The unofficial mod adds DLSS support to Starfield – Games

In particular, Starfield modders have already added popular support to the game for Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) technology, along with the game’s official support for AMD’s corresponding FSR2 technology. But to unlock the full power of this mod, they’ll need to either make a payment to Patreon or use a crack to bypass some of the controversial DRM that protects the full version of the mod.

Since its initial release on Friday, “Starfield Upscaler” is currently the most popular Starfield mod listed on the main NexusMods website. The modification is an important development for a large part of PC gamers who have the latest generation Nvidia graphics card that supports this specific technology that increases the number of frames per second with the help of artificial intelligence. This is especially true for Nvidia owners who were upset when Bethesda announced an official partnership with AMD for Starfield over the summer, without specifying whether it would be exclusive.

However, in practice, the practical impact of unofficial DLSS support may be difficult to see for many players. in his tests Ars Technica On a PC with a GTX 2080 Ti (2560 x 1440, Ultra HD, and 50% resolution), the site managed 35 frames per second using both the DLSS adjustment and the game’s built-in AMD FSR2 support, which also works on Nvidia cards.

This is because the free upgrade mod currently offered on NexusMods only supports the more limited DLSS2 standard, which dates back to 2020. Players who want access to Starfield’s DLSS3 framemaking capabilities can subscribe to modder PureDark’s Patreon page, which offers experimental copy Which supports the latest upgrade standard on compatible Nvidia RTX4000 series cards. Frame generation features can further enhance frames by inserting AI-generated frames among those generated by the game itself. Regarding this version of the mod for RTX 4000 cards, the differences reportedly reach 65%.

There are many people who are philosophically opposed to the idea of ​​paying for game mods, as evidenced by the backlash when Valve tried to bring paid mod support to Steam in 2015. At the time, the company had used Bethesda’s (creator of Starfield) Skyrim as its first game. for the relevant test.

In fact, some players who support free mods have reportedly released a crack for the DRM built into the mod itself. Apparently, these days, even mods are not safe from the never-ending battle between pirates and developers.

For anyone hoping for a more formal (and less ethically problematic) way to add DLSS support to Starfield, AMD hasn’t completely ruled it out. In a recent interview with The Verge, Frank Azur, CEO of AMD Gaming, stated that “if they want to [η Bethesda] To bring DLSS to Starfield, they have AMD’s full support… If our partners ask us to support DLSS, we will always say yes.” There’s still no public statement from Bethesda on whether this “if” will become a reality anytime soon. Excitingly, Also of interest is a new Digital Foundry video that compares the game’s performance on different hardware including systems with AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, suggesting that the problematic experience in the cases of Nvidia and Intel GPUs is “extraordinarily unreasonable.”