Having a weird pixelated effect in the game.

[Precious Tritium]

Ive been having a weird pixelated look in the game that seems related to certain effects happening around objects.
The most obvious examples I could find are with a couple Starborn powers:
Example 1[i.imgur.com]
Example 2 [i.imgur.com]
And here are my settings:
Settings[i.imgur.com]

My specs are:
Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
OS: Windows 11
RAM: 16 GB

I'm also using the Starfield Upscaler mod for NVIDIA DLSS.
It's an easy thing to ignore but still a weird effect so i just wanna be sure it's not something on my end that is causing it.

[nzguzzi]

Driver update or you GPU frying itself?
Only 16 gigs ?
Borderline , many games can cache over 20 gigs now.

[ZombieHunter]

Those are DLSS artifacts.

[Precious Tritium]

Originally posted by nzguzzi:

Driver update or you GPU frying itself?
Only 16 gigs ?
Borderline , many games can cache over 20 gigs now.

16 is the recommended RAM according to Bethesda, although those suggestions are neveer completely accurate. And I have the latest drivers.

[Precious Tritium]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Those are DLSS artifacts.

Huh, I figured it had something to do with the upscaling. So it wouldnt look like that if I was using FSR?

[TehJumpingJawa]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Those are DLSS artifacts.

Precisely.

Turn off Dynamic Resolution, up the render resolution to 100%.
Do the artefacts go away? Mystery solved.

[Precious Tritium]

Originally posted by TehJumpingJawa:

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Those are DLSS artifacts.

Precisely.

Turn off Dynamic Resolution, up the render resolution to 100%.
Do the artefacts go away? Mystery solved.

I just changed those settings and it still looks like that.

[Precious Tritium]

So after looking through some videos it seems like the game just does this with certain visuals/effects, odd but it doesnt hinder the experience. I'm just glad it isnt something on my part.

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by Precious Tritium:

So after looking through some videos it seems like the game just does this with certain visuals/effects, odd but it doesnt hinder the experience. I'm just glad it isnt something on my part.

It does not. It is b/c of DLSS or FSR or some other scaling algorithm. My game does not have any pixellated effects anywhere at anytime. I do not use FSR or any kind of upsample or downsample. Render at native and turn the gimmicks off and it won't do this.

DLSS and FSR do not look better than native. They are crutches to gain FPS at slight cost of image quality but there is always a cost in image quality. That way the manuf. can put on the box that their card does X FPS at Y resolution in Z game with the added caveat that DLSS or FSR is enabled meaning the card cannot handle it at native.

Unfortunately this also means we will could get games that are optimized for DLSS and FSR but run like garbage in native. So far this has not been the case but we will see.

[GrandTickler]

i think its either 1. bad DLSS mod. theres multiple floating around so far only PureDark's DLSS mod looks good for me, all the other ones come with aliasing or weird low quality shimmering objects

2. time for rebuilding your shader cache in case its broken, i had to do this quite a few times after getting weird artifacts like blocky shadows and very dark lighting
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16703yo/guide_how_to_force_recompile_shaders/

[Precious Tritium]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Originally posted by Precious Tritium:

So after looking through some videos it seems like the game just does this with certain visuals/effects, odd but it doesnt hinder the experience. I'm just glad it isnt something on my part.

It does not. It is b/c of DLSS or FSR or some other scaling algorithm. My game does not have any pixellated effects anywhere at anytime. I do not use FSR or any kind of upsample or downsample. Render at native and turn the gimmicks off and it won't do this.

I found this image[staticg.sportskeeda.com] in a guide for Starborn powers that shows the same pixelation for Personal Atmosphere. Picture is a bit blurry but the blurriness wouldnt make it look pixelated.

and this clip: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxaBsTwToR-_71hTmcLrhz1Tp4RtMpdh9W?si=LHW04KQNoGAIqrMj they use inner demon and has the same pixelation.

Granted those two examples could be using an upsclaer, but I also turned off dynamic resolution and set scaling to 100%, and disabled DLSS with the mods integrated menu. It still has the pixelation.

But I'll try to work with the shader cache in case you're right.

[ZombieHunter]

It could be they disable filtering on the animated texture for artistic effect. This can be enabled and disabled via the API at will by the developers. Sometimes filtered effects with small particles look like blobs and it ruins the effect you want. So you disable filtering on it or you filter it but sharpen it up in a shader. It depends on what the artists' vision was for this particular effect.

This is done a lot for rain as well since filtering rain makes it look like giant blobs.

The rain is SF is terrible. It is billboards of a rain texture and the billboard is being moved as the rain moves and it looks like crap. I don't know why studios keep changing how they do rain. The best rain I've seen is 3D rain where they draw anti-aliased color shaded lines in local space around the player. When you look up you will see the rain coming down as if you looked up in the sky. When you look up in SF its all flat and weird looking b/c they are billboards that always face the player. The effect is ruined when you alter the angle. Rain should be no different than 'stars' to represent motion in a space game like SF. The concept is the exact same thing.

[Precious Tritium]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

It could be they disable filtering on the animated texture for artistic effect. This can be enabled and disabled via the API at will by the developers. Sometimes filtered effects with small particles look like blobs and it ruins the effect you want. So you disable filtering on it or you filter it but sharpen it up in a shader. It depends on what the artists' vision was for this particular effect.

This is done a lot for rain as well since filtering rain makes it look like giant blobs.

The rain is SF is terrible. It is billboards of a rain texture and the billboard is being moved as the rain moves and it looks like crap. I don't know why studios keep changing how they do rain. The best rain I've seen is 3D rain where they draw anti-aliased color shaded lines in local space around the player. When you look up you will see the rain coming down as if you looked up in the sky. When you look up in SF its all flat and weird looking b/c they are billboards that always face the player. The effect is ruined when you alter the angle.

Oh yeah I noticed that with the rain too. It's a shame because the actual feeling of being in a storm in this game is really cool but then the rain looks like Pho noodles falling frrom the sky.

[Precious Tritium]

Originally posted by GrandTickler:

i think its either 1. bad DLSS mod. theres multiple floating around so far only PureDark's DLSS mod looks good for me, all the other ones come with aliasing or weird low quality shimmering objects

2. time for rebuilding your shader cache in case its broken, i had to do this quite a few times after getting weird artifacts like blocky shadows and very dark lighting
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starfield/comments/16703yo/guide_how_to_force_recompile_shaders/

Starfield Upscaler is PureDark's. I also rebuilt the shader cache and it still looks the same. I think the verdict here is that the game just has this effect under certain conditions.

[White ⁧⁧Wolf]

For some reason I can't view the imgur links, but is this what you're getting?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmHuN1miQKk

Started getting the issue in the video recently, and loading an old save does not fix it.

Processor: 10th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900K
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090(newest drivers) with 24GB VRAM(not that it matters)
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
RAM: 64 GB
SSD: Samsung 950 Pro NVMe

I'm not using any mods(also not using the DLSS mod) - as a matter of fact I've never used mods in Starfield and haven't in any game for a long time. Using custom ingame settings that have served me well for the playthrough until now. Got quite a heft save file at this point so maybe the visuals corrupt after doing too much in the game?

Only thing I can think of is that I enabled 16x AF in the NVIDIA Control Panel to see if it would improve the textures(I think right before this issue started), and possibly texture filtering. Already tried turning it back to application controlled to no effect.