Starfield’s sun doesn’t shine on AMD graphics cards

Starfield Players Encounter Bug with AMD Radeon Graphics Cards

Players of the highly anticipated game Starfield have recently discovered a bug that affects the rendering of the sun when using an AMD Radeon graphics card. Despite the partnership between Starfield and AMD Radeon, it seems that there is a graphical issue specifically related to the depiction of the sun in the game (via PC Gamer). A Reddit user, going by the name Yoraxx, drew attention to the problem, explaining that when traveling to the dayside of any moon without an atmosphere, the sun appears to be completely absent.

A comparison provided by Yoraxx shows how the sun is rendered on a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics card versus the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT. The Nvidia card correctly displays the sun, emitting a captivating glow, while the AMD card fails to render the sun at all.

This issue also affects planets with an atmosphere, as evidenced by additional in-game screenshots provided by Yoraxx. On AMD cards, you will see an illuminated skybox from the surface of the planets, but no sun.

“Your game does NOT render the sun,” Yoraxx expressed. “There will be light and shadow effects, but you’re out of luck to ever see the sun, no matter the planet or moon with/without atmosphere.”

While it has not been officially confirmed, Yoraxx speculates that this bug may be specific to some of the newer AMD 6000 and 7000 Series GPUs. Other users have responded, sharing their own experiences with the issue. One player urged others to upvote the Reddit post to bring attention to the problem and prompt Bethesda, the game’s developer, to provide a fix. They described the bug as a “total immersion-killer” for many players.

Another user suggested that if the bug persists, players can look forward to mods. Game director Todd Howard has already confirmed that official mod support will be added to Starfield next year. In the meantime, players are already busy creating impressive mods for the game.

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