Bethesda Game Studios had promised a Starfield DLSS 3 beta update to land this week, and the developer has now delivered. Steam users can opt-in to beta update 1.8.83 by right-clicking on Starfield in their libraries, selecting Properties, then picking Betas in the pop-up window and again [beta] in the drop-down selection. Do note that this will require a separate download. You’ll get to continue your current saves, but saves created in this beta build won’t work until this update goes live later this month.
The Starfield DLSS 3 beta update adds DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation, as well as NVIDIA Reflex and DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing). Bethesda adds that while DLSS Frame Generation is active, players will have to keep VSync toggled off to see the benefits; this setting will be automatically set in a future update.
The Starfield DLSS 3 beta update also introduces various performance optimizations on both the CPU and GPU side, brightness settings (including HDR if the system supports it), the ability to eat food directly where you find it in the world, and made stealth a bit easier. There’s also lots of bug fixes, as you can read in the full changelog.
- Addressed a number of memory related issues and leaks.
- [PC Only] Add some GPU performance optimizations, which will be more impactful on higher end cards.
- [PC Only] Improved renderer threading model, improving CPU usage most notably on higher end systems.
- Various stability and performance improvements.
- Added the ability to eat the food placed in the world
- Adjusted stealth to be a bit more forgiving.
- Fixed an issue where Andreja’s head would stay permanently cloaked.
- Fixed an issue that could prevent players from firing their weapons.
- Fixed issues where some NPC could be seen not wearing clothes.
- Fixed an issue where already in-progress skill challenges could stop progressing after reaching the Unity and starting a new game.
- Fixed an issue that could temporarily prevent opening the inventory or saving after entering the Unity.
- PC: Fixed an issue where mouse movement could be choppy.
- Fixed a rare issue that could cause the home ship to be lost.
- Fixed an issue where the ship services technician might be missing.
- Addressed an issue with how ambient occlusion appeared in ultrawide resolutions.
- Optimized initial shader compilation that occurs on start-up.
- Added the ability to adjust Brightness and Contrast in the Display Settings menu.
- Added the ability to adjust HDR Brightness provided that the system supports it. (Xbox & Windows 11 only).
- Addressed a number of materials that could sometimes present an unintended pattern under certain conditions.
- Fixed various visual issues related to the new FOV slider options.
- Improved the appearance of the eyes on crowd characters.
- Addressed a number of minor visual issues related to lighting, shadows, terrain, and vegetation.
As a reminder, Starfield DLSS 3 mods have been available since September thanks to PureDark and LukeFZ. However, both of these mods had a fair amount of stability issues, often causing crashes for players. Hopefully, the native implementation won’t have these problems.
Bethesda also previously said that support for AMD’s FSR 3 is coming in the future, though there’s still no ETA on when that’ll happen.
