Well that was fast. Days after releasing a mod to use DLSS2 and XeSS, modder Puredark has updated it to use DLSS3 for Starfield.
Three months ago, Puredark revealed his plans to add support for these upscalers to the game after Bethesda revealed that they had partnered with AMD for the release of Starfield. While Bethesda were notoriously skittish on the details, that seemed to confirm that the studio was only working on AMD support for Starfield, with Nvidia and Intel components basically left to their own devices.
Just so we’re clear here, Starfield does not need DLSS or XeSS support to run on either Nvidia or Intel components. However, without official support for these upscalers, Starfield would default itself to minimum or low system settings to run on PC builds using these components.
So, this isn’t really a matter of handpicking the optimal components and upscaler technology to run Starfield the best that it can. Bethesda made that irrelevant when they essentially announced that they would only be working with AMD. But since AMD also confirmed that modders could add such support for their game, Puredark emerged to pick up the task.
Now, the thing is, most PC users would have already been covered with either DLSS 2, which Puredark had worked on, or FSR, which is the AMD upscaler technology that Bethesda officially supported. That Puredark went out of his way to include XeSS and DLSS3 demonstrates that he wanted to make sure that nobody got left behind.
As reported by Tech4Gamers, testing demonstrated that modded Starfield with DLSS 3.5 yields better performance that Starfield with FSR 2.2. It’s a very game demonstration that if Bethesda hadn’t made such deals with any PC manufacturer, they could have ensured that PC players could get Starfield performing at its most optimal.
Interestingly enough, Puredark has improved the mod even further than that. There are now two version of the DLSS / XeSS mod, one of which includes ReShade. ReShade is another mod that adds more visual effects to the games it’s used on. However, it is also known to add lag to some games. PureDark notes that his implementation of ReShade and his mod on Starfield adds contrast adaptive sharpening, but it could conflict with the Steam overlay.
Whether you choose the version with or without ReShade, the mod now also comes with an auto-HDR fix. It’s all very impressive work, but once again, it should be self-evident that a fan shouldn’t have to do this work, when Bethesda is selling this game to all PC players. Hopefully, in time, Bethesda will go back and add support for these non-AMD components officially, and make sure they stick.
