A work-in-progress PC mod called Seamless Landings is designed to carry Starfield‘s approach from space to a planet’s surface without the usual loading-screen break. In the base game, players select a landing zone rather than piloting through the atmosphere and touching down themselves. Seamless Landings is not an official Bethesda feature.
Surface assets load in the background while the player can still interact with the game. Frederik Wessberg explains that clouds in the transition do not hide a loading screen. They help align lighting, exposure, and terrain color at the final cell switch, with the view changing once the assets are ready. Airless moons and planets skip the cloud veil and use additional exposure matching instead, since the lighting changes less between the two views. Wessberg’s explanation of the transition adds detail to what the teaser shows.
Wessberg has worked on the project for roughly six months. It replaces the game’s 2D planetary rendering with a 3D approach, keeping planets detailed and sharp at every altitude. The rendering draws on biome data and exact surface maps, including climate and atmospheric composition, and accounts for each planet’s orbital phase, distance from the sun, and light from orbiting moons. Atmospheric scattering during entry is based on each planet’s composition data. Heat-shield effects add a glow during re-entry and leave ash on the ship’s hull.
Players will be able to pilot the ship manually or hand the descent to autopilot. While autopilot handles the approach, they can move around the ship’s interior. The mod is also designed to allow water landings instead of limiting ships to preselected landing areas.
Planned atmospheric features include volumetric clouds driven by climate data and weather systems, along with thunderstorms, lightning, polar auroras, and airglow above the night-side horizon. Terrain and cloud shadows are designed to stretch across the globe, while city lights will appear at points of interest. Biomes, oceans, and snowcaps are also planned, alongside live cockpit monitoring and new ship HUD elements that provide information during descent.
Seamless Landings follows Wessberg’s Seamless Grav Jumps and Seamless Planet Takeoffs mods. The addition of cruise mode in Starfield‘s Free Lanes update made the remaining gap between orbit and a landing stand out to him.
Seamless Landings remains in development and requires Starfield Script Extender. Wessberg plans to release it for free on Nexus Mods when it is ready.
What detail would you most want to see during a seamless descent in Starfield? Follow the mod’s progress toward its planned release, and other Starfield developments, through X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.
Starfield
Developed by Bethesda Game Studios
Starfield is a single-player action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and set in an open-world space environment. Players create a customizable character and explore a region of the Milky Way galaxy spanning approximately 50 light-years, landing on over 1,000 planets with procedurally generated landscapes. Gameplay includes first-person and third-person combat using firearms, explosives, and melee weapons, as well as spaceship construction, outpost building, resource gathering, and crafting. Players recruit companion characters, join factions, and progress through skill trees spanning Physical, Social, Combat, Science, and Tech categories.
- Genre Shooter, Role-playing (RPG), Adventure
- Platforms Xbox Series X|S, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5
- Perspective First person, Third person
- Modes Single player
- Release September 6, 2023
- Publisher Bethesda Softworks
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