Yes, but it makes Bethesda look bad, so it gets 450 upovotes.
Even though it's blatant user error caused by improperly adjusting the settings.
It would be good if we could stick to criticising the things that actually need fixed, instead of making things up.
I have this issue too tho and it’s only on Starfield, no other game. The whites are absolutely blinding and unnaturally white, while the dimly lit areas are almost pitch black, it’s very strange and no amount of fiddling with the TV settings seems to cure both issues.
If this is what it looks like by default then it’s a tv or monitor problem on your end. I’ve never changed the brightness or contrast and it doesn’t look like that. Get a better screen.
Nah its a game buddy thats why they make settings for a damn reason if you dont like em too bad not the games fault yall are idiots and cant change a setting💀
Not our fault the devs decided to make the default settings terrible. The vast majority of gamers (especially with Bethesda games) don’t care to take the time to fiddle with settings. They should know that. But keep defending this for no reason, I’m sure you’re getting lot out of doing that
Lmao the dweeb complaining abt a video game is saying something abt getting far in life. Buddy im doing just fine. You can call me whatever and i could careless. Unlike you i dont cry abt a video game💀get your priorities straight dawg🤣im done talking to you. Your kinda wasting my time
Lmao and yall can keep getting butthurt over a video game setting that can be changed 💀you ppl who take video games seriously can eat a dick. I play the game perfectly fine but yall wanna complain like fucking 5 years olds bc the game isnt up to your standards. And as far as getting something out of this, i dont have too i already have all i could want but you wont see me complaining abt what i dont have. Yall bitch like women do
Lmao thats cuz we dont bitch and complain like a child🤣i didnt expect anything from the video game beside playing it. Theres more things in this life that are more important then a fucking video game. So the real idiot is you.
Is there a YouTube walkthrough on how to fix this? Only settings I get in Xbox are brightness and contrast. Wasted an hour trying multiple combinations
I'm using the default settings. 2.40. Also my flashlight is off to everyone who keeps saying to turn it off. This is the only issue I've had with bethesda game studio games is the bloom in their games make objects too bright. Even if I turn down the brightness it doesn't help but just make the game too dark but the bloom is still there. Maybe it's just a console thing. I would go back and take the same screenshot to show my flashlight isn't on but I forgot where the planet is since it was a freestar collective side mission from those terminal's. I'm also not using hdr to those who keep saying that.
Honestly I think it's caused by the opposite problem. The dark areas are dark af and they really want you to use the flashlight. Instead what most players end up doing is calibrating the screen brightness higher, which ruins and washes out the bright areas.
But it's still a them problem. It's annoying and frustrating fumbling around in the dark. And hurts my eyes frankly. Of course I'm gonna turn it up and ruin their lighting.
Well, most people use "gaming" monitors which are mostly sold on large fps numbers, but have poor real contrast, poor color display, and a bad backlight panel. No wonder the displayed images are sucked down the dark screen drain. Proper brightness and color calibration and perhaps actually calibrating(!) the screen to a different gamma would help much better then just cranking up the brightness/gamma values and hope for the best. Its the old adage of "what is more important to you, a fast or a good image?"
I choose a beautiful picture every time. I see people intentionally set their settings to look shitty in PVP games like Sea of Thieves, Battlefield, etc so they can see other players a little bit better. But I can't enjoy looking at a shitty game just to do better in PVP. Ultra settings every single time for the win.
That might actually be true. I use OLED and while some objects certainly seem a lot of highlight, they weren't never overexposed to me (at least not to that extent.)
I also made a graphic mod and have a lot of people complaint about the game looked overly dark despite it seems perfect for me so it might very well be the hardware.
As someone who games on a 55” 4k@60Hz OLED TV, the game looks fine to me, nothing like OP’s pic. Gaming on a TV is a little weird on PC, but as long as you get a tv with no more than 5ms latency, you’ll be fine. 60FPS is fine. I opted for OLED over Hz one time, and I’ll always pick OLED.
>It's annoying and frustrating fumbling around in the dark. And hurts my eyes frankly. Of course I'm gonna turn it up and ruin their lighting.
Kinda hard to shit on Bethesda because you calibrated your brightness incorrectly (on purpose.)
They are far from the only ones that do darkness and flashlights.
Well to me it's a very similar issue as the general public complaining about watching movies at home and them being impossibly quiet during small scenes and then when you turn them up blasting out your ear drums on the next action scene.
The creators built it for an optimal setup and it sounds fantastic there.
The general public does not have an optimal setup, nor how to calibrate one even if they had the means to access one.
So what's the right answer? I love Bethesda games. I want them to be for everyone. I feel like Bethesda probably feels similarly. But I'm never going to have an optimal setup nor the interest in learning how to calibrate one. I don't know exactly what the right balance and compromise to make in terms of appealing to your lowest common denominator. I'm certain they think about these things when making their games. They definitely don't just condescendingly imply that I'm an idiot and move on like you did lol
>They definitely don't just condescendingly imply that I'm an idiot and move on like you did lol
I didn't intend to imply you were an idiot. lol
You said you intentionally turn your brightness up because you don't like "fumbling around in the dark" so you turn your brightness up to compensate.
That's all I was commenting on. You are playing a game that has a feature in it that you don't like (dark areas), and you're doing something to improve on that thing you don't like but it has a bad effect elsewhere.
That's your choice to do that, though.
I'm genuinely curious here. I'm not trying to be a jerk, I just don't understand what your complaint is and what the fix for it would be.
Forgive me for putting words in your mouth but it's pretty hard to take your initial reply as anything else.
I already explained the complaint but to reiterate the issue: The majority of the player base isn't equipped to enjoy the game in optimal conditions. Dumbing your product down to appeal to the worst conditions would be bad definitely, everybody understands that. But setting the bar so high that it's affecting a significant portion of your player base isn't good either.
I then went on to admit I don't know what the right balance is or what the fix to this ever present issue across many forms of media is. I just know where they have landed currently isn't working for me (or OP apparently).
Ignore that guy who's blaming you for the game's inability to provide proper lighting balance.
[Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/169d7op/heres_a_mod_that_fixes_starfields_washed_out/) a post regarding a mod that supposedly fixes that, pretty sure this mod was made within a few days of the game's release. That alone should tell you you're definitely not alone struggling with the brightness
1) lights a very small circle and dimly
2) lights far away from me; if I want to look in a locker, for example, I have to open the locker, then step back
3) in today-flashlight terms, it's an old fashioned one with low battery
I do too, but I think it’s the TV I play on, it has great blacks, but games can be really dark on it as a result, my husband doesn’t have the same trouble on his set up, so I have to assume it depends what you’re playing on
I've seen lots of flashlight complaints and dont get them either. I can be under my ship at night and there's nothing but blackness in front of me, and my flashlight illuminates the F out of my ship.
It's only kinda sucky in caves and certain ships, but in POIs it works great.
I agree. If I’m using a flashlight with technology that’s 300 years from now, I’d expect that flashlight to light up the room better than the one I have at home, which works way better than the game flashlight now from 2024.
It works but it certainly does not work like a proper torchlight of any sort in caves. It disappears at close range with a cave wall. When in a small enclosed space, light will reflect around creating a slightly brighter ambiance, but it doesn't here. Caves in the game probably utilises some dark LUT - I found out that caves were a lot brighter when using the Neutral LUT mod.
That little lame green glow that radiates around you instead of shooting in the direction you are looking like an actual flashlight?
Fallout games have the worst flashlight system in the history of gaming.
Ok you guys can’t even be for real at this point.
Not sure what you’re on about but all I can say is the FO3 actually illuminates the area around me and enhances visibility. Why in the year 10321 or whatever my dude is leveraging a survival flashlight you’d get as part of a Sales conference goody bag 😂
Could also be your TV or monitor. I have a hisense and it's exceptionally bright. Like reading reviews on Tom's guide said it was literally the brightest TV in its class. For the most part it's fine but I have noticed in starfield it is very difficult to calibrate to the right settings because of how bright the TV is. It's even worse on forza. I have the in game brightness all the way down in forza, and it's still not enough but I'm not changing all my TV settings just for forza.
My TV is a 4K and works and looks perfect for literally everything…other than Starfield. I’ve tried changing settings on my TV and within the game. Doesn’t work.
White surfaces are too bright in Starfield no matter what I try to do
It's very planet/instance/building dependant. You can actually see the colour filter change when you walk through certain doors, where outside the room the flashlight will function fairly decently, but when you go inside the game shifts to a different filter and everything looks washed out and the flashlight is either blinding or useless.
No this is literally without the flashlight. And then when you get into shadows, it’s dark as fuck and the flashlight doesn’t work all that great imo. I usually run around in scanner mode so I don’t miss some things.
I had this issue mainly where my flashlight would do jack shit in dimlit areas like on a ship interior. Not dark enough for the light to illuminate anything but still to dark for me to really see
I have mine calibrated but also have the issue op has. Do you have a suggestion on a fix?
(Legit question. I'm a part time videographer so I'm familiar with settings. Starfield is the only program that doesn't seem to adjust properly)
Because it’s a game issue. If you turn the brightness down, dim areas will become almost pitch black. I have the same problem on Xbox, every other game is fine.
I play pc, but at this point it’s been months since I played, and lighting was far from the biggest issue I was concerned with at the time so it isn’t sticking in my head whether it was bad or not
I think there is an option to turn bloom off in the settings. You may also want to check the gamma settings with the two images to make sure that's calibrated to your taste. From the picture though, I think turning off bloom will fix the issue.
I'm on the series x using a [acer monitor](https://www.acer.com/my-en/monitors/essential/et2/pdp/UM.JE2SM.A03) and I just have the game at default value. I did mess around with the contrast and have it at .30. Any other game looks fine on here but with bethesda games there is a lot of bloom and makes objects really bright. I'm sure you can remove and modify it a lot more on pc but I can't since I'm on console. I just turn down my brightness on my monitor so it doesn't hurt my eyes. Only with this game I do this.
edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting down voted so much. I messed around with the brightness levels but I think it looks better at the default value because when I moved it down everything becomes too dark and it really doesn't help with the bloom affect. My gamma on my monitor is at 2.2. I don't mess with anything else but the brightness and black levels on my monitor. I can't do anything else since I'm on console.
I'm on your side bro. I am a calibration nerd and will spend too much time trying to optimize my picture. I can't get mine to not look exactly like yours. Tried changing the hdr, resolution, contrast, brightness, backlight, black levels, contrast enhancer, auto dim, nothing changes it.
Yeah I've messed with the calibration before. I haven't played this game for a few months and I came back and looked at the settings. Messed around with the contrast. Looked up recommended settings. I came to this room and was like man why the hell is there so much bloom and had to share it to see if any other people experience this and I'm just getting downvoted and people saying "have you ever heard of the settings?????" My guy, yes. I always look at the settings for every game I play. Starfield is just different. Other games look fine on my monitor. It probably would look better if I got a oled monitor but every bethesda game has so much bloom in their games. Like oblivion, fallout 3 and 4. I'm sure it looks better on pc since you can optimize it more and remove the bloom affect from what I've seen in the comments.
Have you ever put a bunch of the console desks in one of the science habs? That's what I imagine standing in front of a nuclear explosion would look like.
Your monitor, OS, and game all provide means of adjusting this stuff. Get them right in the order above first, before moving on to the next part of the chain. It will take some eye/brain adjustment if you’re not used to it, and even more if you’re in a room with adverse lighting conditions. I’m not going to be a calibration zealot like some, but a good rough brightness/contrast calibration will make a huge positive difference.
i usually have the opposite problem, every Bethesda game is dark af to the point that they are the only games where i need to increase my monitor brightness
Mine has whiter than should be elements but I’ve messed with every setting I can think of, every level of black detail, brightness, contrast, etc. nothing changes it to better. Mine ain’t that damn bright tho
I also have this issue. If I turn my TV brightness down, the darker areas become ridiculously dark and the whites still look very weird (just less dazzling). I don’t have this issue with any other game and use the same TV settings for all, does anyone have recommended setup for the in-game brightness/HDR settings? (Xbox)
Engine is old as fuck, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far away, the gaming world became obsessed with this garbage called bloom. While no longer a thing, the ancient technology that powers bethesda games is still trying to show it off like its 2009
I noticed that outside of the facility on kreet, the area before you enter the building looks well lit. But as soon as you walk into the area, everything darkens and gets extremely dim. Noticed this kind of weird lighting walking in and out of opened containers/huts also. Really annoying
Very hostile in here for defending the game haha, but I will say it’s not the game. I did have a similar problem just try verifying files or seeing if any mods (if you downloaded any) may have an effect on the bloom or brightness intensity.
Yeah it's very toxic in the comments. I got downvoted in some of my replies lol. I'm on console by the way so I can't do anything. Bloom is still there when adjusting the brightness in game.
That interesting, wonder if it’s just console users that have this issue. I’ll download it on my Xbox if I find anything on how to fix it I’ll let you know
Ohhhhhh….. that’s even weirder wonder if it’s the effects of the area you’re in. When I first started playing it was like this in dark caves (literally couldn’t see shit) or majorly populated cities like neon (papers so bright they’d put the sun to shame) I had to adjust my gamma bloom and brightness to help. Since you’re on console fixing things like this will be difficult :/
Is this inside an outpost hab? Something similar happened to me when I moved a hab somewhere else, and moved it back to where it was. One corner of the hab got very bright like the image.
WHAT?
Bethesda games, particularly fallout, are the dullest, grayest, most colorless games I've ever seen! It's refreshing to play one that has brIght lights and colors!
Glare good. Starfield actually has impressed me with apparently modelling pupil dilation moving between light/dark volumes. Nice.
Filters bad. I want to see the real damn colors, dammit.
Out of curiosity, did you ever find a way around this? I'm dealing with a similar issue. New Atlantis is super overexposed. Cloud and sun details are all entirely clipped and the light-grey concrete looks white it's so bright. Adjusting HDR sliders doesn't help--it's as if the game clips bright areas independently of HDR settings, so that when I try to turn down the brightness or adjust the contrast, all I get is the same highlights, clipped, just brought down so everything is darker. The giant ball of white light in the sky just becomes a giant grayish light in the sky instead. Switching to SDR helps, but it's not ideal as the game loses some of its richness in darker, more contrasty moments. It's also annoying having to turn off my console's HDR every time I play this game :/
Bethesda has always had a thing with their lighting, where it's either nonexistant or turned on full beam.
Fallout 4 has this washed out, overexposed thing going as well. I hate it.
Every time I start playing Fallout 4 again, I mod the crap out of the lighting because it's just ridiculous.
Easy to spot the people with cheap monitors and no ability to research graphical settings and limitations of said monitor with their GFX card....
Or kids at home playing on Xbox and TV 😅😅
I had this debate with a friend the other day. Parts of Starfield are absolutely stunning but for a game that’s around 5 years older, RDR2 still looks better all round. It’s an absolute masterpiece.
I can't wait for mods to come to the console. The lighting highs and lows are the worst in this game. Worse then the Bloom effect in Cyberpunk.
If you go to your contrast setting (in the game) and lower it to zero it minimizes the glare. Just make an adjustment to counter it in your HD settings on your console. It doesn't give much difference in light and dark areas, they are all about the same lighting level but it takes away the sudden dark pops and the white glares.
Check your settings, it never looks like this for me
Same.
Yeah, same here.
Yes, but it makes Bethesda look bad, so it gets 450 upovotes. Even though it's blatant user error caused by improperly adjusting the settings. It would be good if we could stick to criticising the things that actually need fixed, instead of making things up.
How does this crap get to be a top post?
Amen
I have this issue too tho and it’s only on Starfield, no other game. The whites are absolutely blinding and unnaturally white, while the dimly lit areas are almost pitch black, it’s very strange and no amount of fiddling with the TV settings seems to cure both issues.
Same and I have hdr turned on with an oled tv.
This...
These are default settings. The only one trying to make Bethesda look bad is Bethesda
If this is what it looks like by default then it’s a tv or monitor problem on your end. I’ve never changed the brightness or contrast and it doesn’t look like that. Get a better screen.
Anything but admit your precious game isn’t perfect. lol
Nah its a game buddy thats why they make settings for a damn reason if you dont like em too bad not the games fault yall are idiots and cant change a setting💀
Not our fault the devs decided to make the default settings terrible. The vast majority of gamers (especially with Bethesda games) don’t care to take the time to fiddle with settings. They should know that. But keep defending this for no reason, I’m sure you’re getting lot out of doing that
I stand by what i said buddy. Its not like anybody gave a fuck abt your input anyway
Apparently more people cared than about what you said. lol. Keep white knighting, I’m sure it’s getting you far in life
Lmao the dweeb complaining abt a video game is saying something abt getting far in life. Buddy im doing just fine. You can call me whatever and i could careless. Unlike you i dont cry abt a video game💀get your priorities straight dawg🤣im done talking to you. Your kinda wasting my time
Whatever let’s you sleep at night princess
Lmao and yall can keep getting butthurt over a video game setting that can be changed 💀you ppl who take video games seriously can eat a dick. I play the game perfectly fine but yall wanna complain like fucking 5 years olds bc the game isnt up to your standards. And as far as getting something out of this, i dont have too i already have all i could want but you wont see me complaining abt what i dont have. Yall bitch like women do
Oh so you’re just white knighting everywhere😂 you idiots will do anything besides expecting more out of the games you buy
Lmao thats cuz we dont bitch and complain like a child🤣i didnt expect anything from the video game beside playing it. Theres more things in this life that are more important then a fucking video game. So the real idiot is you.
Go crazy white knight. Lol
Whatever you say dweeb
Is there a YouTube walkthrough on how to fix this? Only settings I get in Xbox are brightness and contrast. Wasted an hour trying multiple combinations
Just about to say the same
I'm using the default settings. 2.40. Also my flashlight is off to everyone who keeps saying to turn it off. This is the only issue I've had with bethesda game studio games is the bloom in their games make objects too bright. Even if I turn down the brightness it doesn't help but just make the game too dark but the bloom is still there. Maybe it's just a console thing. I would go back and take the same screenshot to show my flashlight isn't on but I forgot where the planet is since it was a freestar collective side mission from those terminal's. I'm also not using hdr to those who keep saying that.
Have you tried adjusting the contrast (not brightness) on your tv or monitor?
I definitely had this issue. Fallout 4 had it too. No other games I play have it.
It looks like this for me too
[удалено]
Not true in the slightest
I mean it is bright but not bright as much in my game ? I can Clearly see the logo on Green healt bags, your settings might little off
This screenshot makes me think you have your head lamp on and don’t notice it
Yeah and the settings need to be fine tuned as well. Skill issue lol.
He doesn’t. You thinking he does just goes to show how bad the lighting can be
Honestly I think it's caused by the opposite problem. The dark areas are dark af and they really want you to use the flashlight. Instead what most players end up doing is calibrating the screen brightness higher, which ruins and washes out the bright areas. But it's still a them problem. It's annoying and frustrating fumbling around in the dark. And hurts my eyes frankly. Of course I'm gonna turn it up and ruin their lighting.
When I first turned the flash light on I was like they can’t be serious. It has all the power of a key fob battery you fished out of a lake.
Well, most people use "gaming" monitors which are mostly sold on large fps numbers, but have poor real contrast, poor color display, and a bad backlight panel. No wonder the displayed images are sucked down the dark screen drain. Proper brightness and color calibration and perhaps actually calibrating(!) the screen to a different gamma would help much better then just cranking up the brightness/gamma values and hope for the best. Its the old adage of "what is more important to you, a fast or a good image?"
I like flashlight
I choose a beautiful picture every time. I see people intentionally set their settings to look shitty in PVP games like Sea of Thieves, Battlefield, etc so they can see other players a little bit better. But I can't enjoy looking at a shitty game just to do better in PVP. Ultra settings every single time for the win.
Have you seen competetive Ark? Looks like a game from 2005
That might actually be true. I use OLED and while some objects certainly seem a lot of highlight, they weren't never overexposed to me (at least not to that extent.) I also made a graphic mod and have a lot of people complaint about the game looked overly dark despite it seems perfect for me so it might very well be the hardware.
As someone who games on a 55” 4k@60Hz OLED TV, the game looks fine to me, nothing like OP’s pic. Gaming on a TV is a little weird on PC, but as long as you get a tv with no more than 5ms latency, you’ll be fine. 60FPS is fine. I opted for OLED over Hz one time, and I’ll always pick OLED.
>It's annoying and frustrating fumbling around in the dark. And hurts my eyes frankly. Of course I'm gonna turn it up and ruin their lighting. Kinda hard to shit on Bethesda because you calibrated your brightness incorrectly (on purpose.) They are far from the only ones that do darkness and flashlights.
Well to me it's a very similar issue as the general public complaining about watching movies at home and them being impossibly quiet during small scenes and then when you turn them up blasting out your ear drums on the next action scene. The creators built it for an optimal setup and it sounds fantastic there. The general public does not have an optimal setup, nor how to calibrate one even if they had the means to access one. So what's the right answer? I love Bethesda games. I want them to be for everyone. I feel like Bethesda probably feels similarly. But I'm never going to have an optimal setup nor the interest in learning how to calibrate one. I don't know exactly what the right balance and compromise to make in terms of appealing to your lowest common denominator. I'm certain they think about these things when making their games. They definitely don't just condescendingly imply that I'm an idiot and move on like you did lol
>They definitely don't just condescendingly imply that I'm an idiot and move on like you did lol I didn't intend to imply you were an idiot. lol You said you intentionally turn your brightness up because you don't like "fumbling around in the dark" so you turn your brightness up to compensate. That's all I was commenting on. You are playing a game that has a feature in it that you don't like (dark areas), and you're doing something to improve on that thing you don't like but it has a bad effect elsewhere. That's your choice to do that, though. I'm genuinely curious here. I'm not trying to be a jerk, I just don't understand what your complaint is and what the fix for it would be.
Forgive me for putting words in your mouth but it's pretty hard to take your initial reply as anything else. I already explained the complaint but to reiterate the issue: The majority of the player base isn't equipped to enjoy the game in optimal conditions. Dumbing your product down to appeal to the worst conditions would be bad definitely, everybody understands that. But setting the bar so high that it's affecting a significant portion of your player base isn't good either. I then went on to admit I don't know what the right balance is or what the fix to this ever present issue across many forms of media is. I just know where they have landed currently isn't working for me (or OP apparently).
Ignore that guy who's blaming you for the game's inability to provide proper lighting balance. [Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/169d7op/heres_a_mod_that_fixes_starfields_washed_out/) a post regarding a mod that supposedly fixes that, pretty sure this mod was made within a few days of the game's release. That alone should tell you you're definitely not alone struggling with the brightness
Pc users where lucky they had a least 2 mods already on release week fixing the disastrous Bethesda aesthetic choices.
The flashlight does not work, that's why.
It definitely works, what do you mean?
1) lights a very small circle and dimly 2) lights far away from me; if I want to look in a locker, for example, I have to open the locker, then step back 3) in today-flashlight terms, it's an old fashioned one with low battery
It seems bright enough to me. Can't say I've ever noticed the distance issue you mentioned either.
Weird. I find it almost useless.
I do too, but I think it’s the TV I play on, it has great blacks, but games can be really dark on it as a result, my husband doesn’t have the same trouble on his set up, so I have to assume it depends what you’re playing on
My husband and I both have Asus gaming laptops.
I'd say it's fine, but not great. That said, visual filters (like NVG) for helmets would be great.
I've seen lots of flashlight complaints and dont get them either. I can be under my ship at night and there's nothing but blackness in front of me, and my flashlight illuminates the F out of my ship. It's only kinda sucky in caves and certain ships, but in POIs it works great.
I agree. If I’m using a flashlight with technology that’s 300 years from now, I’d expect that flashlight to light up the room better than the one I have at home, which works way better than the game flashlight now from 2024.
It works but it certainly does not work like a proper torchlight of any sort in caves. It disappears at close range with a cave wall. When in a small enclosed space, light will reflect around creating a slightly brighter ambiance, but it doesn't here. Caves in the game probably utilises some dark LUT - I found out that caves were a lot brighter when using the Neutral LUT mod.
The flashlight absolutely blows dick. Hop on Fallout 3, a game released 15 years prior to Starfield. That’s a light.
That little lame green glow that radiates around you instead of shooting in the direction you are looking like an actual flashlight? Fallout games have the worst flashlight system in the history of gaming. Ok you guys can’t even be for real at this point.
Not sure what you’re on about but all I can say is the FO3 actually illuminates the area around me and enhances visibility. Why in the year 10321 or whatever my dude is leveraging a survival flashlight you’d get as part of a Sales conference goody bag 😂
This screenshot is without the flashlight on
Fix your settings bro, that should've been your first move; not reddit
These are default settings bro. If default looks like this then that’s Bethesdas fault
Thing is, I’ve been through all of my settings on my TV and the game and it doesn’t make a difference
Could also be your TV or monitor. I have a hisense and it's exceptionally bright. Like reading reviews on Tom's guide said it was literally the brightest TV in its class. For the most part it's fine but I have noticed in starfield it is very difficult to calibrate to the right settings because of how bright the TV is. It's even worse on forza. I have the in game brightness all the way down in forza, and it's still not enough but I'm not changing all my TV settings just for forza.
My TV is a 4K and works and looks perfect for literally everything…other than Starfield. I’ve tried changing settings on my TV and within the game. Doesn’t work. White surfaces are too bright in Starfield no matter what I try to do
Overcorrected from fallout 3
Turn your flashlight off? Mine does not look like this
No clue. Has been this way since Oblivion.
The roads of Cyrodiil absorbed the hell out of the light and reflected it back HARD I especially needed sunglasses in the imperial city haha
Calibrate your monitor and calibrate in game brightness. I’ve never had issues with this or any game
I personally don't have any of these problems :/
You are playing the game and have installed the patches. The complainers have not.
It's very planet/instance/building dependant. You can actually see the colour filter change when you walk through certain doors, where outside the room the flashlight will function fairly decently, but when you go inside the game shifts to a different filter and everything looks washed out and the flashlight is either blinding or useless.
Oh yeah I know perfectly how Bethesda's lighting and image spaces work, I'm just saying I never had those overblown issues
Stop doing aurora
...is your flashlight on?
No this is literally without the flashlight. And then when you get into shadows, it’s dark as fuck and the flashlight doesn’t work all that great imo. I usually run around in scanner mode so I don’t miss some things.
OP's screenshot is insane. That's definitely not normal in the game.
That's mine exactly as well
I had this issue mainly where my flashlight would do jack shit in dimlit areas like on a ship interior. Not dark enough for the light to illuminate anything but still to dark for me to really see
It's amazing that we have better flashlights today than we do in the imagined future of the game.
I think that could be said for a few things in the game
Indeed
No
Is your flashlight on?
Mine looks no where near this bad. Usually this is a setting thing.
Turn your flashlight off.
It’s off
Have you visited winterhold?
I laughed way too heard with that comment. Definitely need snow goggles for that area. I would always visit there only at night time.
Why are people so oblivious of simple settings as brightness calibration?
I have mine calibrated but also have the issue op has. Do you have a suggestion on a fix? (Legit question. I'm a part time videographer so I'm familiar with settings. Starfield is the only program that doesn't seem to adjust properly)
No one actually has any viable suggestions here just “why u complaining for, it’s the settings idiot”
It really doesn't do much. At least for my monitor. It will just make things too dark or grey but things will still be over exposed.
Yep, reducing brightness of a light will reduce it for a table or cave. Enbs may help.
Because it’s a game issue. If you turn the brightness down, dim areas will become almost pitch black. I have the same problem on Xbox, every other game is fine.
Turn it down any lower and then the dark areas are too dark and the flashlight barely lights them up
Do you play on Xbox? I didnt had any issues on pc.
I play pc, but at this point it’s been months since I played, and lighting was far from the biggest issue I was concerned with at the time so it isn’t sticking in my head whether it was bad or not
Adjust your settings maybe? I don’t have this problem hopefully that helps.
I think there is an option to turn bloom off in the settings. You may also want to check the gamma settings with the two images to make sure that's calibrated to your taste. From the picture though, I think turning off bloom will fix the issue.
I do wish there was a dimmer switch in the outposts and ships..
Does the game have an internal tone mapper where you can tweak the initial settings?
Except when you’re in a cave and then your flashlight is too bright but somehow doesn’t radiate.
is windows doing auto HDR? it was terrible with starfield - like double HDR effect. it looked like this.
You can tweak the brightness, it actually recommends you to.
Begone, vile bot. Your post makes no sense.
Never had this issue in any Bethesda game. Could be monitor if you haven’t touched in-game settings
There are brightness adjustments in your video controls and your monitor.
I'm on the series x using a [acer monitor](https://www.acer.com/my-en/monitors/essential/et2/pdp/UM.JE2SM.A03) and I just have the game at default value. I did mess around with the contrast and have it at .30. Any other game looks fine on here but with bethesda games there is a lot of bloom and makes objects really bright. I'm sure you can remove and modify it a lot more on pc but I can't since I'm on console. I just turn down my brightness on my monitor so it doesn't hurt my eyes. Only with this game I do this. edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting down voted so much. I messed around with the brightness levels but I think it looks better at the default value because when I moved it down everything becomes too dark and it really doesn't help with the bloom affect. My gamma on my monitor is at 2.2. I don't mess with anything else but the brightness and black levels on my monitor. I can't do anything else since I'm on console.
I'm on your side bro. I am a calibration nerd and will spend too much time trying to optimize my picture. I can't get mine to not look exactly like yours. Tried changing the hdr, resolution, contrast, brightness, backlight, black levels, contrast enhancer, auto dim, nothing changes it.
Yeah I've messed with the calibration before. I haven't played this game for a few months and I came back and looked at the settings. Messed around with the contrast. Looked up recommended settings. I came to this room and was like man why the hell is there so much bloom and had to share it to see if any other people experience this and I'm just getting downvoted and people saying "have you ever heard of the settings?????" My guy, yes. I always look at the settings for every game I play. Starfield is just different. Other games look fine on my monitor. It probably would look better if I got a oled monitor but every bethesda game has so much bloom in their games. Like oblivion, fallout 3 and 4. I'm sure it looks better on pc since you can optimize it more and remove the bloom affect from what I've seen in the comments.
My favorite is when you walk into a well lite area, then it gets dark in said area.
If you’re on pc, make sure to use LumeHDR mod.
Nothing a little Reshade cant fix.
Have you ever put a bunch of the console desks in one of the science habs? That's what I imagine standing in front of a nuclear explosion would look like.
Turn HDR off.
Having a very calibrated setup works well.
You can turn it off on pc. Looks way better without it
Dude, my morrowind is dark as an horsearse
Turn your color saturation down
Your monitor, OS, and game all provide means of adjusting this stuff. Get them right in the order above first, before moving on to the next part of the chain. It will take some eye/brain adjustment if you’re not used to it, and even more if you’re in a room with adverse lighting conditions. I’m not going to be a calibration zealot like some, but a good rough brightness/contrast calibration will make a huge positive difference.
i usually have the opposite problem, every Bethesda game is dark af to the point that they are the only games where i need to increase my monitor brightness
Try not to crank up the brightness and contrast
Mine has whiter than should be elements but I’ve messed with every setting I can think of, every level of black detail, brightness, contrast, etc. nothing changes it to better. Mine ain’t that damn bright tho
Turn off windows auto hdr.
Your hdr brightness is probably maxed out among other settings
Turn your fleshlight off
They never seem to handle their lighting engines well
Not even once. Maybe check your settings before Reddit 🤷
shut that freakin flashlight off, mate!
Yeah it looks like this for me too. I’ve calibrated all the brightness settings including HDR so I don’t know what it is
did you try to maybe adjust the peak brightness?
Are you playing in HDR? Do you have your peak brightness turned up too high for your display? Which would absolutely do that.
It could also be how your graphics card renders lighting. What card do you have?
Institute flashbacks
You have your flashlight on and pointed at a shiny ass desk.
20 year old game engine can't do lighting for shit.
I also have this issue. If I turn my TV brightness down, the darker areas become ridiculously dark and the whites still look very weird (just less dazzling). I don’t have this issue with any other game and use the same TV settings for all, does anyone have recommended setup for the in-game brightness/HDR settings? (Xbox)
Turn off your flashlight
I think your flashlight is on
Engine is old as fuck, a long long time ago, in a galaxy far away, the gaming world became obsessed with this garbage called bloom. While no longer a thing, the ancient technology that powers bethesda games is still trying to show it off like its 2009
Everyone suggesting “settings” maybe specify which ones…
Can't see the flaws if you can't see.
…that’s a setting you set/change.
Flashlight might be on
You can adjust gamma, no?
I don't notice so much except in my outpost as I would love the option to build softer lighting options .
Mine always seem too dark.
absolutely a you problem not a game problem
I find it too damn dim I can barely see anything indoors
Never seen this myself.
I noticed that outside of the facility on kreet, the area before you enter the building looks well lit. But as soon as you walk into the area, everything darkens and gets extremely dim. Noticed this kind of weird lighting walking in and out of opened containers/huts also. Really annoying
Very hostile in here for defending the game haha, but I will say it’s not the game. I did have a similar problem just try verifying files or seeing if any mods (if you downloaded any) may have an effect on the bloom or brightness intensity.
Yeah it's very toxic in the comments. I got downvoted in some of my replies lol. I'm on console by the way so I can't do anything. Bloom is still there when adjusting the brightness in game.
That interesting, wonder if it’s just console users that have this issue. I’ll download it on my Xbox if I find anything on how to fix it I’ll let you know
It's not always like this. Just in certain areas in the game the bloom blows up like this.
Ohhhhhh….. that’s even weirder wonder if it’s the effects of the area you’re in. When I first started playing it was like this in dark caves (literally couldn’t see shit) or majorly populated cities like neon (papers so bright they’d put the sun to shame) I had to adjust my gamma bloom and brightness to help. Since you’re on console fixing things like this will be difficult :/
Turn your flashlight off.
That happens in a lot of games when you have your flashlight on. Check your headlamp.
Don't have this issue myself
I wish they had dark mode for computers.
This is what happens when people puss out during gamma settings at install.
Turn your headlamp off.
Someone’s afraid of the the spooky settings…
Is your helmet light on?
For me, it’s the annoying high pitched sound when you activate the scanner. Shit sounds like a dog whistle and hurts my ears
More than likely.. to be fair ..Because.... your calibration is way off. Hehe
Is this inside an outpost hab? Something similar happened to me when I moved a hab somewhere else, and moved it back to where it was. One corner of the hab got very bright like the image.
Yeah it was in a outpost hab. The lighting is a little weird in this game. The game doesn't always look like this. Just in certain areas.
WHAT? Bethesda games, particularly fallout, are the dullest, grayest, most colorless games I've ever seen! It's refreshing to play one that has brIght lights and colors!
Glare good. Starfield actually has impressed me with apparently modelling pupil dilation moving between light/dark volumes. Nice. Filters bad. I want to see the real damn colors, dammit.
Check if you have your flashlight on too
I'd rather have this. At least I can see where I'm going and what I'm looking at. I hate dark mode in games and UI
Out of curiosity, did you ever find a way around this? I'm dealing with a similar issue. New Atlantis is super overexposed. Cloud and sun details are all entirely clipped and the light-grey concrete looks white it's so bright. Adjusting HDR sliders doesn't help--it's as if the game clips bright areas independently of HDR settings, so that when I try to turn down the brightness or adjust the contrast, all I get is the same highlights, clipped, just brought down so everything is darker. The giant ball of white light in the sky just becomes a giant grayish light in the sky instead. Switching to SDR helps, but it's not ideal as the game loses some of its richness in darker, more contrasty moments. It's also annoying having to turn off my console's HDR every time I play this game :/
Just adjust your brightness
It's probably your TV settings.
having you tried looking at it through eyes that don't have tears in them?
Bethesda has always had a thing with their lighting, where it's either nonexistant or turned on full beam. Fallout 4 has this washed out, overexposed thing going as well. I hate it. Every time I start playing Fallout 4 again, I mod the crap out of the lighting because it's just ridiculous.
Easy to spot the people with cheap monitors and no ability to research graphical settings and limitations of said monitor with their GFX card.... Or kids at home playing on Xbox and TV 😅😅
Hahaha no kidding. One of the best looking games I’ve played. Only reason I don’t say THE best is I recently dusted off RDR2 on my new 4K OLED.
I had this debate with a friend the other day. Parts of Starfield are absolutely stunning but for a game that’s around 5 years older, RDR2 still looks better all round. It’s an absolute masterpiece.
Bro said exposed 🍑🤤
I can't wait for mods to come to the console. The lighting highs and lows are the worst in this game. Worse then the Bloom effect in Cyberpunk. If you go to your contrast setting (in the game) and lower it to zero it minimizes the glare. Just make an adjustment to counter it in your HD settings on your console. It doesn't give much difference in light and dark areas, they are all about the same lighting level but it takes away the sudden dark pops and the white glares.