Starfield exclusively with FSR2?
Marked for release on September 6th, the game’s launch is just around the corner. Early reviews are already underway, and eager users are using the opportunity to preload the game data in advance.
Initiating yesterday, preloading of 139GB of data for the PC version of Starfield started, prompting some curious gamers to look into the files, primarily in an attempt to confirm a technology support aspect of Starfield. This aspect revolves around the partnership between Bethesda and AMD, who announced that AMD will be the exclusive PC partner for the launch of this game. AMD also confirmed that FSR2 will be available in this game on day one, but at the same time this raised questions about the inclusion of NVIDIA and Intel’s upscaling tech.
As revealed, the game files exhibit no traces of FSR3 or any FSR iteration for that, a probable result of FSR’s open-source nature, allowing its seamless integration into the executable files. Unlike AMD’s approach, Intel XeSS and NVIDIA DLSS are proprietary technologies which only come in precompiled DLL format.
So after combing through Starfield preload files on PC, I don't see any sign of it supporting DLSS/XeSS. If true I think this would generate a lot of backlash for Bethesda & AMD (due to their refusal to confirm whether they block rival GPU vendor techs in their sponsored games). pic.twitter.com/U67On3x6Kt
— Sebastian Castellanos (@Sebasti66855537) August 18, 2023
Furthermore, Sebastian Castellanos’ data mining attempt unveiled the absence of either NVIDIA or INTEL tech in the preloaded game files. However, this absence isn’t definitive proof of the game’s lack of these technologies, as substantial day-one patches often introduce features that weren’t present initially. Additionally, considering the foundational support for temporal upscaling through motion vectors, incorporating DLSS and XeSS into Starfield would presumably pose minimal challenges for the developers. Nonetheless, the game’s exclusive partnership with AMD might have contributed to this scenario.
While both AMD and Bethesda have refrained from confirming the absence of these upscaling technologies in Starfield, the evidence does seem to suggest that competing upscaling methods won’t be part of the game. Nonetheless, only time will provide a definitive answer.
Source: Sebastian Castellanos via PCGamesN
