Starfield was mired in controversy on PC both prior to launching and after the game was finally released, but developer Bethesda seems committed to patching it into a better state. The studio has confirmed that the game will receive an update for both Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling 3 (DLSS 3) and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3).
We’ve known for weeks that DLSS 3 was coming to the game. Bethesda confirmed support about a week after release, following a wave of backlash over the fact that the game exclusively used AMD’s FSR 2. The company says DLSS 3 is coming to a Steam Beta update next week, and it will roll out to all PC and Xbox players shortly after.
Note, DLSS is for PC Nvidia users only. We’ll also have AMD FSR3 support in a future update.
— Bethesda Game Studios (@BethesdaStudios) November 1, 2023
The big update here is AMD’s FSR 3, though. After a long year of waiting, FSR 3 arrived with barely a whimper in ho-hum titles like Immortals of Aveum and Forspoken. Given that AMD claimed it was “PC exclusive partner” for Starfield, many assumed that FSR 3 would debut alongside the game. That wasn’t the case, and we haven’t gotten confirmation that FSR 3 would be added to the game until now.
It’s a big deal, as the outlook for FSR 3 up to this point hasn’t been great. Both Forspoken and Immortals of Aveum weren’t blockbuster releases, and upcoming releases sporting the tech like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora haven’t generated the same anticipation as a game like Starfield. That left us to assume Starfield would never get FSR 3 support. In AMD’s reveal of FSR 3, just days before the release of Starfield, the company was shockingly quiet about Bethesda’s space-bound RPG.
Adding on top of that disappointment has been AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF). The tech was supposed to add frame generation to thousands of games through AMD’s driver, but after releasing, it was discovered that AFMF would turn itself off during fast motion. That led to a situation where the frame rate would massively fluctuate during gameplay in titles that didn’t officially support FSR 3.
The inclusion of FSR 3 in Starfield shows that AMD’s tech has legs, though. We still don’t know when the update will arrive, with Bethesda simply saying it will arrive in “a future update.”
Although the updates are focused on PC, it’s worth noting that Bethesda didn’t say the FSR 3 update would be exclusive to PC. Unlike Nvidia’s DLSS 3, FSR 3 works on consoles in addition to PC. It could be a massive benefit to Starfield on consoles, which is otherwise restricted to a locked 30 frames per second. It will certainly benefit PCs that can’t use DLSS 3, as Starfield‘s PC performance still isn’t great.
