Following seamless gravity jumps and takeoffs from planets, modders are preparing to bring to life another dream for fans of the space role-playing game Starfield from developers from Bethesda Game Studios.
Image source: Bethesda Softworks
We’re talking about seamless landings on planets, as implemented in the space adventure No Man’s Sky from Hello Games. Due to the nature of Starfield in the original game, the process was accompanied by loading screens.
Implementing seamless landings in Starfield was considered impossible (or close to it) by modders, but Danish developer and musician Frederik Wessberg decided to challenge this idea.
In a two-minute gameplay published recently video Wessberg showed how he navigates his Starfield ship through the thick atmosphere and lands it on the planet’s surface without any loading screens.
According to Wessberg, the clouds in the demo are not a cover for the loading screen, but serve as a curtain for the transition from a texture floating in space to a 3D model of the planet. On atmosphereless moons this veil will not exist.
To implement seamless landings, Wessberg had to completely rework the system for rendering Starfield planets in outer space
Wessberg has been working on a seamless fit at Starfield for about six months. Seamless Landing does not have a release date yet, but it does have a destination – the Nexus Mods platform. To operate the mod you will need a utility SFSE (Starfield Script Extender).
Starfield will be released in September 2023 on PC (Steam, Microsoft Store), Xbox Series X, S and Game Pass, and reached PS5 on April 7, 2026. The game remains “an important part” Bethesda’s future – the studio is preparing new content and improvements.
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