Planet Zoo is now available on PC and it already counts thousands of players taking care of their own virtual zoos. However, much like many other PC titles, this one too didn’t come without its issues. We’ve collected some of the most annoying errors you might encounter after you download the game and start playing.
As you might already have figured out, Planet Zoo too has some crash issues along with black screens and in-game bugs. Most bugs are investigated by Frontier Developments as we speak. If you find any, make sure to submit it to their Issue Tracker, so that the team can address it right away.
Planet Zoo Crash at Startup Issue
There are a handful of fixes for this error, most of which are generic solutions to most PC games. For starters, try running the game as an administrator, straight from its installation folder. If that doesn’t work then we have to dig deeper. There could be an issue caused by your anti-virus, so try disabling it and run the game once more. If that works and you don’t want to disable your firewall every time you launch Planet Zoo, then add the entire folder as an exception to your respective anti-virus program.
Last but not least, check your GPU’s drivers and make sure they are up to date. If not, download the updates and try again. Also, make sure to check if you have MSI Afterburner or GeForce Experienced activated. Sometimes, disabling them and starting the game works wonders.
Items and Tiles Losing their Texture
Many players have reported adding animals or items to their zoo that don’t appear properly after placement. This issue could have two reasons for existing. If you’re running an older CPU the game might not be rendering correctly. Ultimately Planet Zoo is a CPU hungry title. Check what your CPU usage is while you play. If it’s at 100% take a look at the fix below. if it’s below 80, then wait for a definite fix since Frontier Developments has confirmed it as an in-game issue and is working on a fix.
100% CPU Usage
This is probably the biggest issue with Planet Zoo right now and it’s not easily manageable. Given its simulation character and the number of things happening at the same time, it’s completely understandable for the game to be extremely demanding. If you find yourself struggling with this issue, try lowering your frames per second (FPS). You can try experimenting with its graphics settings but expect some stuttering to be present in all cases.
If the issue persists then you should wait for a fix. It exists mostly due to the fact that it supports DirectX11 and not DirectX12, which is available with most games. Players confirm having this issue even with high-end CPU’s, so this isn’t just you and the team will address the matter.
Planet Zoo Black Screen Issue
If you’re facing a black screen after launching the game then there’s a quick fix but you won’t like it. If you have updated GPU drivers and disabled your GPU’s extra functionalities as we stated above, then you can click Alt+Enter to make the game run on windowed mode. Most likely, the game will start running again and you can normally go to the settings and choose the resolution of your liking.
Random Crash Issue
If your game doesn’t crash on startup and instead decides to close out of the blue after hours of playing then you might be facing a corrupted save issue. Players reported that deleting their last save file and resuming from their most recent one fixes the problem. If it doesn’t though, it might be a performance issue. Try capping your FPS at 30 and see if Planet Zoo runs properly.
As you have already figured out, Planet Zoo right now has some major performance issues that might or might not be fixed from your end. Don’t panic if you see the game freezing or having low FPS. Frontier Developments is already working on a fix for the game’s known issues. Whatever the case, all similar games including Planet Coaster and Jurrasic World Evolution did have “huge expectations” from our PC builds.
