UE5.8 VR Preview Crash with Deferred Rendering (Regression from 5.7)

General Issues and Bug Reporting (Unreal Engine)
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Summary

UE5.8 VR Preview Crash with Deferred Rendering (Regression from 5.7)

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Rendering (Graphics / Niagara)

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open a VR project (new VR Template or existing project) in UE 5.8.
  2. Go to Project Settings → Engine → Rendering.
  3. Disable “Forward Shading” (use Deferred Rendering).
  4. Ensure “Instanced Stereo Rendering” is enabled.
  5. Click “VR Preview” button.

Expected Result

VR Preview should launch successfully with Deferred Rendering, as it did in UE 5.7.

Observed Result

Immediate crash with the following error:

Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x0000000000000090

Callstack:
UnrealEditor_Renderer x7
UnrealEditor_RenderCore x4
UnrealEditor_Core x4
kernel32
ntdll

Affects Versions

5.8

Platform(s)

OpenXR

Additional Notes

This is a regression: works fine in 5.7, crashes in 5.8.

Temporary workaround: Enable Forward Shading (which is also recommended for VR performance).

Additional info:

  • VR SDK: OpenXR
  • GPU: RTX 4070
2

Exact same issue here, switching to deferred on the default vr template worked with 5.7.4, with 5.8 it crashes. Same callstack as in the original reply, reproducable on two different PCs (RTX 3080 and RTX 4080). I tried playing around with all kinds of rendering settings but found no way to prevent the crash.