I would like to say that these lines of code were not taken from my head, they are all listed in a repertoire of all the settings available for StarfieldCustom.ini. What I did was just take lines that I considered could improve the game's reflections. There is no fixed method for reflections in Starfield, neither SSR, nor Rasterization, much less real-time Ray Tracing. What there is, is a combination of SSR and rasterization techniques where Bethesda judged it to be best implemented. Basically, what these codes do is increase the resolution size and buffers for reflections, but nothing is guaranteed because it is very possible that there are still settings about screen space reflections in other internal files.
I changed my StarfieldCustom.ini according to your instructions and, after two hours of playing, I can confirm that this is a mod that will stay installed on my Starfield until the day that, eventually, Bethesda decides that CPUs in general are powerful enough to support ray tracing in this game. And even then, it will be a case of taking a good look first, because games with poor ray tracing implementations are still very common out there.
Even before I started writing this message, I landed my ship at the New Atlantis spaceport and went to the Jamison Mercantile. Those who have played this game know that it is a store with walls made of glass. Well, it was sunset and the outside and inside of the store have never looked so beautiful and natural. For me, the most surprising thing were the shadows. Finally, they seem right now. I'm playing this game at 4K, with all settings maxed out (I have an RTX 4090 and I don't use DLSS!), I use an LG 42C3 OLED TV as a monitor (it's about 60cm or 24" between my eyes), which I bought precisely because of this game, and Starfield has never looked so natural and beautiful to me as it does now.
I know I'm late, but if it were possible to vote for the mod of the month for this game, this mod would get my vote.
Once again, thank you very much for the tip on changing the settings that is in this mod.
I took the time today to take a couple screenshots using these .ini settings. I did a test inside of the Ryujin hallway in Neon just outside the elevator. Here and the main floor of the Ryujin building have a lot of marble like flooring, lots of lighting that doesn't generally shift with time elapsing, and a good variety of objects in the scene. I did not use any setting that relates to RayTracing as I've tried them before and they make no difference that I could notice. The other settings do have an effect on the reflections in the game, specifically the reflection of light.
My immediate takeaway is that the light reflected in the floors is closer to it's natural color. Surface light reflections and scattering have a duller tint. I also noticed that the diffusion of light in the reflection is softer, for good or for worse. I would say this is more a stylistic choice but it could also be early systems to have better light reflection. A drawback to this is that shadows appear less dark, distant colors and lighting also seems slightly less saturated and less sharp. Perhaps this is why Bethesda left it off for now?
Honestly I like the subtle changes it's made. I've only been using it for about 20 minutes so I have yet to test it across a wide stretch of scenarios. The more natural light reflection color is a plus vs softer diffusion, and if I want darker shadows i'm sure there are plenty of other ini settings I can mess with.
I'm not really much of a forum user, so I'm not sure the best way to insert or upload images. I'm happy to take some direction for anyone who wants to compare. I changed no settings other than the ini reflections in-between closing and opening the game.
In previous comments I read that using "bOutputRaytracingShaderStats" deactivates GeforceExperience and ShadowPlay, for this very reason I wanted to include only this one in .ini, since I use GE only and exclusively for the convenience of updating the drivers and nothing else. Is it possible that on my crappy PC, I gained some fps? Because that's the impression I had, especially when I returned to New Atlantis after the change. I could be wrong, I'm not sure and maybe it was just my imagination.
All modifications that are beneficial to you and that you judge to be beneficial to others, feel free to share. This mod is free for modification and additional experiments.
You do know you can put a shortcut on your desktop to the driver page for your video card to get your updates from a simple double click from the desktop? Seems like a huge hassle to run a full device launcher like GE just to get updates and then to consider it a convenient solution is down right facepalming.
GE notify me if new driver shows up, and with some clicks installs it. The download page it's in my bookmarks, if I want to download it manually, but I just prefer GE notification and decide when download and install. Before, and for years, I downloaded drivers manually, then rebooted in "safe mode", uninstalled old driver with DDU, rebooted, installed the new one. Now I'm just bored of all this :)
This tweak inserts new lines into an existing file in the Documents folder, not the game's folder. That's why Vortex is not possible, and I've deactivated the Vortex option.
FWIW, I gave it a try for a reference point if anyone finds it useful.
The settings regarding raytracing don't seem to be functional. The rest are functional and have an effect. Mainly being reflective surfaces taking into account dynamic light sources in their reflection cube map (i.e., the color tints matches the actual scene).
Including the raytracing option ("bOutputRaytracingShaderStats=1") disables telemetry from the GPU regarding FPS calculations using Geforce Experience. Nvidia Shadowplay is also disabled when using that setting (no recording, or screenshots). No Visual difference is observed with or without.
I saw no drop in performance (New Atlantis - besides the "ok... no bounty" guard - looking towards the pond) 40 fps average before and after. RTX 2080 + i7 8700K OC'd Ultra/High graphics setting - 1440p - using DLSS mod (upscaled from 70%)
Yes. That what I ended up with. I Removed the two lines regarding raytracing, mainly that "bOutputRaytracingShaderStats=1" which is the culprit behind disabling Geforce experience features and has no effect anyways (game fps remaining the same was also evidence that no raytracing calculations are being done, otherwise I would have seen the bottleneck in fps.)
That's weird. Other graphics tweaks works for you by the way? Or that's the 1st one you tried with this method? I recommend to use the bug section if you have troubles
It doesnt work because there are neitehr screen space reflections nor any form of raytracing in the game. Those settings are just leftovers and unused.
I thought you guys read the previous comments before write here. It was stated by many of us before, there is no such a thing as raytracing here fur sure, yep.:)
Still, some of the command lines are works, but obviously not all of them because of the above written
Sorry to tell you but neither SSR nor RT is in this game. If SSR was in it you could see it immediately on account of SSR reflections breaking up the second the thing is off screen or is occluded. Starfield does not behave like that. It is not SSR that this game uses for reflections. If you want more information feel free to watch any of the digital foundry videos on the topic.
I don't know what you did, but instead of downloading, I just added the sections in the mod description, and while I didn't make before/after comparisons I do feel like reflections look better. Personally i wouldn't use the mod manager to download an ini file, so Just modified the existing one. What did you try if I may ask? ^^ (Sadly this also means I cant endorse the mod, even though I do like it). Agreement on ray tracing thou, considering the game doesn't even support Nvidia cards and such, so that lline will definetly do nothing ^^. Still, and maybe I'm really just believing really, really hard that it looks better, and maybe it truly doesn't. But it feels like it does ;D
42 comments
I changed my StarfieldCustom.ini according to your instructions and, after two hours of playing, I can confirm that this is a mod that will stay installed on my Starfield until the day that, eventually, Bethesda decides that CPUs in general are powerful enough to support ray tracing in this game. And even then, it will be a case of taking a good look first, because games with poor ray tracing implementations are still very common out there.
Even before I started writing this message, I landed my ship at the New Atlantis spaceport and went to the Jamison Mercantile. Those who have played this game know that it is a store with walls made of glass. Well, it was sunset and the outside and inside of the store have never looked so beautiful and natural. For me, the most surprising thing were the shadows. Finally, they seem right now. I'm playing this game at 4K, with all settings maxed out (I have an RTX 4090 and I don't use DLSS!), I use an LG 42C3 OLED TV as a monitor (it's about 60cm or 24" between my eyes), which I bought precisely because of this game, and Starfield has never looked so natural and beautiful to me as it does now.
I know I'm late, but if it were possible to vote for the mod of the month for this game, this mod would get my vote.
Once again, thank you very much for the tip on changing the settings that is in this mod.
My immediate takeaway is that the light reflected in the floors is closer to it's natural color. Surface light reflections and scattering have a duller tint. I also noticed that the diffusion of light in the reflection is softer, for good or for worse. I would say this is more a stylistic choice but it could also be early systems to have better light reflection. A drawback to this is that shadows appear less dark, distant colors and lighting also seems slightly less saturated and less sharp. Perhaps this is why Bethesda left it off for now?
Honestly I like the subtle changes it's made. I've only been using it for about 20 minutes so I have yet to test it across a wide stretch of scenarios. The more natural light reflection color is a plus vs softer diffusion, and if I want darker shadows i'm sure there are plenty of other ini settings I can mess with.
I'm not really much of a forum user, so I'm not sure the best way to insert or upload images. I'm happy to take some direction for anyone who wants to compare. I changed no settings other than the ini reflections in-between closing and opening the game.
Is it possible that on my crappy PC, I gained some fps? Because that's the impression I had, especially when I returned to New Atlantis after the change.
I could be wrong, I'm not sure and maybe it was just my imagination.
The download page it's in my bookmarks, if I want to download it manually, but I just prefer GE notification and decide when download and install.
Before, and for years, I downloaded drivers manually, then rebooted in "safe mode", uninstalled old driver with DDU, rebooted, installed the new one. Now I'm just bored of all this :)
Hope you learned to post in the right section nxt time.
The settings regarding raytracing don't seem to be functional. The rest are functional and have an effect. Mainly being reflective surfaces taking into account dynamic light sources in their reflection cube map (i.e., the color tints matches the actual scene).
Including the raytracing option ("bOutputRaytracingShaderStats=1") disables telemetry from the GPU regarding FPS calculations using Geforce Experience. Nvidia Shadowplay is also disabled when using that setting (no recording, or screenshots). No Visual difference is observed with or without.
I saw no drop in performance (New Atlantis - besides the "ok... no bounty" guard - looking towards the pond)
40 fps average before and after.
RTX 2080 + i7 8700K OC'd
Ultra/High graphics setting - 1440p - using DLSS mod (upscaled from 70%)
I Removed the two lines regarding raytracing, mainly that "bOutputRaytracingShaderStats=1" which is the culprit behind disabling Geforce experience features and has no effect anyways (game fps remaining the same was also evidence that no raytracing calculations are being done, otherwise I would have seen the bottleneck in fps.)
Still, some of the command lines are works, but obviously not all of them because of the above written