Starfield: FSR 2.2

[Outback Bronze]

Vegetation, NPCs, planets from space, etc.
The graphics is no way that good to require so much resources. I know 5 years old games that are looking way more better and requires a 980 to play, common.

Not sure what is happening recently. Games with subpar graphics requiring ridiculous amount of resources, for no actual benefit. This starts to look more and more like a scam in order for the Video card sellers to sell more of their over expensive cards.

Cool, it's not just me

 

[ratirt]

Vegetation, NPCs, planets from space, etc.
The graphics is no way that good to require so much resources. I know 5 years old games that are looking way more better and requires a 980 to play, common.

Not sure what is happening recently. Games with subpar graphics requiring ridiculous amount of resources, for no actual benefit. This starts to look more and more like a scam in order for the Video card sellers to sell more of their over expensive cards.

Not to mention, you need upscaling of some sort FSR/DLSS to even run some of the games in a way you would enjoy it on a top shelve cards. you may ask a question, does the games use so much of those new tech that give you the eye candy? Then you realize these games, suck all the performance from a card, giving lower than expected performance, these don't look that good and you know games from 5 years ago that look better than this.

@W1zzard is there a plan for performance evaluation and benchmark for graphics cards? Want to know what to expect from my 6900XT with this one.

 

[bug]

Not to mention, you need upscaling of some sort FSR/DLSS to even run some of the games in a way you would enjoy it on a top shelve cards. you may ask a question, does the games use so much of those new tech that give you the eye candy? Then you realize these games, suck all the performance from a card, giving lower than expected performance, these don't look that good and you know games from 5 years ago that look better than this.

@W1zzard is there a plan for performance evaluation and benchmark for graphics cards? Want to know what to expect from my 6900XT with this one.

I would rephrase that a bit: it eats a crapload of resources and brings even the most powerful video cards to their knees, but in return you get perfectly meh graphics

 

[maxus24]

@maxus24 is there any appetite to get the free DLSS Super Resolution mod and test it? Naturally it should be made very clear if/when the results are published that it is a mod, and doesn't come baked into the game, but I think testing it is highly pertinent - given the current political situation in sponsored games.

We will have a follow up review covering the DLSS mod as well.

 

[wolf]

We will have a follow up review covering the DLSS mod as well.

Awesome cheers!

 

[Veseleil]

From what I saw so far, without actually playing, is really disappointing in many ways. TBH I didn't expect much from this title anyway, but considering time and resources they wasted, it's a mind boggling result. All seems like a scam to sell expensive hardware without providing any noticeably better visuals than a much older titles.
In a few days I'll test it first hand, but seeing how it barely performs on hardware similar to mine, I think I'll be probably pissed off soon enough. Going under 60fps? Yeah right. I got this hardware for the purpose of having 100fps+ in 1440p. Without upscaling, and fake frames BS.

 

[Chrispy_]

I think this is also kind of the artistic vision they wanted to go for?

Fallout 3 was green, Starfield is poop brown or grey. Arguably Fallout 3 also had a better atmosphere to it than 4 which had 'vibrant' colors, I mean 4 is the most fake looking Creation Engine game ever and the vibrancy is part of that. New Vegas had brown/red which also kind of worked, a little bit.

But yeah this is simply, once again at its core, the engine that just can't do proper lighting and Todd's coping mechanisms to 'fix it'.

It's not a huge deal, anyway. Lots of LUT mods on the Nexus already

I get what you're saying about colour filters, specific looks - honestly I have no real issue with the colour filters - most games and movies are filtered and we're just used to it at this point. Like @Dr. Dro says, there are already LUT mods to remove or enhance the filters, but nothing to correct the incorrect black point yet.

The issue is bad contrast through what I believe to be an oversight or error. No TES or Fallout game has ever had an incorrect black level, and no TES or Fallout game has ever lacked a brightness slider. Black levels have nothing to do with artistic style, they are to do with the ambient brightness of the room you're viewing the content on, in that they will need adjusting based on the viewer's environment, not the content being viewed.

I do not believe the black level problem to be opinion, I believe it to be an objectively measurable fault that needs correcting. Display device reviews (whether it's monitors, TVs, phones, or tablets) measure contrast levels and brightness. Dull, poor-contrast displays are objectively worse, and the recommendations and conclusions of all these reviews, channels, and guides, without exception, is that low contrast, washed-out displays with incomplete gamut coverage are bad; Do not buy them.

This is a game that is low contrast with washed-out colours that covers a narrow gamut. It is objectively bad regardless of my opinion on colour filters or artistic style.

 

[r9]

Haven't seen a game to make such a big perf issue when indoor/space vs when planet surface in decade/s.
It runs fine on medium detail 80% res on the steam deck unless you are on a planet.
But it runs great on the 6700xt/11700k 4k High detail 90% resolution.

 

[Metroid]

This game doesn't deliver 20% of all the hype that has been going through. Anyway, the fsr on 4k looks good x native.

 

[Dudebro-420]

Thanks for this.

I've held off playing for the moment because the lack of gamma/brightness in game makes worries about image quality irrelevant. The starting cave/mine is so washed out and grey it was actually unplayable for me. I'd rather have the horrible piss-yellow filter from Fallout3/NV than deal with a complete disregard of black levels. It made my OLED look like a low-rent Wish.com garbage-tier TN monitor with a 30:1 contrast level.

I don't spend big money on OLED and calibrating dark levels only to have a game display such a limited and poorly-mastered dynamic range. It's not HDR, it's not even SDR, it's PLR - Pathetically Limited Range.

Edit:
Here's the starting level. I turned off my torch, holstered my mining laser, and ran into the pitch black far away from any light sources so that the game's true black level can be measured. It's 32, 32, 32 which is not black, it's a 12.5% grey. That's worse than even "limited RGB 16-235" which always looks truly awful on any modern display:

View attachment 312045

...and no, it's not limited to the "dusty atmospherics of the starting mine. It's exactly the same in the air-filtered recovery room before you head outside for the first time, and here I'm staring at the sun causing a whiteout that blooms out cloud detail - it should be 255, 255, 255 or close to it, but no we get very limited-range, even if you ignore the horrible beige filter....

View attachment 312052

There's already a mod that fixes the black levels and removes the washed out filters. I know it's not ideal having to fix it with a mod but it makes the game look much better. Sorry I don't remember the name of the mod or have any screenshots handy.

 

[Chrispy_]

There's already a mod that fixes the black levels and removes the washed out filters. I know it's not ideal having to fix it with a mod but it makes the game look much better. Sorry I don't remember the name of the mod or have any screenshots handy.

It's called Neutral LUTs by Fadingsignal on Nexus mods. It fixes the shocking image quality caused by the incorrect black level and compressed colour range.



I'll wait until the weekend to see if Bethesda address this in their first major patch, because adding mods disables achievements. If they don't I'll gladly sacrifice achievements to get decent image quality and might as well get all of the other UI fixes that modders have added for things like HUD scaling at higher resolutions and HUD animations >30fps; Having the ship combat reticule update at 30fps makes the ship controls feel all janky for no good reason, I've downloaded the 120fps reticule mod and it feels much better.

 

[Dudebro-420]

I have no doubt that Bethesda will eventually patch the game and most of the initial performance complaints will evaporate into the ether. Some streamers have said the game has a slow start compared to past BGS titles but that it gets a lot better after ~10 hours. I totally understand people not wanting to put that much time in just for it to get going. Personally I foolishly pre-ordered the discounted $58 standard edition from Fanatical (which is non-refundable after being redeemed) so I'm stuck on this carnival ride but look forward to giving it a chance for the first time later this evening. Sorry for the bad grammar and run on sentences.

 

[notaburner]

I was honestly a bit surprised with how much control the FSR implementation gives you with regards to the render resolution. It's actually quite nice to be able to fine tune in the menu instead of being stuck with a handful of preset options (Quality, Balanced, etc.).

One thing that I think is going to be a bit of a problem though for the average gamer is that the render resolution defaults to 100% when doing custom settings and enabling FSR. I can see a lot of people toggling on FSR and not bothering to look up at render resolution. Have a friend who is fairly knowledgeable compared to the most average gamer (knowing that they should have FSR turned on with their older GPU and is comfortable tweaking settings) but asked me for help with their performance. Low and behold, render resolution was still at 100% with FSR enabled. Most games have their resolution scale slider disabled when enabling FSR/DLSS so I can see this being a tad unintuitive.

 

[Chrispy_]

I was honestly a bit surprised with how much control the FSR implementation gives you with regards to the render resolution. It's actually quite nice to be able to fine tune in the menu instead of being stuck with a handful of preset options (Quality, Balanced, etc.).

One thing that I think is going to be a bit of a problem though for the average gamer is that the render resolution defaults to 100% when doing custom settings and enabling FSR. I can see a lot of people toggling on FSR and not bothering to look up at render resolution. Have a friend who is fairly knowledgeable compared to the most average gamer (knowing that they should have FSR turned on with their older GPU and is comfortable tweaking settings) but asked me for help with their performance. Low and behold, render resolution was still at 100% with FSR enabled. Most games have their resolution scale slider disabled when enabling FSR/DLSS so I can see this being a tad unintuitive.

I guess upscaling at 100% allows you to use sharpening, but realistically the native 100% without FSR doesn't need sharpening in the first place.

 

[ViperXZ]

Basically this is the first game that uses part of "FSR 3" you could say, the image improving feature without upscaling, as leaving it at 100% render scale, was marketed by AMD for FSR 3 recently. This is DLAA basically without the fancy name.

 

[notaburner]

I guess upscaling at 100% allows you to use sharpening, but realistically the native 100% without FSR doesn't need sharpening in the first place.

I'm always up for more options so having the functionality isn't really a bad thing, even if the upside of a 100% scale with FSR is dubious as you said. I just feel like having three options "FSR Quality, FSR Balanced, and FSR Performance" that lock out the resolution slider and set to a preset scale would be easy for most people to set and forget. Then have a fourth for "FSR Custom" that allows you to tweak it to your hearts content.

 

[TechHalp]

Thanks for this.

I've held off playing for the moment because the lack of gamma/brightness in game makes worries about image quality irrelevant. The starting cave/mine is so washed out and grey it was actually unplayable for me. I'd rather have the horrible piss-yellow filter from Fallout3/NV than deal with a complete disregard of black levels. It made my OLED look like a low-rent Wish.com garbage-tier TN monitor with a 30:1 contrast level.

I don't spend big money on OLED and calibrating dark levels only to have a game display such a limited and poorly-mastered dynamic range. It's not HDR, it's not even SDR, it's PLR - Pathetically Limited Range.

Edit:
Here's the starting level. I turned off my torch, holstered my mining laser, and ran into the pitch black far away from any light sources so that the game's true black level can be measured. It's 32, 32, 32 which is not black, it's a 12.5% grey. That's worse than even "limited RGB 16-235" which always looks truly awful on any modern display:

View attachment 312045

...and no, it's not limited to the "dusty atmospherics of the starting mine. It's exactly the same in the air-filtered recovery room before you head outside for the first time, and here I'm staring at the sun causing a whiteout that blooms out cloud detail - it should be 255, 255, 255 or close to it, but no we get very limited-range, even if you ignore the horrible beige filter....

View attachment 312052

In the time it took you to make this you could have downloaded the reshade before early access even began and fixed your own problem.

 

[RainingTacco]

Could you test the unofficial DLSS addon?

 

[TechHalp]

Vegetation, NPCs, planets from space, etc.
The graphics is no way that good to require so much resources. I know 5 years old games that are looking way more better and requires a 980 to play, common.

Not sure what is happening recently. Games with subpar graphics requiring ridiculous amount of resources, for no actual benefit. This starts to look more and more like a scam in order for the Video card sellers to sell more of their over expensive cards.

If you actually played the game you'd laugh at anyone saying 5 year old games look better, but it doesn't seem like you have. You stared at a bunch of ultra zoomed in screenshots in SDR and watched a bunch of low bit rate youtube videos, of course it's gonna look underwhelming.

I found the game boring and empty, but you are biased and utterly dishonest about this.

 

[ViperXZ]

I'm always up for more options so having the functionality isn't really a bad thing, even if the upside of a 100% scale with FSR is dubious as you said. I just feel like having three options "FSR Quality, FSR Balanced, and FSR Performance" that lock out the resolution slider and set to a preset scale would be easy for most people to set and forget. Then have a fourth for "FSR Custom" that allows you to tweak it to your hearts content.

There's nothing dubious about it, they could've handled the options better for people who aren't that tech savvy, labeled it FSR 3 Native Render, Quality, Balanced and Performance as per usual. Instead they did it the "tech savvy" way with just giving you the plain options and basically letting you do it yourself.

 

[JustBenching]

If you actually played the game you'd laugh at anyone saying 5 year old games look better, but it doesn't seem like you have. You stared at a bunch of ultra zoomed in screenshots in SDR and watched a bunch of low bit rate youtube videos, of course it's gonna look underwhelming.

I found the game boring and empty, but you are biased and utterly dishonest about this.

I've played the game , 5 year old games look better for sure. Easy example, rdr2

 

[notaburner]

There's nothing dubious about it, they could've handled the options better for people who aren't that tech savvy, labeled it FSR 3 Native Render, Quality, Balanced and Performance as per usual. Instead they did it the "tech savvy" way with just giving you the plain options and basically letting you do it yourself

I only said "even if it's dubious" as the guy I was replying to didn't seem all that convinced that the 100% FSR method was beneficial. Point being that the usefulness of that feature is debatable (as graphics settings are all very subjective) but having the option to turn it on is still nice. Just leads to a scenario where you can enable FSR and have equal to or worse performance (ignoring image quality) compared to native rendering which isn't that intuitive to the non-tech savvy folks.

 

[TechHalp]

I've played the game , 5 year old games look better for sure. Easy example, rdr2

Not only is RDR2 a perfect example of a game with a ton of performance issues that doesn't look as good as the requirements, it also doesn't look as good. You could not have chose a worse example.

That game is literally used a benchmark because it is so cpu limited. It was so terrible on release it wouldn't run on a 3080, which starfield at least does. I dunno what kind of screen you're playing on but I bet it's 1080p with 1 dimming zone. If not you might want to see a new optometrist

 

[JustBenching]

Not only is RDR2 a perfect example of a game with a ton of performance issues that doesn't look as good as the requirements, it also doesn't look as good. You could not have chose a worse example.

That game is literally used a benchmark because it is so cpu limited. It was so terrible on release it wouldn't run on a 3080, which starfield at least does.

Uhm...no? I mean....ok, whatever, if you think RDR 2 doesn't look good, not much to talk about.

EG1. Im playing on a 4k oled but thanks anyways.

EG2. Although back when I played RDR2 I had a 5120*1440 49" SUW VA panel.

 

[Trunks0]

I only said "even if it's dubious" as the guy I was replying to didn't seem all that convinced that the 100% FSR method was beneficial. Point being that the usefulness of that feature is debatable (as graphics settings are all very subjective) but having the option to turn it on is still nice. Just leads to a scenario where you can enable FSR and have equal to or worse performance (ignoring image quality) compared to native rendering which isn't that intuitive to the non-tech savvy folks.

Pretty common issue on PC. Where graphics settings menu's do a poor job of explaining things. It's a known learning curve to PC gaming that takes a little getting used to.