What does NVIDIA DLSS 3 have to offer over AMD’s existing FSR 2 option for Starfield?
Fans of Bethesda Game Studios’ space-faring RPG can find out today, as the developer has released Starfield Beta Update 1.8.83, allowing players on Steam to check out many of NVIDIA’s latest performance-enhancing technologies in its newest game.
As confirmed by Bethesda, those would include DLSS Super Resolution, Deep Learning Anti-aliasing (DLAA), and, perhaps most excitingly, DLSS 3 Frame Generation for an additional boost to frame rates on supported GPUs:
This update introduces Nvidia DLSS support for our PC players. Compatible Nvidia graphic cards can now use DLSS Super Resolution, Deep Learning Anti-aliasing (DLAA), Nvidia Reflex Low Latency, and DLSS Frame generation. Please note: While DLSS Frame Generation is active, VSync needs to be toggled OFF to see the benefit. We are working to automatically adjust this setting in a future update.
The new Starfield update also adds an eat button, which allows players to gain their health back and/or get drunk without having to go into the game menu:
By popular request, we have added the ability to ingest food and drink items upon finding them in the environment. You can enjoy those Chunks immediately or save them for later. The choice is yours.
And here’s the long line of fixes and improvements that the update offers, including what appears to be a better time for stealth-focused builds:
Performance And Stability
- Addressed a number of memory related issues and leaks.
- [PC Only] Add some GPU performance optimizations, which will be more impactful on higher end cards.
- [PC Only] Improved renderer threading model, improving CPU usage most notably on higher end systems.
- Various stability and performance improvements.
Gameplay
- Added the ability to eat the food placed in the world
- Adjusted stealth to be a bit more forgiving.
- Fixed an issue where Andreja’s head would stay permanently cloaked.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent players from firing their weapons.
- Fixed issues where some NPC could be seen not wearing clothes.
- Fixed an issue where already in-progress skill challenges could stop progressing after reaching the Unity and starting a new game.
- Fixed an issue that could temporarily prevent opening the inventory or saving after entering the Unity.
- PC: Fixed an issue where mouse movement could be choppy.
- Fixed a rare issue that could cause the home ship to be lost.
- Fixed an issue where the ship services technician might be missing.
Graphics
- Addressed an issue with how ambient occlusion appeared in ultrawide resolutions.
- Optimized initial shader compilation that occurs on start-up.
- Added the ability to adjust Brightness and Contrast in the Display Settings menu.
- Added the ability to adjust HDR Brightness provided that the system supports it. (Xbox & Windows 11 only).
- Addressed a number of materials that could sometimes present an unintended pattern under certain conditions.
- Fixed various visual issues related to the new FOV slider options.
- Improved the appearance of the eyes on crowd characters.
- Addressed a number of minor visual issues related to lighting, shadows, terrain, and vegetation.
Quests
- All That Money Can Buy: Fixed a rare issue where players couldn’t sit during the negotiation with Musgrove.
- Blast Zone: Fixed an issue where the hard rocks that need to be cleared out by players will not appear on Ngodup Tate’s land.
- Echoes of the Past: Fixed an issue where the Grylloba Queen could sometimes not be reachable during the objective “Secure the Shuttle Bay”.
- Eye of the Storm: Fixed an issue where players’ quest progression could potentially be blocked due to a missing docking prompt.
- Grunt Work: Addressed an issue where progress could appear blocked if “Supra et Ultra” was completed while returning to the Lodge during “High Price to Pay”.
- No Sudden Moves: Fixed an issue that could prevent the entrance door to the Scow ship from being opened again.
- Operation Starseed: Fixed an issue where the key that is needed to exit the facility could sometimes not be present.
- Sabotage: Fixed an issue where David Barron could potentially not be found by players.
- Short Sighted: Fixed an issue where players could rarely become control-locked while speaking with Vladimir.
- The Heart of Mars: Fixed an issue where players might not be able to mine the “The Heart of Mars”.
Starfield continues to retail for $69.99, although it’s also available on Game Pass, the PC tier of which starts at $9.99/mo.
Discussion (11 replies)
Join Discussion →Perfect timing considering I finished the game last night :p
I plan to restart my game since I maybe got about a 1/4 into it before stepping back. I'm glad they made it this far but disappointed about the HDR controls being Windows 11 only on PC. That basically tells me they did the bare minimum and have essentially handed that feature off to MS to deal with and so it's probably not true HDR at all. Otherwise, happy about everything else.
Improved stealth is MUCH needed. You pop a guy from a very long range and have max stealth where if you don't move you're near invisible... And everyone that gets near the body starts shooting at you IMMEDIATELY. If I'm going to do some long range silenced sniping... I want SOME benefit from stealth.
I mean... it's not like they hit often... but still.
Daaaaaaang, are you serious?! I guess I missed that part!
Well, HDR doesn't really 'truly' exist on the desktop. What we have are half-arsed attempts at mapping because monitors have such a very broad interpretation of HDR.
(as I understand it, one has to set their monitor brightness to a certain level, and match that in the Windows 11 HDR tool somehow, and then HDR can get close to what it's supposed to be)
From the update notes:
"Added the ability to adjust HDR Brightness provided that the system supports it. (Xbox & Windows 11 only)."
Too true but I've got maybe a dozen or so games that knock it out of the park on my C9/Z9D and some that still manage to look good on the CRG9. This game however, looks so bland w/o it by comparison that it reminds of the old 8-bit RGB settings. Still not going to W11 just for this though.
So, I decided to try the BETA to test this out.
Unsurprisingly it looks like they phoned it in, at least on the HDR side.
Instead of three sliders like in Cyberpunk (Max brightness, Paper white, tone mapping midpoint) so you can really configure it to make the most of your screen, there is just one slider, with no indication as to what it does (no units) and it goes from 0-1
Default is 0.80
The DLSS implementation is also confusing. It has all the different settings (quality, performance, etc.) but the render resolution scale is still there at the top of the page, making it unclear as to how they interract, especially because the main difference between the different DLSS quality levels is just how much they scale...
Also, they seem to have tried to address the negative LOD Bias complaints with upscaling.
...but they haven't done it well. The settings they have chosen seem to introduce a lot of unintended sparkling light effects. They need to optimize that better.
I mean, this isn't rocket science. The Nvidia implementation PDF tells you exactly what to do, what lod bias range to use for what resolution and scale factor, and what to do if you see sparkling effects...
So yeah, they really phoned in this stuff.
But on the positive side, this update MASSIVELY improved my CPU performance. It gets much better framerates in cities than it used to. In fact, performance overall is much improved.
Yeah, I booted it up last night just to take a peek. I'm on W10 so no-HDR and colors still look like crap. Performance-wise the 4090 was pushing 100-110 FPS w/ DLSS Quality and frame gen on. I also noticed the weird menu layout. I cranked scaling to 100% and noticed it turned on VRS which I also turned off. I guess I'll be back on the hunt for an HDR/color correction mod again. I had a good one that I'll check on again. At least I'll be down to one mod instead of 3 or 4.
Wasn't there some kind of FOV thing? I looked around and didn't see it. Maybe it was some kind of auto 32:9 fix they plugged in. I only tested on the C2 last night but will get around to the CRG9 either today or this weekend.
While I definitely don't share the exact same feelings (although I do about the game's color palette) as this person does it still gave me grin to read their post on the Steam forum.
The HDR mode I used was a little bit complicated to install (it had many parts and the instructions were imperfect, but the results were pretty good in the end, except for the UI elements being a bit bright.
They didn't completely eliminate the LUT's, because once you do it looks a little flat and boring, but instead they significantly reduced their intensity, and the results were pretty damn good.
This is the one I used:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/1844[/URL]
To get it to work properly you have to install a few prerequisites, and then launch the game from the SFSE executable in the game folder going forward.
Thanks! I'll give this a try. The I used before was LUT mod that had its own share of complications. Looked pretty good but not perfect either. I love the description for it.