Performance Texture Pack – WEAPONS
Only weapons textures, for those who are experiencing low FPS or stutters when drawing weapons or in combat.
There are three different options available here, depending on the performance improvements you’re looking for (Hot Potato-1K, Warm Potato-Half, or Cold Potato-Quarter).
For the Hot Potato version, I have downscaled all color and normal maps to a max of 1K, and all other maps were reduced by half. The Warm Potato reduces all of those textures again by half, and the Cold Potato by another half. Thus, the Hot Potato version has fewer files because it excludes files that in the vanilla game are 1K or below.
This way, you have the option to either only downscale weapons textures, or to use my AIO Performance Texture Pack and then overwrite with this. For example, you can use the Hot Potato AIO Pack, and then the Warm Potato Cities Pack. Note that until the final update to the AIO, the same ‘Potato’ style is more optimized in the smaller packs than in the AIO, so there are advantages to using the small modules over the AIO. I will continue to release such modules so you can customize your performance.
INSTALLATION
Vortex and MO2 now support loading of loose files with the Starfield extension without any other manual edits. Go bananas!
If you are not using Vortex and want to load loose files mods manually, you will need the appropriate ini file, installed into Documents/My Games/Starfield. That ini file is uploaded on the AIO Pack for your convenience.
MORE INFO
This is the first mod in the second stage of a multi-step project.
Future plans as follows:
Stage 2:
Release additional mods with custom resolutions for different types of textures that hit harder than others. Downscaling planets is less effective at increasing performance than downscaling random NPC faces or architecture, and some people want higher resolution faces than landscapes. Multiple modules are more flexible for a variety of users.
Stage 3:
I will be upscaling many vanilla game textures and releasing those for high-end systems. In the process I will also be downscaling those upscaled textures to performance resolutions. From my experience with heavily trained and managed AI uspcaling I can often achieve greater sharpness and clarity than vanilla textures even at the same resolution via this process.
Stage 4:
Updating this AIO pack with the above changes.
ABOUT ME
I have released over 250 mods, nearly all texture optimization or upscaling for Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077, including Performance Optimized Textures for all of Skyrim. My work has been featured in a number of gaming magazines over the past two years.
I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Starfield FOR.EV.ER, and the main reason for the delayed release of this mod is because I am absolutely in love with this game and having trouble pulling away from playing it.
That said, there’s a ton of work to do on the textures so I am also incredibly excited to get to work on the vanilla game textures and improve user experiences with performance and visual quality. Please track my mods from my user page to stay tuned to new releases.
You can find me in v2’s Starfield discord here, and eventually my performance texture mods will be included in a Constellation Performance Graphics Collection by v2, so please check out his main collection here.
FAQs:
Which pack should I choose?
Completely depends on your system. My guess is that if you have a 2080 or better the Hot Potato pack will probably be enough. If you have a 1060 or below you might need the Cold Potato Pack.
Why loose files?
They allow files to be more easily overwritten by both other mods and by any fixes or updates.
Why won’t you update the AIO pack at each stage?
The files are too large, I want to verify that there aren’t issues at every stage of the process, and you can always overwrite this mod with the new releases.
I’m having a bug or other problem with this mod, what do I do?
Please report it on the ‘Bugs’ tab on this mod page. I may not be able to keep up with all the comments on the ‘Posts’ tab.
How does this differ from x mod?
Read everything above and if it isn’t clear, ask a friend or post in the comments. Likely answers are that it downscales more textures or is packaged differently.