It appears that HDR functionality is not working as intended in the Xbox Series X|S and PC versions of Bethesda Game Studios’ latest action role-playing game, Starfield.
YouTuber GamingTech has reported that the HDR implementation in Starfield is broken, as the picture is washed out and black levels are elevated. He also mentioned that specular highlights are completely missing from the game with HDR enabled.
According to the YouTuber, the HDR issue in Starfield persists across both HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Not only that, but switching to SDR doesn’t exactly solve the problem either, as black levels are elevated in general. On PC, there’s currently no way to start the game in HDR at all, suggests that either this is some sort of a bug or the game may not support the feature at all.
As pointed out by GamingTech, when going through the settings menu in Starfield on Xbox Series X|S, there is no indication that the game supports HDR. The only display settings available on the Xbox consoles are Film Grain Intensity, and toggles for Motion Blur and Depth of Field. However, he also mentioned that the game’s title screen shows an output of 1000 nits, indicating that it is capable of achieving this peak brightness in-game. Changing the console settings to 2000 nits still shows an output of 1000 nits on the title screen, which is rather odd. During actual gameplay, Starfield only manages to achieve a peak brightness value of around 400 to 441 nits, regardless of how bright the in-game scenery is.
Bethesda has yet to comment on the state of HDR support in Starfield on Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Starfield is an action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was revealed at Bethesda’s E3 presentation in 2018. Set in a space-themed environment, the game marks Bethesda’s first new intellectual property in 29 years. The game is set to launch on September 6, 2023, for Windows and Xbox Series X/S, though those who purchased the Digital Premium or Constellation editions can play it a week earlier on August 31, 2023.
