I didn’t have an issue with this until I upgraded my 1080Ti to an RTX 3080, but since then LE has been unplayable. I can usually play for awhile, then when I go to a new zone everything is black. I’ve turned my settings way down, tried different resolutions, updated drivers, verified file integrity with Steam, and everything else I can think of, but still the problem persists.
DxDiag.txt (125.2 KB)
le_graphicsmanager.ini (482 Bytes)
Player.log (81.8 KB)
Hey… Welcome to the forums…
(long response - please read through it all before attempting anything suggested)
The black screen UI issue has been around for a while now and it does seem to be more prevalent on higher end GPUs like the 3080 and ultrawide resolutions - I dont think anyone is 100% sure why it happens yet… especially when there are plenty of people with 3080s not having any issues… Solutions range from rolling back to older drivers, reinstalling, changing in-game settings/driver level overrides etc. its a bit of pot luck right now…
Your player.log is so full of errors I am surprised that the game even loads at all… Besides the usual common debug errors everyone gets, there are ones related to Logins, Rendering Textures @ 3440x1440, UI settings, Sound… I am not a Unity developer so hopefully the devs who read this can figure something from it.
Based on all the errors, if you had not already said you check the file integrity I would have assumed your install was messed up… Graphics drivers are also relevant to some of the errors so next things to check are the game settings.
The settings you are using should have absolutely no problems on a 3080. You have the framerate limits, Medium settings…
Have you attempted to run the game in a more standard resolution - yes I know your screen is widescreen - but perhaps you can do a test at 16:9 ratio - like 2560x1440 - just to see if the widescreen is what is causing it… It shouldnt as I know other players using your resolution but its worth testing to see what happens.
Another thing in the settings… the Window mode… please can you try one of the other settings and see if it makes any difference… Again… its a shot in the dark but Window mode has caused some issues for certain setups.
From your dxdiag I see you are running 3 monitors… Some players have experienced very odd things with multiple monitors… not specifically this black UI issue but it might be worth trying the game on a different monitor (perhaps one of normal non-widescreen ones).
Now onto the dxdiag information:
Your windows OS version could use a patch to 19043/44… There were windows updates earlier in the year that messed with gaming and GPUs so its important to make sure that they are not applied. They likely are, but version 19042 was pre those problem patches.
Your GPU driver is dated 11/25/2021 - so this is recent… However, did you install the GPU driver using a safe mode clean driver installation - especially after upgrading from your old GPU? Its important as a normal upgrade driver installation would not remove older unneccessary files and might not upgrade existing ones as it should. If you dont know how to do that you can use something like DDU.
Based on the Sound errors in the player log… you should probably look at your complex sound setup and see if there are some updates to the 2016/17 drivers you are using…
IMPORTANT: In the diagnostic section at the end of your dxdiag file there are multiple references to dwm.exe crashing the KERNELBASE.dll… The Desktop Window Manager is a core component of windows that controls hardware based graphical accelleration in Windows since Vista… It is involved in DirectX D3D and virtually any graphical component of windows even to the use of VMs graphical emulation. From my experience if a system is reporting DWM.exe APPCRASH, there is something serious not working properly on their system. There have been people having various issues (not the Black UI issue) with LE (and other games like your PoE crashes) and after finding the dwm errors, the only solution that solved their problems playing was a clean Windows installation (not upgrade). After they did this, LE had zero problems. Unfortunately this doesnt indicate why it happened in the first place. You can search the web for the errors and you will see a wide variety of possible issues / causes / solutions…
Lots to digest here…
Same here!!!
And you can still hear your character walking around.
2080 here
Have you attempted to run the game in a more standard resolution - yes I know your screen is widescreen - but perhaps you can do a test at 16:9 ratio - like 2560x1440
Yep, I tried with only one of my 2560x1440 monitors hooked up and it caused the same issue. I also tried running it in 2560x1440 on my 21:9 and the issue came back as well.
Another thing in the settings… the Window mode…
I’ve had it happen in full screen as well, but if this game didn’t work in borderless window it would be identical to being unplayable for me.
Your GPU driver is dated 11/25/2021 - so this is recent… However, did you install the GPU driver using a safe mode clean driver installation
I just ran DDU earlier today in safe mode and reinstalled drivers from scratch. I actually got a pretty long play session out of it, but it happened again just a few minutes ago after being good for a few hours, so apparently that didn’t fix it.
Based on the Sound errors in the player log… you should probably look at your complex sound setup and see if there are some updates to the 2016/17 drivers you are using
I use a dedicated sound card that has worked flawlessly since I bought it years ago. I don’t actually have a complex sound setup, but every peripheral device (headsets, Oculus, Nvidia HD Audio, etc.) all show up in dxdiag. It makes it look far more confusing than it is.
As far as the DWM.exe crashes go, I have had firefox tabs crash occasionally and LE crash along with it, so I’ll look into that. If it requires a fresh install of Windows, then I may be SOL for the moment. I only seem to get the crashes with PoE when Awakened PoE Trade is open, which can be its own can of worms.
Thanks for the heads up on the OS patches, I’ll look into seeing if that is a source of my issues. Those patches could have come out around the same time that I upgraded my GPU, giving me the impression that the card upgrade is what instigated all of this.
Yeah the game still runs and plays. I’ve killed stuff with the black screen going. I can even see my map overlay just fine.
Ok…
A few more things:
Are you running any other applications while testing LE? Sometimes a third party app can impact on the game - especially if that app tries to use GPU resources/hardware accelleration… As a test, dont run anything else… doesnt matter how irrelevant you think it is, just dont run it… The Unity game engine has a few apps that it doesnt play nice with (like Citrix/Teamviewer etc) so its best to try independently…
The windowed mode is just to test if that makes any difference - i.e. give the devs something to trace and potentially fix… there have been players who experience odd graphics issues & performance based on the chosen Window mode… hence the suggestion.
Long play session without problems after DDU then it comes back… That is odd unless there is some sort of memory issue (gpu or system) that causes the problem over time… or there is something else running in background that periodically impacts the game/gpu/drivers. I would suggest monitoring your system while playing and see if anything out of the ordinary happens - if there is any app/process that all of a sudden takes CPU/GPU or something like that.
DWM is a really odd one and I cannot even say if it will stop the Black UI issue specifically… I know it causes lots of issue/stability generally but unfortunately I have yet to find any solution other than reinstallation that works… If I recall, one player was lucky enough to have a system restore point that he/she/they reverted to that also solved the issue but ultimately it seems like a clean install is the only guaranteed way to get rid of it.
Driver level overrides… Sometimes people forget that they set something at a driver level that overrides whatever the game might be trying to do… Double check that there isnt anything set on your driver that could be impacting things… Even something like antialiasing or the various vsync/half vsync configs that some systems support.
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