I've been able to replicate this after reinstalling the client completely, and restarting/retrying the beta.
In 1440p settings, everything maxed, fov 106, while in flight and pulling up the clipboard to change/test graphic settings, clicking the "no shadows" tag makes the entire screen go black, yet the plane will remain in flight and the game won't crash, and only the clipboard is really visible. Clicking to turn shadows back on, the game comes back, but only fills the top half of the screen and is in black and white (no colors). Clicking the post lighting button to unchecked, then checked, brings the game back to normal again. In 1080p with the same PC, turning off shadows works without the above happening.
Latest nVidia drivers, I can post a dxdiag if needed, pretty regular setup, x79 w/eVGA 980.
