AMD announced a partnership with Bethesda Studios earlier this year, especially for the spaced-based RPG Starfield. Later, a leak from the game’s preload files shows that the PC version would not support Nvidia’s DLSS or Intel’s XeSS technology. Then we learned that Starfield supports just AMD’s FSR, at least for launch.
However, a player prepared a mod for DLSS from day one. This new mod for the Starfield enables DLSS in place of AMD’s FSR, offering improved image quality for Nvidia GPU owners.
Created by modder PureDark, the ‘Starfield Upscaler’ mod allows players to activate DLSS in the graphics settings instead of AMD FSR. To install it, users must extract the files into their Starfield directory and add the required DLL file.
With the mod enabled, pressing End in-game brings up a menu to tweak DLSS settings. The mod essentially unlocks DLSS support that is not natively included in Starfield.
AMD is the exclusive partner for Starfield, which explains the default integration of their FSR 2.0 upscaler. However, if Bethesda wishes, AMD’s gaming marketing head, Frank Azor, has expressed openness to officially adding DLSS support in a future update.
Meanwhile, the Starfield Upscaler mod claims to provide a way for the roughly 75% of PC gamers with Nvidia cards to take advantage of their hardware’s specialized AI upscaling. According to the PC Gamer, this mod works flawlessly with no blocked achievements, making it an easy upgrade for Nvidia users wanting a visual boost.
In other news, AMD announced its third version of FSR graphics tech at Gamescom 2023. FSR 3 Frame Generation will reportedly give PC and console games a huge frame rate boost and will be added to Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum via patches in September. It is worth noting that Starfield supports the older FSR 2 for now.
Source: Nexus Mods via PC Gamer