UEFN Crashes on Launch — Feature Level 5 Not Detected Despite RTX 2080 SUPER

Summary

UEFN fails to launch on my system, showing the error:

“A Feature Level 5 video card is required to run the editor. AvailableFeatureLevel = ES3_1, ShaderPlatform = PCD3D_ES31”

I’m using an RTX 2080 SUPER with full support for DirectX 12 / Shader Model 6.6 / Feature Level 12_1.
All drivers and DirectX runtimes are current.

Please select what you are reporting on:

Unreal Editor for Fortnite

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Stability

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Launch UEFN from Epic Games Launcher
  2. Observe crash or error: “A Feature Level 5 video card is required to run the editor. AvailableFeatureLevel = ES3_1, ShaderPlatform = PCD3D_ES31”

Expected Result

UEFN should launch normally using DirectX 12.

Observed Result

UEFN crashes before launch. This prevents use of the editor entirely.

Platform(s)

Windows 10 Pro (Build 19042)
RTX 2080 SUPER (Driver 32.0.15.8088)
DirectX 12, Feature Levels: 12_1, 12_0, 11_1 (confirmed via dxdiag)
WDDM 2.7

Experiencing the same issue. It started after the new update as well

Same issue for me with the update

FORT-949982 has been created and its status is ‘Unconfirmed’. This is now in a queue to be reproduced and confirmed.

Hello! Would you be able to share your logs with us so we can investigate?

Instructions:

cef3-backup-2025.08.04-18.23.58.zip (1.6 MB)

1 Like

Hello, my logs are 125mb and max on here is 30mb. I can maybe upload them on google drive and send a link?

1 Like

Hello - 1st time poster lurking the forums to find my exact issue which brings me here; also having the same error and message after update.

2 Likes

Seeing this on two different PCs as well

Logs.zip (2.2 MB)

I get this as well, but I’m using a legacy video card so there will be no more updates for it.
Was about to face not being able to map for a while, but remembered

use -d3d11 in the epic game launcher as a command line argument to force the editor to use DX11 mode

It runs, keep us going until the next driver update or saving up for a new graphics card

1 Like

I have found a solution thanks to a member in the community.

  • Go into the epic games launcher
  • Click on the 3 dots for UEFN > manage
  • turn on ‘Launch Options’
  • and type in -d3d11
  • then launch UEFN

It should work from there.

1 Like

Hello,

Old integrated GPUs cannot run the editor in DX12. They used to automatically fall back to DX11, but unfortunately we broke this behavior when we introduced DX12 performance mode in the client. We will fix the problem ASAP, but in the mean time the solution is indeed to run with the -d3d11 command line argument, to force the editor to start in DX11.

However, I’m not sure what’s wrong in Abu_Daxi’s case. A 2080 on Windows 10 20H2 should be able to run DX12 SM6, but the engine says this:

DirectX Agility SDK runtime not found

That means it cannot load D3D12Core.dll from INSTALL_DIR\FortniteGame\Binaries\Win64\D3D12. Can you please make sure this DLL is present?

That makes sense, thanks for the info, so I’ve been running DX11 mode all along anyway he he

same with me

i did this and it works!