There is a lot of buzz on the internet about Bethesda’s latest open-world RPG, Starfield, which has a spacefaring twist. Even though the game is not officially released yet, players who paid for the $100 premium edition are already playing it. Despite some controversy before its release regarding the prioritization of AMD’s FSR upscaling over Nvidia’s DLSS, the game already has hundreds of thousands of concurrent players. However, as is typical with Bethesda RPGs, there is a mod available to address this issue.
The Starfield Upscaler mod is now live on the popular NexusMods platform. This mod allows players to replace AMD FSR with either Nvidia DLSS or Intel XeSS, depending on their graphics card. It was released shortly after 2 a.m. this morning, just a few hours after the game became available for pre-order. Installing the mod requires another mod called Upscaler Base Plugin and some adjustments to the game’s internal files, but experienced modders familiar with Skyrim or Fallout should have no trouble with it.
PC gamers, especially those who own expensive Nvidia RTX cards, were disappointed when Starfield did not mention support for DLSS upscaling. This is likely due to a partnership with AMD, as the game is bundled with certain Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs. AMD has stated that there is nothing preventing Bethesda from supporting Nvidia or Intel upscaling methods, but it seems that the developers are prioritizing AMD’s platform-agnostic technology at launch. As PCGamer points out, this modder has previously released similar tools for older Bethesda RPGs that also lack upscaling support.
Starfield has more than just a single upscaling issue at launch. Initial reports indicate that gamers with Intel ARC discrete GPUs cannot play the game at all. Intel is working to resolve this issue before the wider launch on September 6th.
