Starfield Performance Preview: What to Expect Based on What We’ve Seen So Far
Starfield is one of the most anticipated games of the next few years. Born from the team that created the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series, Bethesda’s universe-focused RPG has sparked excitement since its 2018 announcement, even though it’s been largely unreleased. With a planned 2023 release, recent gameplay reveals revealed the upcoming Xbox and PC exclusives, giving us a chance to get a sense of what the team has in store for us.
On a headline level, the game is based on an advanced version of the Creation Engine. Dubbed Creation Engine 2, the engine bears definite similarities within its render output to both Fallout 76 and Skyrim, which build upon its predecessor. Fallout 4 and later games have made significant changes to the engine, enabling physically-based lighting shaders and materials, deferred tile-based rendering pipelines, highly dynamic light sources, volumetric lighting, and other cutting-edge technologies. was given. But technology offers more than just visuals. For example, Havok physics aids animation, AI and quest building come from his Radiant system in the engine. Many of these make up the core DNA of Bethesda games.
Before we go any further, please note that this is all based on work-in-progress footage, so some or all of these areas may change upon release.
Improved rendering
Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 improved the feel of buildings with real-world rendering and scale. From the emergence from the shelter, to the devastated wasteland that stretched out before me, to the depth created by the volumetric lighting, it immediately felt striking and epic. Dynamic time-of-day and physically-based rendering materials (PBR) all enhance the overall visuals and promote their realism with cube maps projected onto metallic and diffuse surfaces, screen space reflections, and shadow-casting light sources Did.
Starfield certainly took this as a baseline, taking into account the resolution, the compositing level of those materials, and some form of global illumination bounce. The scale is again front and center, with long, barren landscapes like Fallout. Height fog is used again. This is a combination of flat 2D billboard sprites that can be raised and lowered to create depth and simulate atmospheric scattering of air pollution and light response. Volumetrics are then used, but mostly within the inner section as they appear to be distinctly different from the outer section. Shadow-casting light sources are noticeably higher due to the electric lights scattered around them, as is the shadow map quality itself. Outdoors uses a softer penumbra effect, but there is a distinctly lower resolution cascade that causes dithering. These appear to use rebuild or TAA specific paths. This makes shadows on some creatures more stable, but ghosts his artifacts when moved.
Light and shadow effects mixed with Volumetrics and Cube maps create a metallic look to most visible sections, giving the surface a high sheen whether metallic or not. This also indicates from what I’ve seen here that Screen Space Reflections (SSR) are likely still in the engine and not replaced by raytraced reflections or other post effects anyway. . This isn’t inherently bad, but the game doesn’t make heavy use of the SSRs in the sections shown so far. In other words, a Projected Cube map and Imposter Light Probes are used to simulate specular highlights and accentuate material quality. This could be a dual goal of keeping the resolution and performance goals as high as possible across all platforms while still allowing the game to scale and run on his low-end PC. Indeed, the rocky surfaces and technowar-like cities show that the art and tech team has created a lot of different things in the engine and game world, all in different shades of copies, more than 1000 indicates that it is not a planet. I pasted the gray.
character improvement
Character and emotion are another important aspect of Bethesda games, and Starfield seems to have made significant improvements here. The PBR material makes the skin nicer and fleshier, there is simulated sub-surface scattering, specular highlights on the skin and higher bone rigging on the face are a definite improvement over Fallout.
The quality of the dialogue section is also much higher, incorporating NPCs from both main quests and side quests. Performance capture here will be a massive undertaking, so it’s likely built using the improved Text to Speech Phonetic system we’ve seen in previous games. The vowels and letter shapes are good, and the expression that emphasizes the meaning is well blended.
As with many of these solutions, there can be tree-overgrown moments, but given the range of dialogue, story, and quests included in the game, the level and quality shown is beyond what the team is capable of. Just enough to allow you to iterate and deliver as quickly as possible. High quality for us to enjoy. From a visual and rendering standpoint, this area is the biggest improvement we’ve seen from the previous game, and we’d love to hear more about what you’ve done here to balance scripting and voice recording with automation or procedural. I’m interested in the animation system.
The actual character model you created isn’t all that impressive. I have the same issue that was seen in the previous game. Namely, eye parallax, blinking, pupils, and emotion, exacerbated by limited facial bones, low hair cards, and general vertex shift. Feature set to choose from. That said, we don’t see ourselves in games much, so he may not be as influential, but he’s far from the best avatar creator we’ve seen.
animation
Animation itself is another area that has always had mixed results in Bethesda games. Starfield certainly shows improvement, but it falls short of the character’s level. Running, fighting, hiding, and even walking show distinct changes between animation cycles. In his one section shown, solid fire from enemies and a relatively weak grip on life is meant to appear to be little more than low-level cannon fodder.
This is an example of uptight combat, again mirrored externally with a set AI routine, and not aided by another key area left over from previous Bethesda games (dynamic movement of the world, especially foliage and destruction). provide. Boxes are either crates to open or adamantium barricades that are weighted and floating or immobile. If I could ask the team, it would be to integrate physics more into the world. Allow trees and shrubs to sway and sway, causing objects to break and react to pressure waves from explosions, or break when used as cover under fire. This not only improves the visual presentation, but also improves gameplay interaction and tactical elements. With an initial statement, it should be noted that this is all we’ve seen so far, and that these ideas may already be in the game or slated for launch. And the materials look great overall, but the physics and vulnerability of that world are areas I’d like to improve.
Animals, robots, and NPCs have always been quality areas in Bethesda games, but not the best. The panning shots and walking sections of the Terraforma show are mostly unchanged here. Spider-like creatures and alien-like cargo skeleton robots are all similar to what we’ve seen before. The obvious similarities to No Man’s Sky are unavoidable, but the more dramatic, effect-based levels of geometric destruction when detaching parts for mining greatly improve resource collection There is a possibility. This, coupled with the procedural destruction of enemies, really helps elevate the exploration and combat sections and heighten the physicality of what we see here. , its interaction and rigidity can weaken its strong impression in other areas.
space travel and combat
Of all we’ve seen, Starfield’s space section looks the most promising to me. This can be a hidden gem of a game as you complete missions and engage in dramatic and dynamic space battles with allies and foes alike. Build and layout your own ships , chassis, cockpits, arsenals and more – this is sci-fi heaven for a Trekkie like me. Combat seems to echo the floating physics found elsewhere in the game, with particle explosions, dogfighting cloaks and daggers, and even warp speed travel, which works perfectly here .
Some questions remain, such as how space travel relates to planetary landings. and dense neon metropolises join the Baron’s craters and rocky plains we’ve seen before. Still, Bethesda claims the game has over 1,000 planets for him to explore, so it remains to be seen how many interesting locations are actually worth exploring.
Due to the level of resolution and performance, the released footage targets the full level of 3840×2160 at 30 fps on the Series X. Having a dynamic 4K/60 fps mode as well is very beneficial for the team. Well-founded concern that Bethesda games are struggling to reach that 30fps level. Fallout 4 had some issues on Xbox One and PS4 in 2015. Progress here Footage occasionally dipped below the 30 fps level, but the release data is a long way off, and given the history of Bethesda games so far, we’re cautiously optimistic about the final release.
