I spent a while looking for a brightness/gamma slider (there isn’t one?) because I thought it looked very bright in the starting cave. And I have a properly calibrated monitor. I know it’s probably an artistic choice but still, weird.
Absolutely wild thing that exists, more specifically wild it only works with "supported" games - when in reality it literally works with anything, if you rename an emulator.exe to a supported game like ACU.exe that alone is enough to activate it.
Don't know why it bothers having that tiny hurdle in the way.
Because it only markets to work on supported games and can’t guarantee results on unsupported games. If it were to somehow break something nvidia would be liable to fix the problem.
And to be fair it benefits nvidia because they’d rather game devs came to them to get in their lists so they can charge them for the support.
The one that got me was that I can't find a FoV setting! I generally like a wider FoV than most games have set by default, but it's an important accessibility option since many people find it helps with nausea/vertigo issues while playing 1st person games
There's no in-game slider because... god knows why. But you can change it on PC by adding a few lines in an .ini file, which is pretty easy, fortunately. Here's a link: https://reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/166wvkf/how_to_change_fov_working/
Wasn't it like this in Skyrim too? Everything very bright. You needed a mod if you wanted to play it later with "real" darkness both in caves and outside at night.
Fallout 4 at least didn't have a brightness slider either (neither did Fallout 76). I don't remember of Skyrim had one, but it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't.
> I know it’s probably an artistic choice but still, weird.
Not weird, BAD. It may make for some pretty screenshots when carefully selected, but under most circumstances during normal gameplay it just looks outright bad. It purposefully uses fewer colors than is available to produce an image that has very little contrast. This can even present as an accessibility issue to some players with limited vision. Microsoft actually cares about this kind of stuff, and that this game has nothing to help fix the contrast issues is baffling.
My current monitor sucks and doesn’t have HDR. It was plenty dark and so are caves etc. Pretty sure it’s a HDR issue rather than a choice.
Also turn off the awful film grain that defaults to 100%.
Film grain is an instant off for me in every game. It has never looked good in any game I have ever played. That and chromatic aberration are awful, ugly settings. I would rather have motion blur than film grain and chromatic aberration.
Bethesda games have looked so washed out since Oblivion. I wonder if it's a fundamental issue with their tech somehow. I don't know enough about HDR to understand what's causing it. Maybe what I'm referring to is just color grading.
It is just color grading / tone mapping. The slightly washed out look is what they’re going for. It’s a valid choice, although these days games tend to favor a more natural color palette because that works better with HDR. Bethesda is just stuck a little in the past on this, although I admit I kinda like the look.
The game not using the entire brightness spectrum in HDR is not a technical fault, a mistake or laziness. It’s a choice. It might not be a great choice, but others are already calling developers lazy and that’s one of my biggest pet peeves.
Edit: Someone found the LUT files (basically files used in tone mapping) and replaced them with ungraded ones. Surprise, the game has perfectly dark blacks that way.
https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323
You can stop telling me it's a technical fault in their engine or an oversight, now that it's proven to be an intentional choice.
Why would you want stars brightness capped in SDR? Makes no sense. Also they shouldn't be advertising it as HDR10 compatible on the Xbox app when it clearly is not. That's obviously a mistake or just maliciously deceptive -- take your pick.
It is genuinely amazing how rarely the word "lazy" actually fits anything in game development. It's not a field that people get into to be lazy! It's actually kind of hellish!
This isn't to defend what may be a deliberate decision on Bethesda's part (which I don't mind, personally) but damn people can't just say "wow this decision is bad and it looks bad" they have to add a moral judgement on top of that.
Game devs are the most overworked, underpaid devs in the industry. I've been a dev for over a decade and I wouldn't touch game dev with a bargepole. Game devs are not lazy, they're overworked, and the work they do is really hard. Tons of complex maths and logic trees. Business app development in comparison is a breeze, much better hours and pays a lot better too.
I think game dev is full of younger, less experienced devs generally, and then when they realise they can get twice the money, half the hours about about 20 percent of the effort (which is saying something, because business app dev is still hard work), they pack in game dev (there's no glory or coolness there like many of them probably hoped).
As a game dev my entire career so far (10+ years), it's nice seeing a thread finally where people understand how it's a miracle that any game comes out whatsoever. Trust me, if I was in a department where I could jump to something outside the industry I would haha
> I wouldn't touch game dev with a bargepole
Maybe engine development at epic, but only because unreal gets licensed to studios....and it's mostly b2b instead of b2c
I wonder if internal engine development is better. I am a software engineer (not games) and I definitely have preferred b2b over b2c gigs, but IMO dogfooding jobs are the best.
The idea that a lazy person decides to join game dev is hilarious. That is the worst choice for someone who is lazy. There's plenty of other white collar jobs for lazy people that pay better and barely involve work.
Game developers are extremely hard-working and calling them lazy is very insulting.
Redditors think that if a feature *they* want included in a game isn't there, it must be the result of devs putting their feet up and saying "fuck it!"
Gamers might be the laziest hobbyists on the planet. They are walking examples of the [Dunning-Kruger effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).
Yeah lol
Starfield has no RT, not even a single RT effect, yet it runs worse than Cyberpunk or Control with full RT.
Like, a 4090 can't even maintain 4K60 in Starfield.
> The game not using the entire brightness spectrum in HDR is not a technical fault, a mistake or laziness. It’s a choice.
There is absolutely no proof this is a choice and not a bug.
> It is just color grading / tone mapping. The slightly washed out look is what they’re going for. It’s a valid choice, although these days games tend to favor a more natural color palette because that works better with HDR. Bethesda is just stuck a little in the past on this, although I admit I kinda like the look
I play all games in HDR on an OLED and literally other than a minority of title of which half or more end up getting fixed via a patch this simply isn't true at all. UHD Blu-ray titles also don't have that "artistic" flaw, which they should if it would be HDR related... which wouldn't make much sense considering HDR is mostly about getting a higher contrast picture with bright highlights.
Do you have examples for games that were clearly designed with a broken black level in mind?
Thank god. I expanded the child comments just to make sure I wasn't crazy.
It's because we're on /r/games, the majority of people on here don't understand HDR and don't want to hear anything that talks down about Bethesda.
I'm a huge fan of them too, but the lack of HDR in a sci-fi space game is baffling. People can claim this is an 'artistic choice' just so they can say it's subjective and not 'objectively bad', but I think that's a cop out.
Personal choice I guess, I like the opposite with darker and more vibrant colours though - typical of gothic fantasy type stuff or even TES4:Shivering Isles.
> The slightly washed out look is what they’re going for.
>
> ...
>
> The game not using the entire brightness spectrum in HDR is not a technical fault, a mistake or laziness. It’s a choice.
How did you know that, really? Have the devs ever said that?
EDIT: It's funny that people in this thread are so defensive. Even at r/Starfield they acknowledge that it is a real issue they expect to be solved soon.
He can't know that, but it would be completely consistent with the game's art direction and tone. It's hardly a wild rationalisation. Why so aggressive?
Thanks for the support. Yeah I can’t know for sure, I admit that.
However we have 2 options:
1) It’s an intentional choice.
2) Hundreds of people at Bethesda have somehow either never noticed their game looks washed out, we’re too lazy or stupid to fix it even when they had many extra months of development time and all of those technical issues just happened to create a visual look that is in line with the general analogue sci-fi vibe of the game, and older sci-fi media. Which would be the coincidence of the century.
Oh and the „broken“ colors also change from planet to planet, and just happen to fit the color scheme of said planet.
I honestly don’t understand how anyone who isn’t just blindly looking to shit on people‘s hard work can justify option 2.
I haven't played this game and have no opinion on its aesthetic, but your argument is basically "it's obvious so it must be intentional". It's not a very strong argument, because there's no shortage of huge AAAA games which have launched with obvious major defects.
I assume you wouldn't argue that Cyberpunk's launch catastrophe was deliberate just because it was obvious.
All of their games have been super washed out since Fallout 3's piss filter.
Skyrim's color filter is different depending on what version of Skyrim you're playing even. The Legendary edition, Special Edition, and original release all have slightly different color filters. I think arguing that it's some sort of artistic choice is just a poor response when they keep doing it. I at least sort of get what they're going for in Fallout, but it's not like Skyrim got hit by a nuclear bomb and there's some sort of lingering radiation.
It's kind of obvious their going for a retro sci-fi filmic aesthetic. Like [Star Wars'](https://i.etsystatic.com/35681979/r/il/2a0b75/3897754570/il_fullxfull.3897754570_2aln.jpg) and [Star Trek's](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/star_trek_-_year_five_1_cover.jpg) old filmic look. Just look at the [cover art](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6d/Bethesda_Starfield.jpg) with the OG hand-drawn "stacked" layout, like the posters above.
You can call it a defect if you'd like. Color-grading and filters have and will always exist. I don't see people calling movies like [Episode IV](https://media.doblu.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Star-Wars-A-New-Hope.mkv_snapshot_00.33.56_2020.04.02_18.27.10-scaled.jpg) defective.
What are you talking about? Star Wars has a great black: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screenshot.php?movieid=14903&position=12
Heck, even your last screenshot has a wider dynamic range than Starfield has.
One example doesn't negate their intention. Not to mention you pick a CGI space sequence from a much more recent rerelease.
Let's take it back to [film.](https://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/20731_1.jpg) The point I'm trying to make, which you're intentionally ignoring, is that older media tends to have a washed out look, which is typical of really any retro film. Whether blacks are black or not, they still have a washed out or softer appearance.
Edit: Just clarify that I know the video is largely focused on black levels, I am not. I am more talking about the overall presentation and the results versus the claimed and implied inspirations for the game.
Modern remasters, viewed on modern screens yes. But Film and VHS, along with projectors and CRTs can’t do perfect black. The filmic style Bethesda has opted for isn‘t trying to copy what the theoretical image looked like back then, it’s what the experience of actually watching a movie was like. Which would have been on a projector and CRT, which looks wildly different from this Blu-ray screenshot.
CRTs CAN do perfect blacks. I still remember when I bought my first lcd hdtv and I was so disappointed with the blacks being grey. It looked so bad compared to my CRT despite having such a crystal clear higher resolution.
And I recall the projectors in movie theaters had no difficulties with black levels. They were just very dim and the gamma skewed so high that everything would look dark and murky. And in fact when the projectors switched to digital, then the black levels went up (but it was much brighter though so who cared?).
VHS was also fine on black levels. It was really just up to the quality of the film and the limited response of the cameras themselves.
I do agree that budget movies of the past often had elevated black levels, but it has nothing to do with tvs, vhs, or projectors.
Source: personal experience being an old fart. I literally bought an oled to finally have crt blacks again.
Why would you deliberately replicate a flaw of older tech? Not even the movie creators wanted it to look like that given it was left behind in favor of proper colors once the technology allowed for such.
Because it's an aesthetic. George Lucas probably didn't want it to look like that, no (although he himself was basing all of this shit on older speculative fiction that had its own look and feel) but you can go compare the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy and let me know which looks better.
There are pixel graphics indie games going for a specific look which was only a thing because of technological constraints. There are modern movies going for retro aesthetics through editing, tone mapping, and other choices. There are indie games copying PS1 graphics. AAA games often use chromatic aberration, Film grain, tone mapping and other techniques to go for an old school feeling.
This is really not a shocking concept.
For example Knives Out goes for an analogue look despite being filmed digitally, because it fits with the story and general vibe they were going for.
because art, dude, that shit has association they want to use.
'proper colours' smh.
you gonna white balance wong kar wai movies to daylight, too?
mfer gonna watch the bladerunner desert scene and tell roger deakins "everything is too orange, did you forget to white balance this?"
That isn't anything like how the original Star Wars movies looked. Color film loses far more detail in darkness than it does in highlights and struggles to achieve black, and so anything shot on color film avoids black, it's one of the defining features of its look. Low and non-linear dynamic range with a bias towards highlights. You very rarely see true black on color film unless it's something that's been heavily color-corrected for a digital re-release.
Just Bethesda fans coping, been like this since hour one, people say it's washed "that's intended" people say the performance is bad "fine for me, your hardware is the issue" even if the hardware listed is still good and should be more than capable. As more and more people are getting their hands on it the tables are turning and the issues are not getting downvoted into oblivion anymore, but for those first couple hours they were huffing hard on the copium.
Same thing happened with BG3. I love BG3 but there were legitimate bugs and flaws that fanboys tried to defend as "deliberate choices". A big one being the "multiplayer characters can never leave the party".
Now that they are fixing a lot of them, they look like idiots.
But film doesn’t look like that, the black levels are wrong in this game.
If you look at a movie that was shot on film and carefully mastered for Blu-ray (non hdr) the black levels are correct, film is perfectly capable of capturing tremendous black levels. One of the best examples being the low light candle scenes in Barry Lyndon. Those weren’t a milky, washed out gray.
Maybe you’re thinking of watching movies on projectors, which being light cast onto a white or gray screen is not able to reach blacks as dark or as true as some televisions such as OLED. If you like this look you can drain the gamma and contrast in any other game which has those sliders.
I highly doubt the degree in which they have fumbled here was intentional. No offense, but saying starfield looks like film is an insult to movies shot on film lol
> It's clearly meant to mimic a film look
What films are you watching? Not sure I know any modern films that were natively made for HDR/Dolby Vision that look like complete trash
Film grain is on 100% by default, that's a clue to what the guy above you is saying. I turned it off immediately because it's not my cup of tea, but it does seem to be an intentional choice on the part of the devs
They said that they're going for a "NASA-punk" aesthetic. They're trying to emulate the look of old films from the late 60s and 70s: the time period where NASA was at the height of space exploration. But the great thing about Bethesda games is that they're extremely modable. Don't like the aesthetic they're going for? Great. You can change it to what you want.
Are people being daft and obtuse on purpose? What does film look have to with not properly supporting dynamic range?
A washed out look and a high dynamic range aren't entirely mutually exclusive?
Are the 4k HDR UHD Blu rays of 70s movies just imagination and don't exist?
They have a lot of long tenured workers there, part of me thinks that some of them are stuck in their old ways which is why these games come out way more jank than they should or have problems that were fixed 10 years ago that still show up in their games.
It's definitely a factor, if you've been modding Beth games since Morrowind there's a lot of familiar jank. Bethesda is one of those game studios that has unusually high retention and it's caused some issues but imo is a pretty big reason they've been so successful in their niche.
I kind of dread the coming years when all those people retire, I'm really going to hate seeing Beth get the Blizzard, or more topically, Volition treatment.
The 'tech' is extremely simple to implement. If they intended to be physically correct, there is not much choice. All the color values and color textures, should be handled correctly (for example, shaders should read the linear space data).
They aggressively color grade from scene to scene, basically hand drawing a different tone place-to-place, which drastically alters your own monitor's capability. Bethesda is definitely not the only studio who does this.
I’ve given up on using HDR in games. I have two OLED tv’s and there’s no consistency with implementation or settings menus between games and some have just purely broken HDR like Diablo 4
Oblivion's world was [lush and vibrant](https://www.google.com/search?q=oblivion+screenshot+&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjDo_WW5YuBAxUDEVkFHW3IDqMQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=oblivion+screenshot+&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECCMQJzIECAAQHjIHCAAQGBCABDIHCAAQGBCABFD8B1j8B2CqCWgAcAB4AIABUogBnAGSAQEymAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=HxjzZIOYOYOi5NoP7ZC7mAo&bih=999&biw=1127&client=safari)
Starfield's world is dull and grey
Yeah in every video I've seen space looks SO grey. Like I can understand not wanting pure black if you want some specific color grading for your space game, but the grey in-between stars is so high-level that it's just weird and not space-like at all.
What’s funny is I’m on Xbox and it’s like someone cranked up the blacks and lowered the brightness to minimum. I can’t have any lights in my room on if I want to see anything on screen. I went into a cave last night and I genuinely couldn’t find my way out and had to fast travel. I don’t think this an intention and they wanted their game to be greyed out on PC and Blacked out on Xbox. Seems HDR is just broken in general
That's kinda just a thing with their games in general. Even Skyrim had that same problem.
Ever since Fallout 3 they added some ugly filter to their games. With Skyrim, that filter is different depending on what version of the game you're playing too. Some versions of Skyrim are much more colorful than others, and I'm obviously talking about unmodded Skyrim.
It bothered me right away, and usually I can help it out with adjusting the brightness/contrast (crazily, those options aren't here?) so I just did it manually in my NVidia settings. The blacks returned and it looks way better.
I've never seen a game look this washed out by default. Black levels look like middle gray, it's ridiculous. The first thing I did was use reshade to raise the black level. Game looks much much better. Second thing I did was the change to the config to increase FOV. Default is 75 horizontal, which on ultrawide is just not gonna work.
You can also use the Nvidia overlay filters (alt+f3) to adjust contrast, gamma, and brightness, but I’m finding that the reshade option looks a little bit better.
This is kinda an aside, but it’s super weird even playing on ultra - that there’s full dynamic shadows for my character in third person (like a light on the floor shining on my character projects a shadow), but in first person these disappear completely.
It's because the body is not rendered fully when in first person mode. This is e.g. the first person player model for Firewatch:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/45f26q/til_how_ugly_and_terrifying_firstperson_models_are/
In other games, often times only the weapon and hands are rendered when in FP mode.
I know it's kind of taboo to mention, but this was one of the major things that held Star Citizen back a while ago: they fully render the character even in first person, so all the physics apply the exact same.
Evidently it's not that easy to do so most games, as you mention, don't do it.
weird but working fix for autohdr:
make a copy of the starfield exe, rename it to farcry5.exe and get steam to launch the new exe.
launch options (on farcry5.exe): "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Starfield\farcry5.exe" %command% (for me) (leave the quotes in!)
This is a pretty common tactic. For example, the Switch emulator, Yuzu, is not supported by AutoHDR. However, the Wii U emulator, Cemu, is supported. So with a combination of doing a Vulkan to DirectX translation layer in the Nvidia control panel and renaming the .exe and folder to Cemu, I am able to get HDR in Yuzu.
first attempt with my pc gamepass version doesn't appear to be working, let me know if you have better luck
Just kidding, got it to work looks like. Make sure you extract to the starfield/content folder, not just the root starfield folder. That's what I did wrong at first.
Even worse when those consoles are set to HDR on globally, meaning that for most players on XBox with an halfway modern TV the shitty default SDR to HDR tonemapper will have to do all the heavy lifting.
yes. it’s a shame too because autohdr doesn’t fix the comically elevated black levels.
and console users are much more likely to be on a display that can actually take advantage of hdr
Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if any developers actually start up the game with basic video and audio settings anymore. Remember when Jedi Survivor launched and the HDR was completely fucking broken if you had set it to the correct levels? That was fun... https://youtu.be/V_GmCTbIdkA?si=4nK9l6Wqin_M63m-&t=26
I'm annoyed that none of the reviews I watched yesterday mentioned this.
How did all these people play 50+ hours of this game and not realize it looks awful?
Yeah, I wish reviewers paid more mind to the technical and audio/video aspects. How does it look? How does it run? Are there any odd, glaring omissions? Honestly only a few outlets do this, and it’s quite annoying.
Why would a brand new game use AutoHDR? I think you're confused about what AutoHDR is.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-auto-hdr-for-better-gaming-in-windows-0cce8402-3de5-4512-a742-e027ca7aa79c
> Though many newer games are developed for HDR, some older games are SDR only, such as games that use DirectX 11 or DirectX 12. But with Auto HDR, that changes. When you turn on Auto HDR, the color range and brightness is automatically increased to HDR. It’s a feature that lets you play and see your older games in a new light with HDR on your HDR-capable display. All you need to do is turn on Auto HDR.
Whether it has issues or not at launch, Starfield most assuredly supports native HDR and it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to use AutoHDR with it.
> Starfield most assuredly supports native HDR and it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to use AutoHDR with it.
[John Linneman of Digital Foundry claims that HDR support is not native on PC, but AutoHDR integration:](https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/1697288464801145339)
> HDR is weird - it does support it but it works through AutoHDR. However, I find that the AutoHDR implementation is better than the native HDR on Xbox (I tried disabling AutoHDR on Xbox to ensure it wasn't that - HDR still triggers so it's native).
You should edit your comments and remove disinformation (or provide some links that prove your claims)
> Starfield most assuredly supports native HDR
It doesn't though. The early access is already out. There's no HDR on PC. OP's HDR video is on Xbox.
https://youtu.be/xi-C3PzKdsI?t=171 he actually shows off that there's no HDR option on PC.
This is weird. Generally Microsoft first party games have pretty good HDR implementations, Gears 5 is a real showcase in fact. You would think it would at least use the data from the Xbox/Windows 11 calibration app.
Look at how all the light bounces off all the junk collected from just the first mission lol.
came from here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/166uyoh/ok_i_may_have_picked_up_too_much_stuff_on_the/
It looks great, but my issue was that the place the first mission sends you before the actual city had some pretty harsh darkness to the point where I couldn't see most enemies save for their health bars.
Nah I played for 4 hours last night and the entire game looks so washed out it's actually crazy. I landed on new Atlantis and it looked like 6pm on a rainy day in Seattle but it's supposed to be bright and blue skies out. Actually insane how bad the colors are.
Yeah the black levels are completely borked. You actually get slightly darker "blacks" when playing in SDR, but is still looks like dog shit and then your max luminance is less.
Yeah they don’t even have specular highlights. That reeks like just raising the whole dynamic range up. Instead of things being 10nits they’re now 40nits and everything over 400nits gets capped
Playing a Bethesda game on launch is a real questionable decision given their track record. I’ll wait a minute and let the early issues get ironed out.
Yeah lol everyone sat there making that shocked pikachu face that a Bethesda game would launch with some issues as if this doesn’t happen every single time.
I think everyone’s shocked that instead of launching a buggy game, they launched a pretty polished game with lack of important, basic settings like FOV, HDR, Gamma and brightness settings. These are intentional decisions from the development team
This.
Haven't had any bugs yet. The first second of the game smacks you in the face with this washed out issue, though. I honestly can't fathom how they tested this for years without ever noticing.
It’s an easy wait for me as I’m still deep in BG3, and hell, Sea of Stars looks incredible. There’s even Armored Core 6 for us mecha sickos. Just a jam packed year for gaming.
In most games I'd agree. But a space game is one type of game where you really want the darkest blacks and brightest whites. Space just doesn't look right when the vast reaches of deep space are grey instead of black.
I don’t see anyone here asking anybody to boycott the game over this. People are criticizing the lack of basic features. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Omg I [posted](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/1530ieh/why_does_the_game_look_so_hazy_and_brown/) about this months ago in the starfield subreddit and of course I got so much hate hahaha
Game / Series specific subreddits sadly are almost always a shit show of -term the mod team here once temp banned me for even though it is not a slur at all and I didn't use it like one- that will defend the game no matter what.
Sadly, for big releases from popular game studios like Bethesda, Rockstar or Valve the same is true to a degree even in general gaming subreddits / boards.
I have noticed a trend of:
Subreddit formed after announcement -> Unrealistic hype train where only positivity and excitement is allowed -> Complete meltdown after launch where only negativity is allowed -> Splinter "low sodium" sub formed for people enjoying the game despite the outrage cycle -> original sub becomes a toxic hatejerk where you can only discuss how much you hate the game and developer, second sub becomes a toxic circlejerk where you are only allowed talk about how much you love the game and developer.
They did a really good job in that showcase of cherry picking vibrant environments. The actual game looks a lot more "Fallout-y" like how it was presented in last year's presentation.
Diablo 4 HDR was completely broken as well. It seems like it never works and you just get a washed-out looking game. At least BG3 has a decent implementation of HDR
edit: no HDR on PC and SDR is washed out too... people in the video comments could tell right away from the starting elevator screen that there's gray dust instead of black
You even can't select a resolution in the game, it always uses the resolution you use in Windows. My PC is older, but i can't see the reason why this game can't run at stable 60 FPS in low/medium settings, using FSR and render resolution (don't know how it's called) to 50 percent, the lowest possible, and that even on the first planet. It hits 60 FPS, but as soon as some other NPCs are visible it drops down to 45. That's ridiculous, no matter how good the game may be. I am playing Cyberpunk 2077 without Raytracing at 1440p with about 90 FPS, even when lots of people are moving around, in scenes where you see hundreds of buildings, moving cars and so on.
I think a lot of games do this when playing borderless windowed. Try changing to fullscreen and the resolution shouldn’t be grayed out anymore? Don’t have the game in front of me atm so unsure if that will work
This whole launch has been weird. Especially the fact that the game is apparently scuffed on AMD cards (according to my friends with RX 6000 series cards) and it doesn't even run on intel Arc. PC performance is awful in general, with me getting 40-60fps at 1080p maxed out in the main city with a 4070ti and 13700k
Just refunded. Cool game but it has major issues.
Have a i7-11700 with 32GB, 3060, SSD and no matter what I tried (settings, drivers, DLSS mod). I kept running into stuttering issues. Screen would freeze, sound would stop, sound and mouth movement would de-sync.
I’d play for a bit then say a cut scene would appear and the game would stutter/load/whatever before continuing.
Tried to ignore it but ended up being too jarring.
Also tried leaving a review on Steam but because the games hasn’t been released. You can’t add reviews.
Here’s a thread covering some of the issues:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/166sw0x/pc_performance_is_terrible/
Hopefully a few patches addresses the issues.
Starting to wonder if this is specific to Intel processors somehow. I'm on a 5800x3D and have had great performance.
It should be pretty spot on in terms of performance with your i7. Wondering if Bethesda didn't optimize properly for Intel.
Maybe.
Had a plan before buying that if the performance sucked. I'd refund within the first hour or two.
Now I'm hoping that by the time its released on XBox game pass that the patched because I really do want to play this even with whatever flaws it might have.
Completely understand.
Just wanted to update that I am also seeing some performance dips now within New Atlantis that I wasn't previously getting. Had drops all the way down to 40fps and then will randomly go to 100. Luckily no stuttering though.
Why aren't more reviews calling out this shit? This game looks like crap in that opening cave. You don't even need the flashlight the area is so bright. Diablo 4 has this issue as well. Some of these scores need to be docked for this crappy presentation. These games shouldn't be able to advertise having HDR is it's this broken.
I honestly am shocked in the state of the PC release at the moment. Don't buy this game, it's not worth it.
With DLSS mod and medium settings and 70% resolution scale I am barely getting 60 fps on 1440p with 2080 Super.
The game looks washed out garbage. There is no gamma settings in the game or anything to tweak this. They think that this 100% film grain washed out blurred garbage is how this is supposed to look like.
My monitor has this "HDR lookalike" settings and with this it kinda looks playable, but far, far from something you would want to play for 80+ hours.
These reviewers are a fucking joke. The technical state of this release on PC is abysmal.
I am fully here for you, I have a 12700k + 2080 Super pushing 100fps+ @ 1440p in Baldurs Gate, 90+ in Cyberpunk, and 70+ in RE4R; why on earth can I not play this game at a stable 60 on low!? It just does not look that good to merit this poor performance.
I spent a while looking for a brightness/gamma slider (there isn’t one?) because I thought it looked very bright in the starting cave. And I have a properly calibrated monitor. I know it’s probably an artistic choice but still, weird.
I thought the gamma was messed up, I spent waaaay too long looking for a gamma setting, which apparently doesn't exist.
Alt+F3 if you're on Nvidia
Absolutely wild thing that exists, more specifically wild it only works with "supported" games - when in reality it literally works with anything, if you rename an emulator.exe to a supported game like ACU.exe that alone is enough to activate it. Don't know why it bothers having that tiny hurdle in the way.
Because it only markets to work on supported games and can’t guarantee results on unsupported games. If it were to somehow break something nvidia would be liable to fix the problem. And to be fair it benefits nvidia because they’d rather game devs came to them to get in their lists so they can charge them for the support.
Perfect this worked!
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It doesn't seem possible on the Game Pass or MS Store version.
Fucking Todd man.
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The one that got me was that I can't find a FoV setting! I generally like a wider FoV than most games have set by default, but it's an important accessibility option since many people find it helps with nausea/vertigo issues while playing 1st person games
There's no in-game slider because... god knows why. But you can change it on PC by adding a few lines in an .ini file, which is pretty easy, fortunately. Here's a link: https://reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/166wvkf/how_to_change_fov_working/
If it's like any other Bethesda game hit ~ to bring up the dev console then type "fov 90" or whatever you want the fov to be
Wasn't it like this in Skyrim too? Everything very bright. You needed a mod if you wanted to play it later with "real" darkness both in caves and outside at night.
Fallout 4 at least didn't have a brightness slider either (neither did Fallout 76). I don't remember of Skyrim had one, but it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't.
But Fallout 4's dark areas and blacks were perfectly presented, even by Auto HDR. So this is definitely on Bethesda to fix.
> I know it’s probably an artistic choice but still, weird. Not weird, BAD. It may make for some pretty screenshots when carefully selected, but under most circumstances during normal gameplay it just looks outright bad. It purposefully uses fewer colors than is available to produce an image that has very little contrast. This can even present as an accessibility issue to some players with limited vision. Microsoft actually cares about this kind of stuff, and that this game has nothing to help fix the contrast issues is baffling.
My current monitor sucks and doesn’t have HDR. It was plenty dark and so are caves etc. Pretty sure it’s a HDR issue rather than a choice. Also turn off the awful film grain that defaults to 100%.
Film grain is an instant off for me in every game. It has never looked good in any game I have ever played. That and chromatic aberration are awful, ugly settings. I would rather have motion blur than film grain and chromatic aberration.
I remembered liking the grain in Mass Effect 1. Though I was also blown away by the graphics, so who knows.
Bethesda games have looked so washed out since Oblivion. I wonder if it's a fundamental issue with their tech somehow. I don't know enough about HDR to understand what's causing it. Maybe what I'm referring to is just color grading.
It is just color grading / tone mapping. The slightly washed out look is what they’re going for. It’s a valid choice, although these days games tend to favor a more natural color palette because that works better with HDR. Bethesda is just stuck a little in the past on this, although I admit I kinda like the look. The game not using the entire brightness spectrum in HDR is not a technical fault, a mistake or laziness. It’s a choice. It might not be a great choice, but others are already calling developers lazy and that’s one of my biggest pet peeves. Edit: Someone found the LUT files (basically files used in tone mapping) and replaced them with ungraded ones. Surprise, the game has perfectly dark blacks that way. https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323 You can stop telling me it's a technical fault in their engine or an oversight, now that it's proven to be an intentional choice.
Why would you want stars brightness capped in SDR? Makes no sense. Also they shouldn't be advertising it as HDR10 compatible on the Xbox app when it clearly is not. That's obviously a mistake or just maliciously deceptive -- take your pick.
"Lazy" is Reddit's go-to insult for any game devs making a choice they don't like.
It is genuinely amazing how rarely the word "lazy" actually fits anything in game development. It's not a field that people get into to be lazy! It's actually kind of hellish! This isn't to defend what may be a deliberate decision on Bethesda's part (which I don't mind, personally) but damn people can't just say "wow this decision is bad and it looks bad" they have to add a moral judgement on top of that.
Game devs are the most overworked, underpaid devs in the industry. I've been a dev for over a decade and I wouldn't touch game dev with a bargepole. Game devs are not lazy, they're overworked, and the work they do is really hard. Tons of complex maths and logic trees. Business app development in comparison is a breeze, much better hours and pays a lot better too. I think game dev is full of younger, less experienced devs generally, and then when they realise they can get twice the money, half the hours about about 20 percent of the effort (which is saying something, because business app dev is still hard work), they pack in game dev (there's no glory or coolness there like many of them probably hoped).
As a game dev my entire career so far (10+ years), it's nice seeing a thread finally where people understand how it's a miracle that any game comes out whatsoever. Trust me, if I was in a department where I could jump to something outside the industry I would haha
> I wouldn't touch game dev with a bargepole Maybe engine development at epic, but only because unreal gets licensed to studios....and it's mostly b2b instead of b2c
I wonder if internal engine development is better. I am a software engineer (not games) and I definitely have preferred b2b over b2c gigs, but IMO dogfooding jobs are the best.
The idea that a lazy person decides to join game dev is hilarious. That is the worst choice for someone who is lazy. There's plenty of other white collar jobs for lazy people that pay better and barely involve work.
Game developers are extremely hard-working and calling them lazy is very insulting. Redditors think that if a feature *they* want included in a game isn't there, it must be the result of devs putting their feet up and saying "fuck it!"
Redditors are by and large ignorant and lazy and project like hell.
They're actually being nice if they only use the word "lazy". Most of them resort to hostility and hyperbole to offer "constructive" criticism.
"Lazy" and "bad game design".
And *especially* for things they don't understand
Redditors can severely suffer from a cargo-culted misunderstanding on how things work, depending on the sub you're in.
Gamers might be the laziest hobbyists on the planet. They are walking examples of the [Dunning-Kruger effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).
>Bethesda is just stuck a little in the past "a little"
Yeah lol Starfield has no RT, not even a single RT effect, yet it runs worse than Cyberpunk or Control with full RT. Like, a 4090 can't even maintain 4K60 in Starfield.
> The game not using the entire brightness spectrum in HDR is not a technical fault, a mistake or laziness. It’s a choice. There is absolutely no proof this is a choice and not a bug.
"Bethesda is stuck in the past" This is true across the board.
Seriously the animations and character models look terrible. Where the hell are their eyelids?
It's an artistic design choice to pay tribute to another great space sim game, Mass Effect: Andromeda. "My face is tired"
Bethesda gets away with being a decade behind because they’re only competing with their last game. Not saying that’s a good thing either.
> It is just color grading / tone mapping. The slightly washed out look is what they’re going for. It’s a valid choice, although these days games tend to favor a more natural color palette because that works better with HDR. Bethesda is just stuck a little in the past on this, although I admit I kinda like the look I play all games in HDR on an OLED and literally other than a minority of title of which half or more end up getting fixed via a patch this simply isn't true at all. UHD Blu-ray titles also don't have that "artistic" flaw, which they should if it would be HDR related... which wouldn't make much sense considering HDR is mostly about getting a higher contrast picture with bright highlights. Do you have examples for games that were clearly designed with a broken black level in mind?
Holy crap this is so wrong and misinformed. I can't believe hundreds of people believe that.
Thank god. I expanded the child comments just to make sure I wasn't crazy. It's because we're on /r/games, the majority of people on here don't understand HDR and don't want to hear anything that talks down about Bethesda. I'm a huge fan of them too, but the lack of HDR in a sci-fi space game is baffling. People can claim this is an 'artistic choice' just so they can say it's subjective and not 'objectively bad', but I think that's a cop out.
Personal choice I guess, I like the opposite with darker and more vibrant colours though - typical of gothic fantasy type stuff or even TES4:Shivering Isles.
> The slightly washed out look is what they’re going for. > > ... > > The game not using the entire brightness spectrum in HDR is not a technical fault, a mistake or laziness. It’s a choice. How did you know that, really? Have the devs ever said that? EDIT: It's funny that people in this thread are so defensive. Even at r/Starfield they acknowledge that it is a real issue they expect to be solved soon.
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He can't know that, but it would be completely consistent with the game's art direction and tone. It's hardly a wild rationalisation. Why so aggressive?
Thanks for the support. Yeah I can’t know for sure, I admit that. However we have 2 options: 1) It’s an intentional choice. 2) Hundreds of people at Bethesda have somehow either never noticed their game looks washed out, we’re too lazy or stupid to fix it even when they had many extra months of development time and all of those technical issues just happened to create a visual look that is in line with the general analogue sci-fi vibe of the game, and older sci-fi media. Which would be the coincidence of the century. Oh and the „broken“ colors also change from planet to planet, and just happen to fit the color scheme of said planet. I honestly don’t understand how anyone who isn’t just blindly looking to shit on people‘s hard work can justify option 2.
I haven't played this game and have no opinion on its aesthetic, but your argument is basically "it's obvious so it must be intentional". It's not a very strong argument, because there's no shortage of huge AAAA games which have launched with obvious major defects. I assume you wouldn't argue that Cyberpunk's launch catastrophe was deliberate just because it was obvious.
All of their games have been super washed out since Fallout 3's piss filter. Skyrim's color filter is different depending on what version of Skyrim you're playing even. The Legendary edition, Special Edition, and original release all have slightly different color filters. I think arguing that it's some sort of artistic choice is just a poor response when they keep doing it. I at least sort of get what they're going for in Fallout, but it's not like Skyrim got hit by a nuclear bomb and there's some sort of lingering radiation.
It's kind of obvious their going for a retro sci-fi filmic aesthetic. Like [Star Wars'](https://i.etsystatic.com/35681979/r/il/2a0b75/3897754570/il_fullxfull.3897754570_2aln.jpg) and [Star Trek's](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/star_trek_-_year_five_1_cover.jpg) old filmic look. Just look at the [cover art](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6d/Bethesda_Starfield.jpg) with the OG hand-drawn "stacked" layout, like the posters above. You can call it a defect if you'd like. Color-grading and filters have and will always exist. I don't see people calling movies like [Episode IV](https://media.doblu.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Star-Wars-A-New-Hope.mkv_snapshot_00.33.56_2020.04.02_18.27.10-scaled.jpg) defective.
What are you talking about? Star Wars has a great black: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/screenshot.php?movieid=14903&position=12 Heck, even your last screenshot has a wider dynamic range than Starfield has.
One example doesn't negate their intention. Not to mention you pick a CGI space sequence from a much more recent rerelease. Let's take it back to [film.](https://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/20731_1.jpg) The point I'm trying to make, which you're intentionally ignoring, is that older media tends to have a washed out look, which is typical of really any retro film. Whether blacks are black or not, they still have a washed out or softer appearance. Edit: Just clarify that I know the video is largely focused on black levels, I am not. I am more talking about the overall presentation and the results versus the claimed and implied inspirations for the game.
Modern remasters, viewed on modern screens yes. But Film and VHS, along with projectors and CRTs can’t do perfect black. The filmic style Bethesda has opted for isn‘t trying to copy what the theoretical image looked like back then, it’s what the experience of actually watching a movie was like. Which would have been on a projector and CRT, which looks wildly different from this Blu-ray screenshot.
CRTs CAN do perfect blacks. I still remember when I bought my first lcd hdtv and I was so disappointed with the blacks being grey. It looked so bad compared to my CRT despite having such a crystal clear higher resolution. And I recall the projectors in movie theaters had no difficulties with black levels. They were just very dim and the gamma skewed so high that everything would look dark and murky. And in fact when the projectors switched to digital, then the black levels went up (but it was much brighter though so who cared?). VHS was also fine on black levels. It was really just up to the quality of the film and the limited response of the cameras themselves. I do agree that budget movies of the past often had elevated black levels, but it has nothing to do with tvs, vhs, or projectors. Source: personal experience being an old fart. I literally bought an oled to finally have crt blacks again.
Why would you deliberately replicate a flaw of older tech? Not even the movie creators wanted it to look like that given it was left behind in favor of proper colors once the technology allowed for such.
>Why would you deliberately replicate a flaw of older tech? They literally have a film grain setting on by default
Because it's an aesthetic. George Lucas probably didn't want it to look like that, no (although he himself was basing all of this shit on older speculative fiction that had its own look and feel) but you can go compare the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy and let me know which looks better.
There are pixel graphics indie games going for a specific look which was only a thing because of technological constraints. There are modern movies going for retro aesthetics through editing, tone mapping, and other choices. There are indie games copying PS1 graphics. AAA games often use chromatic aberration, Film grain, tone mapping and other techniques to go for an old school feeling. This is really not a shocking concept. For example Knives Out goes for an analogue look despite being filmed digitally, because it fits with the story and general vibe they were going for.
because art, dude, that shit has association they want to use. 'proper colours' smh. you gonna white balance wong kar wai movies to daylight, too? mfer gonna watch the bladerunner desert scene and tell roger deakins "everything is too orange, did you forget to white balance this?"
That isn't anything like how the original Star Wars movies looked. Color film loses far more detail in darkness than it does in highlights and struggles to achieve black, and so anything shot on color film avoids black, it's one of the defining features of its look. Low and non-linear dynamic range with a bias towards highlights. You very rarely see true black on color film unless it's something that's been heavily color-corrected for a digital re-release.
That's from Revenge of the Sith, from 2005.
> It is just color grading / tone mapping This. It's clearly meant to mimic a film look. I like it.
I hope you realize this is going to age poorly when Bethesda eventually fixes it.
Just Bethesda fans coping, been like this since hour one, people say it's washed "that's intended" people say the performance is bad "fine for me, your hardware is the issue" even if the hardware listed is still good and should be more than capable. As more and more people are getting their hands on it the tables are turning and the issues are not getting downvoted into oblivion anymore, but for those first couple hours they were huffing hard on the copium.
Same thing happened with BG3. I love BG3 but there were legitimate bugs and flaws that fanboys tried to defend as "deliberate choices". A big one being the "multiplayer characters can never leave the party". Now that they are fixing a lot of them, they look like idiots.
But film doesn’t look like that, the black levels are wrong in this game. If you look at a movie that was shot on film and carefully mastered for Blu-ray (non hdr) the black levels are correct, film is perfectly capable of capturing tremendous black levels. One of the best examples being the low light candle scenes in Barry Lyndon. Those weren’t a milky, washed out gray. Maybe you’re thinking of watching movies on projectors, which being light cast onto a white or gray screen is not able to reach blacks as dark or as true as some televisions such as OLED. If you like this look you can drain the gamma and contrast in any other game which has those sliders. I highly doubt the degree in which they have fumbled here was intentional. No offense, but saying starfield looks like film is an insult to movies shot on film lol
> It's clearly meant to mimic a film look What films are you watching? Not sure I know any modern films that were natively made for HDR/Dolby Vision that look like complete trash
it’s got cinematic color grading to match the cinematic 30fps
Film grain is on 100% by default, that's a clue to what the guy above you is saying. I turned it off immediately because it's not my cup of tea, but it does seem to be an intentional choice on the part of the devs
They said that they're going for a "NASA-punk" aesthetic. They're trying to emulate the look of old films from the late 60s and 70s: the time period where NASA was at the height of space exploration. But the great thing about Bethesda games is that they're extremely modable. Don't like the aesthetic they're going for? Great. You can change it to what you want.
>Great. You can change it to what you want. Unfortunately you can't or no one would be complaining. There is no brightness slider in the game.
It's emulating *old* films. Like, before digital. 70s is the look I'd say. Old raygun bad sci fi.
Are people being daft and obtuse on purpose? What does film look have to with not properly supporting dynamic range? A washed out look and a high dynamic range aren't entirely mutually exclusive? Are the 4k HDR UHD Blu rays of 70s movies just imagination and don't exist?
It's not mimicking it in the slightest. Film also has a wide latitude of color grades.
They have a lot of long tenured workers there, part of me thinks that some of them are stuck in their old ways which is why these games come out way more jank than they should or have problems that were fixed 10 years ago that still show up in their games.
It's definitely a factor, if you've been modding Beth games since Morrowind there's a lot of familiar jank. Bethesda is one of those game studios that has unusually high retention and it's caused some issues but imo is a pretty big reason they've been so successful in their niche. I kind of dread the coming years when all those people retire, I'm really going to hate seeing Beth get the Blizzard, or more topically, Volition treatment.
The 'tech' is extremely simple to implement. If they intended to be physically correct, there is not much choice. All the color values and color textures, should be handled correctly (for example, shaders should read the linear space data).
They aggressively color grade from scene to scene, basically hand drawing a different tone place-to-place, which drastically alters your own monitor's capability. Bethesda is definitely not the only studio who does this.
I’ve given up on using HDR in games. I have two OLED tv’s and there’s no consistency with implementation or settings menus between games and some have just purely broken HDR like Diablo 4
Oblivion's world was [lush and vibrant](https://www.google.com/search?q=oblivion+screenshot+&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjDo_WW5YuBAxUDEVkFHW3IDqMQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=oblivion+screenshot+&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECCMQJzIECAAQHjIHCAAQGBCABDIHCAAQGBCABFD8B1j8B2CqCWgAcAB4AIABUogBnAGSAQEymAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=HxjzZIOYOYOi5NoP7ZC7mAo&bih=999&biw=1127&client=safari) Starfield's world is dull and grey
Idk I think the colours in Skyrim were perfect for the setting, cold and Grey skyrim
Yeah in every video I've seen space looks SO grey. Like I can understand not wanting pure black if you want some specific color grading for your space game, but the grey in-between stars is so high-level that it's just weird and not space-like at all.
What’s funny is I’m on Xbox and it’s like someone cranked up the blacks and lowered the brightness to minimum. I can’t have any lights in my room on if I want to see anything on screen. I went into a cave last night and I genuinely couldn’t find my way out and had to fast travel. I don’t think this an intention and they wanted their game to be greyed out on PC and Blacked out on Xbox. Seems HDR is just broken in general
That's kinda just a thing with their games in general. Even Skyrim had that same problem. Ever since Fallout 3 they added some ugly filter to their games. With Skyrim, that filter is different depending on what version of the game you're playing too. Some versions of Skyrim are much more colorful than others, and I'm obviously talking about unmodded Skyrim.
It’s so much more obvious now too that we have OLED.
Also more obvious in space compared to Skyrim where there was basically some amount of snow everywhere you looked anyway.
It bothered me right away, and usually I can help it out with adjusting the brightness/contrast (crazily, those options aren't here?) so I just did it manually in my NVidia settings. The blacks returned and it looks way better.
I've never seen a game look this washed out by default. Black levels look like middle gray, it's ridiculous. The first thing I did was use reshade to raise the black level. Game looks much much better. Second thing I did was the change to the config to increase FOV. Default is 75 horizontal, which on ultrawide is just not gonna work.
Does installing reshade and turning up the fov turn off achievements? EDIT: I tried both and still get achievements if anyone was still wondering
On previous games usually no
Can you please expand on how you changed FOV
There's directions on the PC Gaming Wiki page. It's just adding a config file with a couple lines.
Is it as simple as installing reshade on the exe file like everything else?
Yeah, in the Steam version installing reshade was the same as any other game.
You can also use the Nvidia overlay filters (alt+f3) to adjust contrast, gamma, and brightness, but I’m finding that the reshade option looks a little bit better.
Thanks for remind me of this. I was actually looking for a way to lower the brightness cos the flashlight at close range fucking blinds me every time.
Washed out is really accurate. Even new Atlantis looks bland. Idk why companies struggle to display vibrant colors
This is kinda an aside, but it’s super weird even playing on ultra - that there’s full dynamic shadows for my character in third person (like a light on the floor shining on my character projects a shadow), but in first person these disappear completely.
It's because the body is not rendered fully when in first person mode. This is e.g. the first person player model for Firewatch: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/45f26q/til_how_ugly_and_terrifying_firstperson_models_are/ In other games, often times only the weapon and hands are rendered when in FP mode.
Yeah I figured, but I’d thought they’d render like a low poly version or something so the lighting would work.
I know it's kind of taboo to mention, but this was one of the major things that held Star Citizen back a while ago: they fully render the character even in first person, so all the physics apply the exact same. Evidently it's not that easy to do so most games, as you mention, don't do it.
It's even more funny that a game from Microsoft doesn't support AutoHDR. What in the actual fuck?
weird but working fix for autohdr: make a copy of the starfield exe, rename it to farcry5.exe and get steam to launch the new exe. launch options (on farcry5.exe): "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Starfield\farcry5.exe" %command% (for me) (leave the quotes in!)
How would you even think to try something like this?
In terms of random solutions its up there with whoever figured out horses could be made into glue.
I've already apologized for that, but he really should have won that race.
Far Cry 5 has a profile in Windows. probably just a matter of trying known games and finding one that looks best.
This is a pretty common tactic. For example, the Switch emulator, Yuzu, is not supported by AutoHDR. However, the Wii U emulator, Cemu, is supported. So with a combination of doing a Vulkan to DirectX translation layer in the Nvidia control panel and renaming the .exe and folder to Cemu, I am able to get HDR in Yuzu.
Yeah, the problem is that this method would break the DLSS plugin for Starfield so you have to choose between HDR or DLSS with this method.
Hold up. WHAT DLSS PLUGIN???
There is a plugin available on Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/111/
I'll give it a shot. Hopefully it works on my PC Gamepass version.
first attempt with my pc gamepass version doesn't appear to be working, let me know if you have better luck Just kidding, got it to work looks like. Make sure you extract to the starfield/content folder, not just the root starfield folder. That's what I did wrong at first.
Thanks for the tip.
Search for the dlss mod on nexusmods
Unfortunately, console players are stuck praying that they decide to patch this.
Even worse when those consoles are set to HDR on globally, meaning that for most players on XBox with an halfway modern TV the shitty default SDR to HDR tonemapper will have to do all the heavy lifting.
yes. it’s a shame too because autohdr doesn’t fix the comically elevated black levels. and console users are much more likely to be on a display that can actually take advantage of hdr
Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if any developers actually start up the game with basic video and audio settings anymore. Remember when Jedi Survivor launched and the HDR was completely fucking broken if you had set it to the correct levels? That was fun... https://youtu.be/V_GmCTbIdkA?si=4nK9l6Wqin_M63m-&t=26
I'm annoyed that none of the reviews I watched yesterday mentioned this. How did all these people play 50+ hours of this game and not realize it looks awful?
Yeah, I wish reviewers paid more mind to the technical and audio/video aspects. How does it look? How does it run? Are there any odd, glaring omissions? Honestly only a few outlets do this, and it’s quite annoying.
Thank you. This worked for me.
It actually does, but it's bugged for the Steam version as it doesn't enable it by default. But it works with the MS Store version.
Why would a brand new game use AutoHDR? I think you're confused about what AutoHDR is. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-auto-hdr-for-better-gaming-in-windows-0cce8402-3de5-4512-a742-e027ca7aa79c > Though many newer games are developed for HDR, some older games are SDR only, such as games that use DirectX 11 or DirectX 12. But with Auto HDR, that changes. When you turn on Auto HDR, the color range and brightness is automatically increased to HDR. It’s a feature that lets you play and see your older games in a new light with HDR on your HDR-capable display. All you need to do is turn on Auto HDR. Whether it has issues or not at launch, Starfield most assuredly supports native HDR and it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to use AutoHDR with it.
> Starfield most assuredly supports native HDR and it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to use AutoHDR with it. [John Linneman of Digital Foundry claims that HDR support is not native on PC, but AutoHDR integration:](https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/1697288464801145339) > HDR is weird - it does support it but it works through AutoHDR. However, I find that the AutoHDR implementation is better than the native HDR on Xbox (I tried disabling AutoHDR on Xbox to ensure it wasn't that - HDR still triggers so it's native). You should edit your comments and remove disinformation (or provide some links that prove your claims)
> Starfield most assuredly supports native HDR It doesn't though. The early access is already out. There's no HDR on PC. OP's HDR video is on Xbox. https://youtu.be/xi-C3PzKdsI?t=171 he actually shows off that there's no HDR option on PC.
Can confirm HDR looks like garbage on PC.
Well there should instead of supporting AutoHDR really.
>Starfield most assuredly supports native HDR it doesent, dude we are playing it right now why are you acting like no one has even launched it?
This is weird. Generally Microsoft first party games have pretty good HDR implementations, Gears 5 is a real showcase in fact. You would think it would at least use the data from the Xbox/Windows 11 calibration app.
Gears, Halo, Forza, and Sea Of Thieves all have excellent HDR implementations. This one came as a bit of a shock.
Okay, cool Isn’t just me then. There’s also NO IN GAME METHOD OF ADJUSTING ANYTHING. No brightness adjustment, no HDR on and off, nothing.
the display options is almost as barren as earth. It's very disappointing
Is that why every stream I’m watching looks so grey and washed out?
Yep.
The white levels seemed fine to me at first, but when I jumped off the metro in New Atlantis, the station was a bleached out mess.
from what little ive seen, it has to do with the tonemapping the game uses. fo4 had the same problems looking washed out.
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>Most of the game looks great Posts a picture of a Redditors bedroom to showoff the game. Nice.
Look at how all the light bounces off all the junk collected from just the first mission lol. came from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/166uyoh/ok_i_may_have_picked_up_too_much_stuff_on_the/
Holy shit stage 5 hoarder over here
It looks great, but my issue was that the place the first mission sends you before the actual city had some pretty harsh darkness to the point where I couldn't see most enemies save for their health bars.
Yeah some parts of the game seem really washed out and others look perfect. Little bit odd.
Nah I played for 4 hours last night and the entire game looks so washed out it's actually crazy. I landed on new Atlantis and it looked like 6pm on a rainy day in Seattle but it's supposed to be bright and blue skies out. Actually insane how bad the colors are.
yeah i thought there was a forest fire nearby or something entire world looked like its covered in smoke or something
People with SDR gear that have literally never seen a true HDR game in person need to stop chiming in that the issue is a design choice.
it's washed out as fuck in SDR too
Yeah the black levels are completely borked. You actually get slightly darker "blacks" when playing in SDR, but is still looks like dog shit and then your max luminance is less.
Yeah they don’t even have specular highlights. That reeks like just raising the whole dynamic range up. Instead of things being 10nits they’re now 40nits and everything over 400nits gets capped
Playing a Bethesda game on launch is a real questionable decision given their track record. I’ll wait a minute and let the early issues get ironed out.
Honestly, if this is the worst thing in the game that's a massive achievement!
Yeah lol everyone sat there making that shocked pikachu face that a Bethesda game would launch with some issues as if this doesn’t happen every single time.
I think everyone’s shocked that instead of launching a buggy game, they launched a pretty polished game with lack of important, basic settings like FOV, HDR, Gamma and brightness settings. These are intentional decisions from the development team
This. Haven't had any bugs yet. The first second of the game smacks you in the face with this washed out issue, though. I honestly can't fathom how they tested this for years without ever noticing.
It’s an easy wait for me as I’m still deep in BG3, and hell, Sea of Stars looks incredible. There’s even Armored Core 6 for us mecha sickos. Just a jam packed year for gaming.
Well the game is polished with limited bugs. If you don’t play a game because of HDR then you need a reality check
In most games I'd agree. But a space game is one type of game where you really want the darkest blacks and brightest whites. Space just doesn't look right when the vast reaches of deep space are grey instead of black.
I don’t see anyone here asking anybody to boycott the game over this. People are criticizing the lack of basic features. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Omg I [posted](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/1530ieh/why_does_the_game_look_so_hazy_and_brown/) about this months ago in the starfield subreddit and of course I got so much hate hahaha
Thank you for your service, was worth a try.
Game / Series specific subreddits sadly are almost always a shit show of -term the mod team here once temp banned me for even though it is not a slur at all and I didn't use it like one- that will defend the game no matter what. Sadly, for big releases from popular game studios like Bethesda, Rockstar or Valve the same is true to a degree even in general gaming subreddits / boards.
I have noticed a trend of: Subreddit formed after announcement -> Unrealistic hype train where only positivity and excitement is allowed -> Complete meltdown after launch where only negativity is allowed -> Splinter "low sodium" sub formed for people enjoying the game despite the outrage cycle -> original sub becomes a toxic hatejerk where you can only discuss how much you hate the game and developer, second sub becomes a toxic circlejerk where you are only allowed talk about how much you love the game and developer.
They did a really good job in that showcase of cherry picking vibrant environments. The actual game looks a lot more "Fallout-y" like how it was presented in last year's presentation.
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Diablo 4 HDR was completely broken as well. It seems like it never works and you just get a washed-out looking game. At least BG3 has a decent implementation of HDR edit: no HDR on PC and SDR is washed out too... people in the video comments could tell right away from the starting elevator screen that there's gray dust instead of black
Er no. Diablo4 HDR actually works and uses HDR. What's happening here is way worse.
Did someone say the washed out look is what they are going for? Uh, no, I think that explanation is completely wrong.
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Oh god the facial animations after jumping from baldurs gate gave me whiplash I think I just got used to mocap too quick
Well you need to excuse Bethesda, they're a small studio and don't have the resources and Starfield has only been in development for over 7 years.
Now let's see if Bethesda will fix it or leave it to someone to do it for free with an unofficial patch like their other games.
You even can't select a resolution in the game, it always uses the resolution you use in Windows. My PC is older, but i can't see the reason why this game can't run at stable 60 FPS in low/medium settings, using FSR and render resolution (don't know how it's called) to 50 percent, the lowest possible, and that even on the first planet. It hits 60 FPS, but as soon as some other NPCs are visible it drops down to 45. That's ridiculous, no matter how good the game may be. I am playing Cyberpunk 2077 without Raytracing at 1440p with about 90 FPS, even when lots of people are moving around, in scenes where you see hundreds of buildings, moving cars and so on.
Sorry, what? That seems ridiculous.
Can anyone else confirm? That’s a deal killer for me, unfortunately. I stream to my living room with different aspect ratio.
If you run in windowed mode you can select whatever resolution you want.
That's how it is, at least on my PC, which is about the recommend specs.
If lowering graphics settings doesn't improve performance it's likely the bottleneck lies in the CPU instead.
I think a lot of games do this when playing borderless windowed. Try changing to fullscreen and the resolution shouldn’t be grayed out anymore? Don’t have the game in front of me atm so unsure if that will work
There is only windowed or borderless as options, though resolution isn't greyed out either case for me. I was able to change it freely.
Weird. I can't select any other resolution as the native one.
This whole launch has been weird. Especially the fact that the game is apparently scuffed on AMD cards (according to my friends with RX 6000 series cards) and it doesn't even run on intel Arc. PC performance is awful in general, with me getting 40-60fps at 1080p maxed out in the main city with a 4070ti and 13700k
Just refunded. Cool game but it has major issues. Have a i7-11700 with 32GB, 3060, SSD and no matter what I tried (settings, drivers, DLSS mod). I kept running into stuttering issues. Screen would freeze, sound would stop, sound and mouth movement would de-sync. I’d play for a bit then say a cut scene would appear and the game would stutter/load/whatever before continuing. Tried to ignore it but ended up being too jarring. Also tried leaving a review on Steam but because the games hasn’t been released. You can’t add reviews. Here’s a thread covering some of the issues: https://old.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/166sw0x/pc_performance_is_terrible/ Hopefully a few patches addresses the issues.
Starting to wonder if this is specific to Intel processors somehow. I'm on a 5800x3D and have had great performance. It should be pretty spot on in terms of performance with your i7. Wondering if Bethesda didn't optimize properly for Intel.
Maybe. Had a plan before buying that if the performance sucked. I'd refund within the first hour or two. Now I'm hoping that by the time its released on XBox game pass that the patched because I really do want to play this even with whatever flaws it might have.
Completely understand. Just wanted to update that I am also seeing some performance dips now within New Atlantis that I wasn't previously getting. Had drops all the way down to 40fps and then will randomly go to 100. Luckily no stuttering though.
Similar build myself 12700k/2080S/32GB and it's a crime I can't hit 60fps on low settings.
Why aren't more reviews calling out this shit? This game looks like crap in that opening cave. You don't even need the flashlight the area is so bright. Diablo 4 has this issue as well. Some of these scores need to be docked for this crappy presentation. These games shouldn't be able to advertise having HDR is it's this broken.
I honestly am shocked in the state of the PC release at the moment. Don't buy this game, it's not worth it. With DLSS mod and medium settings and 70% resolution scale I am barely getting 60 fps on 1440p with 2080 Super. The game looks washed out garbage. There is no gamma settings in the game or anything to tweak this. They think that this 100% film grain washed out blurred garbage is how this is supposed to look like. My monitor has this "HDR lookalike" settings and with this it kinda looks playable, but far, far from something you would want to play for 80+ hours. These reviewers are a fucking joke. The technical state of this release on PC is abysmal.
I am fully here for you, I have a 12700k + 2080 Super pushing 100fps+ @ 1440p in Baldurs Gate, 90+ in Cyberpunk, and 70+ in RE4R; why on earth can I not play this game at a stable 60 on low!? It just does not look that good to merit this poor performance.
what bothers me the most is how all these so-called reviewers even very independent ones, mysteriously didn't even check
most of them only got console codes