Starfield is finally adding DLSS support in a test update next week

Starfield is getting Nvidia DLSS support at long last in a test update next week that'll fully launch on Xbox and PC shortly after.

Bethesda announced the update on Twitter, explaining that it'll first hit Steam Beta at some point next week before it gets a proper release. The update will include "Nvidia DLSS support with frame generation, display and HDR controls for supported systems, and other optimizations and improvements."

The lack of DLSS in Starfield has been a common pain point in the community since launch, to the point where Starfield DLSS mods became a pretty popular choice for PC players, so it's good to see Bethesda is finally adding official support.

As for AMD's equivalent performance-boosting tech, which it calls FSR3, Bethesda is working on support for that too and says it'll be added to Starfield "in a future update."

The conversation around DLSS support in Starfield started back in June when Bethesda announced AMD would be the game's "exclusive PC partner," which a bunch of people mistakenly took to mean Nvidia's DLSS tech would never be added. AMD soon after said it wouldn't block DLSS support, although it will have taken a good deal of time to make it officially available.

DLSS, which stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling, is Nvidia's proprietary image rendering tech. In the most basic sense, it lowers resolution in certain areas to boost framerates and then uses AI magic called deep learning to upscale those frames and make them look like the original resolution. The result, ideally, is better framerates without as much of a compromise in visual quality.

In other news from the Settled Systems, a Starfield modder recently turned leftover space station outpost code into a fully functioning feature and sparked hopes for DLC.