Starfield‘s 30fps frame-rate target on consoles proved controversial at the game’s launch, despite the game’s impressive world complexity. That all changed in May of this year when the game was updated with support for 40fps, 60fps, and unlocked modes on Series X, though the performance level was understandably a little bit variable. Series S was left out in the cold, with players on Microsoft’s pint-sized console still left with a 30fps visual option as their only choice. That changed with last week’s major game update, finally giving the S the same visual options as the Series X, adding visuals and performance modes along with selectable frame-rate caps. So how close do these updated modes come to their Series X counterparts? Is this patch a win for Series S users, or do these new options prove visually unsatisfying?
Getting down to the basics, Starfield on Series S provides one key graphical choice to players: the option to select a performance or visuals mode along with various frame-rate targets: 30fps, 40fps (for 120Hz displays), 60fps and uncapped. There’s also the option to enable or disable v-sync. The performance and visuals modes have some obvious visual differences. Shadow resolution takes a big hit in the performance mode, which is very obvious across the game. Shadow draw-in is also more aggressive for some distant objects. Starfield uses some quite effective shadow filtering though, so shadows in the performance mode generally just look softer, without obvious sawtooth edges.
Paradoxically, that can make the performance mode look more realistic at times, as shadows are generally more diffuse in the real world, as opposed to looking razor sharp. With soft shadow maps, there’s sometimes a trade-off between shadow resolution and the appearance of natural penumbra, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing here. In general though the visuals mode does provide a more satisfying appearance, as the performance mode doesn’t ground smaller objects very effectively. The other major cutback comes to foliage draw. Ground foliage draws in at closer range in the performance mode, and has much less density.
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