Facepalm: Starfield had a lot of expectations to live up to. From the expansive universe to interactive environmental elements, the game was designed to completely immerse players in an endless intergalactic landscape. Given Bethesda's attention to even the smallest details, one would think something as big as a huge ball of fire illuminating the sky of any planet wouldn't be overlooked. But according to increasingly frequent reports, many users are missing one of the biggest features of any planet – the sun.
Reports of unrendered stars on the daylight side of Starfield's planets began popping up across several Reddit posts last week. According to a post by Reddit user Guts2021, some AMD users were noticing that no matter what planet they were on, daylight was visible but there was no sun or host star rendered to radiate it.
Additional posts began to surface on r/Starfield confirming the same issue for others: Radeon 6000 and 7000 series users were not seeing entire stars and suns on the daylight side of any planets, while Nvidia users in the same locations observed normally rendered stars, light, and other atmospheric effects.
According to a post by Redditor Yoraxx, the skybox screenshot below was rendered on a system running a 7900XTX. In the shot, light can be seen on the planet's surface, and in the sky, but there's no visible source.
Another screenshot provides the same skybox view, said to be running on the same system, but this time rendered using a Nvidia 3070 Ti. Hard to miss the difference.
I'm currently running a Radeon 7900XTX on the latest AMD drivers, and as of Sunday, September 10th I'm encountering the same issue. Light, clouds, but no sun or visible light source.
It's not exactly a game-breaking issue, but it is very hard not to see once you've noticed it. And for anyone who bases their experience on getting lost in a game's environment, the lack of such a prominent celestial figure in a space-based odyssey can be quite a low point in their experience.
It's not clear if the issue rests on AMD or Bethesda's shoulders, but one thing is for sure: if a game's attention to detail lets a player correct which way a toilet paper roll is oriented, then it's not too much to ask for a planet's sun to hang in its sky.
P.S. – The proper orientation for a toilet paper roll is with the paper rolling over the top. You're welcome.
Image credit: Yoraxx
https://www.techspot.com/news/100099-amd-gpu-users-reportedly-cant-see-sun-any.html
