As most PC gamers will have noticed right away when launching the game, there is no Starfield FOV (Field of View) slider in the game’s settings. This is unfortunate since the default setting appears to be 75, which is lower than preferable, especially for those who experience motion sickness when playing in first-person view.
Thankfully, several mods are already starting to appear on Nexus, including some that allow players to increase the Starfield FOV value. User Hellstorm102 provided a downloadable StarfieldCustom.ini file that needs to be placed in the Documents/MyGames/Starfield folder to enable the increased Field of View. The provided file sets FOV to 100 for both first-person and third-person view, though any user can modify the .ini with different values as desired.
Likely, Bethesda will eventually add an in-game Starfield FOV slider at some point, but mods will have to do in the meantime.
While fixing the Starfield FOV was one of the community’s main priorities, there are plenty more mods. For example, an optimization mod already tweaks the values of shadow distance, reflection size, and more. It was created by Erokk, one of the makers of the Cyberpunk 2077 Path Tracing optimization mod. The author clarified this is unlikely to make a big difference in terms of frame rate due to the relatively minor tweaks made. However, Erokk also said is just the beginning, hinting that more ways to further optimize Starfield are being looked at by modders. If you do install the modded .ini, make sure to switch between presets to activate the modifications.
In Wccftech’s review, Francesco wrote:
Starfield is also one of the few PC games to be released without major performance issues in the past few years. While native 4K, high, or ultra settings are just as demanding as in every modern AAA title, the game runs great even on a non-top-of-the-line hardware with some tweaking. At 4K resolution, medium to low settings, FSR2, and Dynamic Resolution, the game ran at a respectable 60 FPS or so on the machine used for the test (i7-10700 CPU, RTX 3070, 16 GB RAM). Lowering the resolution to 1440p, increasing the settings to a combination of medium and high, and turning FSR2 off, the game ran at an average of 85 FPS in open fields and combat and around 100 FPS in smaller, closed-off areas. These average framerates are also accompanied by no stuttering whatsoever, which isn’t exactly the norm nowadays. Again, it is clear how the additional development time and the smaller number of target platforms have done wonders for polishing.
Of course, the Starfield FOV and performance mods are just two of many options available to PC gamers. Another crafted by Aetherpoint lets you skip the introductory videos, while a mod by KhaoMaat seeks to improve the Heads Up Display (HUD) by moving and shrinking the location and XP notification text. Yet another UI mod by Johnny3TearsUxA removes hit markers and, optionally, enemy health bars.
NVIDIA and Intel users may also check the DLSS and XeSS mod released a few hours ago by PureDark. Even with Bethesda’s official mod tools still a few months away, many more useful mods are sure to appear; stay tuned as we keep you up to date on the latest community works.
