reports and the dev team having moved on, I doubt there would ever be an official patch for this.

So maybe give this mod a try.

 

[juantimer]

Hey guys. I've tried using a mod on Nexus called "Ultra Plus Better Path tracing" which offers an option to use the 2.0 PT instead of the 2.1 (apparently something was changed between the two versions), this has drastically reduced the frequency of crashes I get.

This basically aligns with my testing results and my theory that something from Phantom Liberty and the post 2.0 updates changed something to path tracing that is causing the crashes. I really hope CDPR can try to find the issue but given that there isn't a large number of reports and the dev team having moved on, I doubt there would ever be an official patch for this.

So maybe give this mod a try.

Just want to chime in and say this is so far proving to be an EXCELLENT tip. Not only the path tracing fix which has increased stability a ton so far, but also because of the NVIDIA FSR3 frame generation modification which boosted performance massively!

 

[simon_93]

Just want to chime in and say this is so far proving to be an EXCELLENT tip. Not only the path tracing fix which has increased stability a ton so far, but also because of the NVIDIA FSR3 frame generation modification which boosted performance massively!

good to hear that it works for you too! So there definitely is an issue with the implementation of PT in 2.1 that is not playing well with the game or maybe hardware (if all of us are using RTX 4090 here). Sadly I think due to the small number of people playing with PT and maybe using the same hardware, there isn't too many reports of this issue to get CDPR's attention.

For me, this mod reduced the general, random crashes a lot but I unfortunately still get the reproducible crash from "send in the clown" where I did all my testings.

 

[juantimer]

good to hear that it works for you too! So there definitely is an issue with the implementation of PT in 2.1 that is not playing well with the game or maybe hardware (if all of us are using RTX 4090 here). Sadly I think due to the small number of people playing with PT and maybe using the same hardware, there isn't too many reports of this issue to get CDPR's attention.

For me, this mod reduced the general, random crashes a lot but I unfortunately still get the reproducible crash from "send in the clown" where I did all my testings.

For the record I am using a 3070

 

[thebestcyberpunk]

It does that even without ray tracing and phantom liberty. On PlayStation

 

[simon_93]

For the record I am using a 3070

I see, so I guess it's not specific to a hardware, thanks for sharing!

Post automatically merged: Jun 9, 2024

It does that even without ray tracing and phantom liberty. On PlayStation

then it's probably not the same kind of crashes that we are having. I immediately stop getting these crashes after turning ray tracing off and I never had a random crash during gameplay before phatom liberty in hundreds of hours.

 

[EvilMevil]

Probably I'm in the same situation high end PC with a 4090. Crashes happens randomly sometime I can play for hours other times it crashes every 2 minutes of gameplay with various different crash errors. I didn't try to disable ray tracing which I will do but it's clear that I need to wait for a game patch as this is something related to the game itself and not to my PC. Sad cause the game overall now is amazing but I can't play like this.

At least you still have 4090 anyway). Not kidding! I've bought my husband 4080 and he was extremely happy.
Hope your crashes will be fixed soon!