A $5 Starfield mod to enable DLSS Frame Generation has been cracked to remove modder's DRM

The good thing about mixing money with mods is it encourages long term support. Of course, not guaranteed, but I have first hand experience (7+ years both in and outside of monetized modding team) that it's one helluva incentive to keep mods up-to-date at a bare minimum.. Anyone above a casual familiarity with mods in games such as TES, Fallout, Total War, and such can recall at least one instance where a beloved mod was broken by an official patch, but the modder was no where to be found. That's not to say there aren't devoted people who will do this stuff for free into perpetuity, but I personally couldn't be fucked to carve out time in my busy schedule to hand out freebies for games I'm no longer playing.
 
IcePickFreak said:
Well it's no surprise they're not going to OK or encourage a mod that adds features for the competitor of their game partner, not that this is even a traditional mod in the first place. Don't forget Skyrim had paid mods that was set-up by Bethesda with the creation club though, but people freaked out so they canned it. Also, there is no shortage of free mods in flight sims even with paid mods that can cost the same or more than the sim itself. There's even free ones that do a better job at a given feature than the paid ones.

Either way, it still doesn't make it any less amusing when the sentiment is someone asking for money for their work is greedy, and people expecting for others to provide work for free isn't. The person doing the work should be able to decide if they want to do it for free or not, and the people who want the benefits of that work can decide if they want to pay for it or not - or you know, do the work yourself. Seems pretty simple.
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The Creation club was a disaster beyond the flack they received for it. The bottom line is that they couldn't compete with the free mods and didn't sell enough to be worth their while but another major reason was all of the plagiarism going on became too hard for them to police.

I may also be misremembering or thinking of a different comment but the one I recall seeing in this thread was not claiming that it was greedy to charge for a mod but that charging for mods changes the reason many are created to primarily being about the money which introduces greedy individuals. This leads to issues like the widespread plagiarism mentioned before and people selling broken or garbage mods based on lies and marketing fluff(also a problem with CC) that I'd rather not have to wade through, it's hard enough figuring out which mods are broken or bad without creating financial incentive for fake positive reviews.
 
GoodBoy said:
Why do we have a thread advocating for software piracy because "it's a mod and all must be free!!"??
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I'm not sure what the modder was doing was following any licensing agreements regarding DLSS but I'll let others expand there. Superficially sounds like someone did something in a gray area to begin with. Morally OTOH due to considerations of a modder's time/effort then people will differ in opinions.
 
Flogger23m said:
And there options for just using DLSS up-scaling or just using frame generation?
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Sure. Keep in mind that because these are mods that translate FSR2 to DLSS. So your actually turning on FSR2 in game, and the mods makes it use DLSS instead.

For just DLSS - You would just install the mod as normal and press the button to turn on/off Frame Generation (Think it's F12 to turn it on/off with LukeFZ's mod)
For just Frame Generation - You would turn on DLSS, but set the render scale to 100% for what is then DLAA and then press the same key to turn it on/off

DLSS/DLAA has to be enabled for the FrameGeneration to work as it feeds off the same information to prefect the interpolated frames. Plus the games built in TAA is absolute garbage and you wouldn't want to use it anyway.
 
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Also worth noting though, that DLSS support is now officially confirmed to be coming.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1716740/view/3687940304703443230

Starfield Updates and Mod Support – September 13, 2023
First, an enormous thank you to all of you playing Starfield and your support. We are absolutely blown away by the response and all you love about the game. We’re also reading all your great feedback on what you’d like to see improved or added to the game. This is a game we’ll be supporting for years and years to come, so please keep all the feedback coming! Even if we don’t get to your requests immediately, we’d love to do it in the future, like city maps. Our priority initially is making sure any top blocker bugs or stability issues are addressed, and adding quality-of-life features that many are asking for.

This first update is a small hotfix targeted at the few top issues were are seeing. After that, expect a regular interval of updates that have top community requested features including:
  • Brightness and Contrast controls
  • HDR Calibration Menu
  • FOV Slider
  • Nvidia DLSS Support (PC)
  • 32:9 Ultrawide Monitor Support (PC)
  • Eat button for food!
We’re also working closely with Nvidia, AMD, and Intel on driver support, and each update will include new stability and performance improvements.

Additionally, we are working on our built-in mod support (Creations) that will work across all platforms similar to what we’ve done with Skyrim and Fallout 4. This full support is planned to launch early next year. Until then, we know our PC community is already very active in the modding space and if you have any feedback on how we can make this better, please let us know . Modding and creating in our games will always be a vital and important part of who we are, and we love seeing the community get off to such a strong start.

Keep the feedback coming, we really do read it all, and thank you all again for taking this journey with us!

Bethesda Game Studios
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So if your not jonesing to play right now. You can just wait and it is going to officially integrated.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Nah. We can’t believe that post. AMD paid to not have DLSS. Doesn’t match the narrative.
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Maybe they did at launch. Got evidence they didn't? It sure seems like they may have. Regardless, it's welcome news that dlss is coming officially. Question now is will it include frame generation or just upscaling?
 
GoldenTiger said:
Maybe they did at launch. Got evidence they didn't? It sure seems like they may have. Regardless, it's welcome news that dlss is coming officially. Question now is will it include frame generation or just upscaling?
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AMD could also have changed some policy of theirs internally. Jedi Survivor and Starfield both adding DLSS around the same time may point to AMD telling developers they can implement DLSS now behind the scenes, but I kind of doubt it. Maybe there is just a lot of backlash. For Starfield Nvidia cards seem to perform poorer than they typically do, so I can see a lot of people wanting official DLSS support.

The good news is they seem to be responsive with updates/patches.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
No evidence was necessary to say they did. No difference. We should ignore this patch, its fake news.
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The Frank Azor quote from a few weeks ago raised a few eyebrows if nothing else:

He admits that — in general — when AMD pays publishers to bundle their games with a new graphics card, AMD does expect them to prioritize AMD features in return. “Money absolutely exchanges hands,” he says. “When we do bundles, we ask them: ‘Are you willing to prioritize FSR?’”
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https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/22372077/amd-starfield-dlss-fsr-exclusive-frank-azor

My read is BGS left out DLSS in the spirit of the partnership with AMD, but may have underestimated the backlash to the omission, and/or how much the omission of DLSS would hold their game back on Nvidia GPUs. Telemetry data they see on in-game settings may also be factoring into their timing on patching in DLSS.

In other words the reality is more nuanced, and these absolutist arguments about narratives and proof of conspiracy (or lack of) are missing the mark. AMD's done nothing unusual or wrong regardless, and it wouldn't be the internet if not blown out of proportion.
 
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DPI said:
Let's go back to the Frank Azor quote from a few weeks ago, as it raised eyebrows if nothing else:


https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/25/22372077/amd-starfield-dlss-fsr-exclusive-frank-azor

My read is BGS left out DLSS in the spirit of the partnership with AMD, but may have underestimated the backlash to the omission, and/or how much the omission of DLSS would hold their game back on Nvidia GPUs. Telemetry data they see on in-game settings may also be factoring in the decision to patch DLSS in now.

In other words the reality is more nuanced, and these absolutist arguments about narratives and proof of conspiracy (or lack of) are missing the mark. AMD's done nothing unusual or wrong regardless.
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If you paid some one off, thats's permanent. So we know this patch is fake news.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Maybe they did at launch. Got evidence they didn't? It sure seems like they may have. Regardless, it's welcome news that dlss is coming officially. Question now is will it include frame generation or just upscaling?
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So you apply POV of "guilty unless proven otherwise" for AMD?
How about Baldur Gate 3 that has FSR 2 on the console but still no support on the PC platform?
Is it Nvidia doing the dirty work to block FSR 2 on the PC?

Now I want to ask, where is that "Maybe they did at launch" came from? a hunch? feeling? guessing? or hard fact?
 
GoldenTiger said:
Maybe they did at launch. Got evidence they didn't?
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Got any evidence they did? The whole problem will DLSS missing is that Nvidia fans assume it's AMD. Instead of assuming that DLSS does nothing for AMD and GTX owners, and frame generation is only for RTX 40 series owners. Nvidia is more at fault here than AMD.
It sure seems like they may have. Regardless, it's welcome news that dlss is coming officially.
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It's more likely that developers just didn't think it was a worthy feature to have a high priority. Starfield has been out for barely a month already and will now have DLSS, where Jedi Survivor took a few months.
riev90 said:
So you apply POV of "guilty unless proven otherwise" for AMD?
How about Baldur Gate 3 that has FSR 2 on the console but still no support on the PC platform?
Is it Nvidia doing the dirty work to block FSR 2 on the PC?

Now I want to ask, where is that "Maybe they did at launch" came from? a hunch? feeling? guessing? or hard fact?
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Baldur's Gate 3 has only FSR 1.0, so should we assume that Nvidia is being assholes since BG3 is an Nvidia sponsored title? Should we start talking about the FSR2 mod for Baldur's Gate 3? No wait, FSR2 will be added to the game sometime this month. No need for pitch forks and 5 threads about how Nvidia paid devs to only include FSR1.0.
 
A youtuber is now saying Nvidia pulled the money away from Gaming to use on AI, He says to have friends that work for Nvidia and they told him from inside the Horses Mouth! as why there was no Starfield development made by Nvidia and why the Hardware runs like trash!
 
crazycrave said:
A youtuber is now saying Nvidia pulled the money away from Gaming to use on AI, He says to have friends that work for Nvidia and they told him from inside the Horses Mouth! as why there was no Starfield development made by Nvidia and why the Hardware runs like trash!
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Well, if he heard it from a friend and it's on the Internet, it's probably true. I know all the best sources are speculations, friends, and hearsay :p
 
crazycrave said:
A youtuber is now saying Nvidia pulled the money away from Gaming to use on AI, He says to have friends that work for Nvidia and they told him from inside the Horses Mouth! as why there was no Starfield development made by Nvidia and why the Hardware runs like trash!
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Sounds like typical nonsense to get those clicks.

Why are you capitalizing random words?
 
DukenukemX said:
Got any evidence they did? The whole problem will DLSS missing is that Nvidia fans assume it's AMD. Instead of assuming that DLSS does nothing for AMD and GTX owners, and frame generation is only for RTX 40 series owners. Nvidia is more at fault here than AMD.

It's more likely that developers just didn't think it was a worthy feature to have a high priority. Starfield has been out for barely a month already and will now have DLSS, where Jedi Survivor took a few months.

Baldur's Gate 3 has only FSR 1.0, so should we assume that Nvidia is being assholes since BG3 is an Nvidia sponsored title? Should we start talking about the FSR2 mod for Baldur's Gate 3? No wait, FSR2 will be added to the game sometime this month. No need for pitch forks and 5 threads about how Nvidia paid devs to only include FSR1.0.
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FSR1 is part of the Nvidia toolkit for adding DLSS. The GPUOpen team does not let FSR2 get added to that kit, they have made their stance on that clear and not open for interpretation.

Nvidia would gladly add it because it has no downsides what so ever for them, it makes them look better in every light.
 
crazycrave said:
A youtuber is now saying Nvidia pulled the money away from Gaming to use on AI, He says to have friends that work for Nvidia and they told him from inside the Horses Mouth! as why there was no Starfield development made by Nvidia and why the Hardware runs like trash!
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Well I heard from the Microsoft guys that Starfield being their first major exclusive had so much riding on it that they couldn’t afford to let anything go amiss with the launch. So they laser focused that shit and only thought about PC once they had the console to a place they were happy with and didn’t involve Intel or Nvidia until about 2 weeks before the pre launch event.

They told me that while getting trashed on Fruli in a game of Jackbox so it’s way more true.
 
"Why do we have a thread advocating for software piracy because "

You have to be kidding. Everyone has or does. You will find something on there computer with them saying "what? I didn't know"

So the guy can charge what ever he wants. Its a SCAM. Just a way to sucker people. Some buy into it. You don't need it. There are others out there that work just as good and free.
 
Lakados said:
FSR1 is part of the Nvidia toolkit for adding DLSS. The GPUOpen team does not let FSR2 get added to that kit, they have made their stance on that clear and not open for interpretation.

Nvidia would gladly add it because it has no downsides what so ever for them, it makes them look better in every light.
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I can understand why. If Nvidia's toolkit was in charge of all forms of upscaling, would you trust Nvidia? Especially if the implementation is not done by the spec needed for FSR? I would rather trust Microsoft over Nvidia for dealing with all the available upscalers. At least Microsoft doesn't have a bias towards which upscaler gets preferential treatment.
Zeblade said:
So the guy can charge what ever he wants. Its a SCAM. Just a way to sucker people. Some buy into it. You don't need it. There are others out there that work just as good and free.
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How does someone sell DLL files not made by himself, not get into legal trouble by Nvidia? This is why mods should always be free, but you can ask for donations for your work. I did say that Starfield would eventually get DLSS, just as Jedi Survivor did. Now everyone yet again who paid for this DLSS mod is out of money, for a feature that did eventually get included into the game.
 
DukenukemX said:
How does someone sell DLL files not made by himself, not get into legal trouble by Nvidia? This is why mods should always be free, but you can ask for donations for your work. I did say that Starfield would eventually get DLSS, just as Jedi Survivor did. Now everyone yet again who paid for this DLSS mod is out of money, for a feature that did eventually get included into the game.
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He's not selling the DLL. He's selling the work he did to add the code to make it work to this game.
For some, having the feature available before the developer gets around to adding it is worth the cost of a pumpkin spice latte.
 
Zeblade said:
"Why do we have a thread advocating for software piracy because "

You have to be kidding. Everyone has or does. You will find something on there computer with them saying "what? I didn't know"

So the guy can charge what ever he wants. Its a SCAM. Just a way to sucker people. Some buy into it. You don't need it. There are others out there that work just as good and free.
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It's beta software. The Patreon payment supports his work. He always releases his mods for free after they reach stable status. Just look at the frame gen mod for RDR2. Early access to developmental builds is just a perk for supporters. It is not a scam by any means. He doesn't have a monopoly on DLSS mods, as shown by the other version that is available for Starfield.
 
Armenius said:
It's beta software. The Patreon payment supports his work. He always releases his mods for free after they reach stable status. Just look at the frame gen mod for RDR2. Early access to developmental builds is just a perk for supporters. It is not a scam by any means. He doesn't have a monopoly on DLSS mods, as shown by the other version that is available for Starfield.
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Ah. This changes things. I feel like someone should've mentioned this earlier.

This is like Sonic Ether's RT mod for Minecraft (actually path traced, so it worked on anything, not just nVIdia cards). He'd release checkpoint "stable" builds periodically but if you wanted the latest you had to join his Patreon.
 
OutOfPhase said:
He's not selling the DLL. He's selling the work he did to add the code to make it work to this game.
For some, having the feature available before the developer gets around to adding it is worth the cost of a pumpkin spice latte.
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This is why it seems that Nvidia users want preferential treatment when it comes to features that are exclusive to their hardware. Now you're out of a pumpkin spice latte.
Armenius said:
It's beta software. The Patreon payment supports his work. He always releases his mods for free after they reach stable status. Just look at the frame gen mod for RDR2. Early access to developmental builds is just a perk for supporters. It is not a scam by any means. He doesn't have a monopoly on DLSS mods, as shown by the other version that is available for Starfield.
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You know who also did this? CEMU and Yuzu emulator authors. Except that emulators are technical never stable, so they eventually release it outside of Patreon supporters when they felt like it. They're upset that someone like pineappleEA is actually compiling the code and releasing what Patreon supporters get, for free. It's still a dick move, especially because Starfield will now get proper working DLSS where as this mod was indeed buggy. Kinda pointless to praise the modder for releasing his mods for free, when the games do eventually get DLSS. You're giving him brownie points for nothing. You guys had a month to play Starfield with a buggy implementation of DLSS. You got scammed.
 
Lakados said:
FSR1 is part of the Nvidia toolkit for adding DLSS. The GPUOpen team does not let FSR2 get added to that kit, they have made their stance on that clear and not open for interpretation.

Nvidia would gladly add it because it has no downsides what so ever for them, it makes them look better in every light.
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It's open source there's nothing stopping Nvidia from adding it themselves. What nVidia wants is AMD to bless the SDK which if I was in AMD's shoes I wouldn't either.
 
kac77 said:
It's open source there's nothing stopping Nvidia from adding it themselves. What nVidia wants is AMD to bless the SDK which if I was in AMD's shoes I wouldn't either.
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OpenSource doesn’t always mean you can just take the code and go with it. There are different types of licenses around it. Especially when talking about corporate entities.

GPUOpen’s team leaders have said publicly and on camera that as long as DLSS is closed source they will do everything they can to ensure that FSR and DLSS do not coexist in the same development package. So FSR 2 and up will be blocked from Streamline and DLSS will be blocked from GPUOpen.

But ultimately FSR is released under an MIT license and that has a catch.
the MIT License also permits reuse within proprietary software, provided that all copies of the software or its substantial portions include a copy of the terms of the MIT License and also a copyright notice.
The bulk of DLSS's implementation does not have an MIT license, should Nvidia port it into Streamline it would be a very easy argument that the significant portions of Streamline, being DLSS's implementation are not released under an MIT license and therefore violate the license.

So ultimately while the actual functionality of DLSS is closed, AMD and the GPUOpen project have a very real and easy method for blocking it's integration.
 
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Lakados said:
OpenSource doesn’t always mean you can just take the code and go with it. There are different types of licenses around it. Especially when talking about corporate entities.

GPUOpen’s team leaders have said publicly and on camera that as long as DLSS is closed source they will do everything they can to ensure that FSR and DLSS do not coexist in the same development package. So FSR 2 and up will be blocked from Streamline and DLSS will be blocked from GPUOpen.

But ultimately FSR is released under an MIT license and that has a catch.
the MIT License also permits reuse within proprietary software, provided that all copies of the software or its substantial portions include a copy of the terms of the MIT License and also a copyright notice.
The bulk of DLSS's implementation does not have an MIT license, should Nvidia port it into Streamline it would be a very easy argument that the significant portions of Streamline, being DLSS's implementation are not released under an MIT license and therefore violate the license.

So ultimately while the actual functionality of DLSS is closed, AMD and the GPUOpen project have a very real and easy method for blocking it's integration.
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Except FSR 1.0 is also under the same license, which Streamline includes. So I doubt there would be a problem with FSR 2. MIT license allows you to use the software even when it's connected to proprietary works (which is all games).
 
kac77 said:
Except FSR 1.0 is also under the same license, which Streamline includes. So I doubt there would be a problem with FSR 2. MIT license allows you to use the software even when it's connected to proprietary works (which is all games).
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But not Streamline itself, there is a difference between them both being in a game and them both being in the same toolkit.

I know Nicolas Thibieroz discussed keeping FSR 2 out of Streamline specifically during XBox Connect back in 2022. So I suppose Nvidia could do it blindly, but AMD won't assist at all and neither will anybody on the GPUOpen project.
 
Lakados said:
But not Streamline itself, there is a difference between them both being in a game and them both being in the same toolkit.
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The MIT license that AMD Is using makes no distinction. Really the only requirement is to display the MIT licensing agreement, and give credit to AMD even for altered FSR implementations (which people are free to do), and include all logos tied to the licensed work.
Lakados said:
I know Nicolas Thibieroz discussed keeping FSR 2 out of Streamline specifically during XBox Connect back in 2022. So I suppose Nvidia could do it blindly, but AMD won't assist at all and neither will anybody on the GPUOpen project.
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Probably in relation to Microsoft's wishes. Nvidia has burned A LOT of bridges Microsoft in particular... also Sony.

Look at what Microsoft is doing for AI. It literally decided to start work on it's own AI chip in order to get off the nVidia hardware they are using now. That's not cheap to do. Not at all. They are literally willing to build out an entire ecosystem to get away from them. That takes billions with a capital B.
 
kac77 said:
The MIT license that AMD Is using makes no distinction. Really the only requirement is to display the MIT licensing agreement, and give credit to AMD even for altered FSR implementations (which people are free to do), and include all logos tied to the licensed work.

Probably in relation to Microsoft's wishes. Nvidia has burned A LOT of bridges Microsoft in particular... also Sony.

Look at what Microsoft is doing for AI. It literally decided to start work on it's own AI chip in order to get off the nVidia hardware they are using now. That's not cheap to do. Not at all. They are literally willing to build out an entire ecosystem to get away from them. That takes billions with a capital B.
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Microsoft and Nvidia are fine, they are working on AI just as everybody is now because it’s a multi-billion dollar growth market. Nvidia and Sony are currently working on big projects together for their entertainment division. Sony wants in on their Digital Stages.
Replace 2 board members or one CEO and you have a whole new company with all new grudges. The Microsoft-Nvidia beef was 2 CEO’s and a few dozen board members back. They make too much money together for there to be a beef.
But Microsoft would have to be beyond stupid if they sat on their asses and let AI pass them buy, it’s primarily a software thing and Software is Microsoft’s game, the hardware should be secondary.

I was under the impression that MIT licenses could be challenged if the “significant portion” of the target code wasn’t also under an MIT license.

But that may not be how it works.

But Microsoft still buys craploads of Nvidia cards and it won’t stop any time soon.
Hell Nvidia buys accelerator cards from other vendors to fill in their performance gaps in their datacenter’s.

I’ve worked with both companies in my years, and you can’t attribute human qualities to them no matter how many votes their money might buy.
 
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