Starfield HD Reworked Project 1.0 is out now, and it improves a lot of textures dramatically

True to his word, it only took famed designer Halk Hogan two weeks to release the first version of the Starfield HD Reworked Project after it was announced.

Like CD Projekt RED’s mods for The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, the Starfield HD Reworked project aims to improve the game’s architecture without affecting performance. In fact, the modder believes that any graphics card with 6GB or more of VRAM should not lose any frame rate. The download is also lightweight, weighing in at less than 600MB.

This initial release focuses on the various environmental textures in and outside of cities (some rocks, walls, floors, terrain, and more), the NPC crowd, and some fire effects. As you can see in the video comparison below, the difference can sometimes be startling.

It goes without saying that the mode will be updated to improve more game textures in the future.

The only downside is that Halk Hogan hasn’t compressed textures to .ba2 format yet, which can lead to occasional loading hiccups. The modder says that a .ba2 version will be available at a later date.

To manually install Starfield HD Reworked Project, follow these simple instructions:

1. Download the main file, unzip it, move the data folder to C:\Users\%userprofile%\Documents\My Games\Starfield\ and bypass it.

2. Enable Archive Invalidation by adding the following lines to your StarfieldCustom.ini file:

[Archive]
bInvalidateOlderFiles=1
sResourceDataDirsFinal=

You can also install mods using a Mod Manager like Vortex.

Halk Hogan’s Starfield HD Reworked Project is the latest evidence of the thriving modding community for Bethesda’s new sci-fi RPG. In just two weeks, nearly 15 million mods have been downloaded via Nexus, exceeding the total downloads of Mods for FromSoftware’s Elden Ring, which launched a year and a half ago. And that’s without the official modding tools, which Bethesda will release to the public sometime in early 2024.

For more great Starfield mods and modifications, check out this best list.