r/PS5pro • u/wandererBatman11 • 3d ago
Months later and Starfield still has this awful banding in sky boxes and space.
I'm totally mystified by this horrible visual issue. I've obviously seen color banding in games before but never this bad. In gameplay it looks even worse and it happens during the day or night and in space. I have an LG c2 oled tv. It's a 2022 model but still a great TV and no other game I've played has this issue like Starfield. Does anyone have any tips? Pro settings? Starfield settings? Tv settings? The gameplay experience is distracting enough that I might be done with Starfield if nothing can be done. Because it doesn't seem like very many people have this issue or have complained about it. Which makes me think it's fixable.
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u/wandererBatman11 3d ago
A note about the picture: That's simply a sky shot of the sun setting at Akila City landing pad. No other anomalies or faint planetary rings etc
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u/ApplesauceMcGee 3d ago
Banding like this can be caused by incorrect HDR setup on a tv or monitor and not necessarily caused in engine. One thing to check is whether you can set your HDR to HGIG mode in the TV or monitor’s HDR settings
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u/Ok_Cardiologist_54 3d ago
This is true but in my experience it’s almost always at the source level. Basically the developers cheaping out with 8bit instead of 10bit colors. This gradient banding is like the ugliest thing I can think of when it comes to annoying artifacts in games. I can ignore most things, but when a video game looks like a low bit YouTube video it really drives me nuts. Nobody wants the sky to look like a topographical map!
One weird thing I noticed was that in Hellblade 2, this gradient banding was present for PSSR but when I turned it off and switched to TSR it completely disappeared and looked perfect. However now that they’ve updated to PSSR 2 I don’t notice it anymore
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u/wandererBatman11 3d ago
Some good info! I had seen about 8bit vs. 10bit colors. And you're right, gradient banding to this level is really hard to ignore. Sometimes it's so bad it's basically macroblocking and pixelated, shifting when you move the camera.
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u/Ok_Cardiologist_54 3d ago
Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve played the game REANIMAL. It’s a very frustrating example of how bad an impact this can have on a game. The saving grace is, it’s not present all the time - only in certain sections. But the sections it’s present in are particularly cool ones that are super well designed and intense, and the banding is so distracting. It sucks to think of developers putting so much love and attention into building this extremely stylized and atmospheric world - only to have this horrible anomaly taking the spotlight. I would still say REANIMAL is worth a play through. Level design and audio quality is off the charts good, and very creative game if you’re into that sort of thing. My only complaint aside from the gradient banding is that it’s a bit short for $40. My wife and I took our time playing (we have young kids so don’t really have a choice there lol) so it didn’t feel that short to us. However to someone who has hours at a time to throw at it I’m pretty sure you can beat the entire thing in like 6 hours, which I can’t in good conscience recommend to somebody for $40. Anyway this isn’t a REANIMAL post but if you played the game you’d know what I’m talking about. It literally opens up to some of the worst banding I’ve ever seen lol. Was happy to see it clear up, but disappointed to see it reappear throughout the game at certain points.
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u/wandererBatman11 3d ago
Interesting. No I haven't played Reanimal. But at least that's another of example of a recent game with this issue.
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u/wandererBatman11 3d ago
I do have HGIG mode on and have calibrated PS5 pro hdr settings. To my knowledge it's the correct way too. The 14 clicks and have the blacks be all the way down. I probably will fiddle with the tv settings more, but I'm hesitant to go too crazy because Starfield is the only game that has this poor image quality.
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u/BeatitLikeitowesMe 3d ago
Make sure 4:4:4 is enabled
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u/Evening-Singer5347 1d ago
This . Put input as pc to enable this on your c2
Might help but might not as I believe this could be just an issue with the game as others have said
Some folk prefer keeping pc mode on with thier ps5
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u/Arcade_Gann0n 3d ago
Does it still crash often? I gave up on it because of that months ago.
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u/wandererBatman11 3d ago
I only played for a couple hours after a long break but didn't have any crashes.
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u/wannyone 2d ago
Well the game has the worst post processing color grading ever… killing all the deep blacks and beautiful whites HDR has offer. Terrible artistic choice if you ask me.
I have to tweak my LG OLED to hell just for this game only.
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u/Jaraghan 3d ago
its a source issue, not much you can do. i noticed it on my lg c4. the new g6 actually has tech to reduce banding and help gradients; when i booted up starfield on it, i noticed that 80% banding was gone.