[BUG] Far Cry Primal and far cry 3 black boxes and glowing hut in far cry primal

[Blackout]

Hello,

I am experiencing severe visual bugs in Far Cry Primal and Far Cry 3 when playing on my Intel Iris Xe graphics.

System Specifications:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-1135G7

• GPU: Intel Iris Xe Graphics (80EU)

• RAM: 8GB Dual Channel

• OS: Windows 11 23H2

Drivers Tested (Clean installs using DDU):

• 32.0.101.7084 (Latest Iris Xe driver)

• 32.0.101.7026 (Older driver before the branching, tested to see if it was a issue with recent legacy update)

Issue Description:

• Far Cry Primal: When entering Tensay's Hut, a giant, blindingly bright glowing square completely blocks my vision during the cutscene. Out in the open world, I see faded blue or black transparent boxes overlaying the huts but only like 2 or 3 (see attached screenshots).

• Far Cry 3: I get a very similar bug where large black boxes frequently appear over buildings and the environment, very frequent than the primal.

Important Notes:

• These bugs do NOT happen in Far Cry 5; that game looks perfectly fine.

I have attached screenshots of the exact visual glitches so you can see the glowing square and the faded boxes. Any help getting this fixed would be greatly appreciated!

[VonM_Intel]

Hi Blackout,
Thank you for posting in our Community.

That level of troubleshooting is very helpful. 

From your description, the issue appears to be graphical artifacts affecting Far Cry Primal (glowing square in Tensay’s Hut cutscene and faded blue/black boxes over huts) and Far Cry 3 (frequent large black boxes over buildings and environment). You also confirmed that Far Cry 5 runs normally, which helps narrow the scope. Since the issue persists across driver versions 32.0.101.7084 and 32.0.101.7026, and clean installs were performed, this may be related to how certain legacy rendering paths or shader effects are handled on Iris Xe. To better isolate the root cause, may I kindly ask:

• Are you running the games in DirectX 11 only, or have you modified any launch parameters?
• Does the issue occur at all graphics presets (Low/Medium/High), or only at specific settings?
• Have you tried disabling features such as Anti-Aliasing, Ambient Occlusion, or Post-Processing to see if the artifacts change?
• Is Windows HDR enabled or disabled?

Have a nice day!

Best regards,

Von M.
Intel Customer Support Technician

[Blackout]

Hi Von,

Thank you for the detailed response. I appreciate you looking into this.

To answer your troubleshooting questions:

1. Launch Parameters: I am running the games with standard launch parameters (default Steam/Ubisoft Connect boot).

2. DirectX Version:

   • Far Cry Primal: Running in DirectX 11.

   • Far Cry 3: Confirmed the issue was severe in DX11 mode (I do not have FC3 installed currently to re-test, but the artifacts were identical).

3. Graphics Presets & Isolation:

   • Presets: I tested Far Cry Primal on the Low graphics preset. The graphical artifacts (glowing square in the hut and blue bounding boxes in the village) STILL APPEAR.

   • Specific Features (Important Finding): * I disabled Anti-Aliasing (Off). Artifacts persisted.

     • Ambient Occlusion Test: Since the game menu does not allow disabling AO, I manually edited the GamerPrile.xml configuration file and set SSAOLevel = "0". Even with Ambient Occlusion forced completely OFF, the black bounding boxes still appeared. 

4. Windows HDR: Windows HDR is Disabled in my system settings.

[VonM_Intel]

Hello Blackout,

Thank you very much for the comprehensive update and for taking the time to perform such detailed testing. Especially testing different presets, disabling Anti-Aliasing, manually forcing Ambient Occlusion off via the configuration file, and confirming that Windows HDR is disabled. That level of troubleshooting is extremely helpful. Given the additional findings you've shared, I will need to conduct further research on this matter and review the behavior more in-depth. I will post an update on this thread as soon as I have more information or recommended next steps available.

Thank you again for your patience and for the thorough diagnostics.

Best regards,

Von M.
Intel Customer Support Technician

[VonM_Intel]

Hello Blackout,

Thank you for your continued cooperation and for the details you've shared so far. After reviewing your case, I’d like to clarify a few important points so I can properly isolate the issue:

• Have you tried installing the graphics driver provided by your system manufacturer (OEM)? If not, I recommend performing a clean installation and using the OEM driver version first. These drivers are customized specifically for your system configuration and can sometimes resolve compatibility or performance-related issues.

• To ensure a thorough and accurate investigation, I can focus on one game per case. Could you please confirm which specific game you would like me to prioritize?
• Could you also share your current in-game graphics settings (resolution, preset level, upscaling mode, frame generation status, V-Sync, etc.)? This information is essential for me to better understand the performance behavior and attempt to replicate the issue under similar conditions.

Best regards,

Von M.
Intel Customer Support Technician

[Blackout]

Hi Von,

Thank you for the update. I have completed the additional testing you requested.

1.  I performed a clean installation of the official Huawei OEM graphics driver for my device but issue still persisted

2. I would like to prioritize Far Cry Primal. 

3. Current In-Game Graphics Settings: Per your request, here is my exact configuration

• Resolution: 1280 x 720 (Native 16x9)

• Refresh Rate: 60Hz

• Window Mode: Fullscreen

• V-Sync: Off

• Graphics Quality: Custom (High-end mix)

  • Textures: High

  • Shadow: Normal

  • Post FX: High

  • Geometry: High

  • Terrain: High

  • Water: High

  • Environment: High

  • Anti-Aliasing: SMAA

  • Volumetric Fog: High

  • Motion Blur: On

• Note: As mentioned previously, I have also tested these settings on "Low" with Anti-Aliasing OFF, and the artifacts still appear.

This game does not support modern features like Upscaling (DLSS/XeSS) or Frame Generation.

I hope this data helps your engineering team reproduce the bug.

[HeroS_Intel]

Hello Blackout,

Thank you for providing the detailed information on your game settings this will be very helpful for us to further investigate your concern. For now, we'll have to further investigate on this issue and will post an update once we are able to gather more information.

Best regards,

Hero Yuki S.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[HeroS_Intel]

Hello Blackout,

Based on our assessment, the game is outside the system requirements set by the developer for your integrated GPU. It would be best to consult with the game developer to inquire if they will be adding support for your reported iGPU in future updates or patches.

With that, unfortunately, I will now close this inquiry. If you require further assistance, please submit a new request, as this thread will no longer be monitored.

Best regards,

Hero Yuki S.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Blackout]

Hi Hero Yuki S,

I must respectfully disagree with the assessment to close this case. The conclusion that this hardware is "below system requirements" is factually incorrect for two reasons:

1. Hardware Capability: Far Cry Primal's minimum requirement is a GTX 460 (1GB VRAM). The Intel Iris Xe (80EU) significantly outperforms a GTX 460 in raw compute and texture fill rate. The hardware is more than capable of running this title.I even played Far cry 5 and RDR2 with no issue.

2. Precedent of Support (Evidence Attached): Intel has previously acknowledged and fixed rendering issues for this specific game engine (Dunia 2) on this specific hardware (Iris Xe).

   • Please see the attached screenshot from Intel Support regarding Far Cry 4 (which runs on the same engine as Primal).

   • In that case, Intel released driver 31.0.101.4644 specifically to fix "dark shadow issues" on the Dunia engine.I can't find this driver in intel page to see if it fixes this, but even if it does it's a 3-year-old driver. So the performance would be low.

This proves that the artificing is a driver regression, not a hardware limitation.