Modder finally adds full seamless planetary landing to Starfield in the spirit of No Man's Sky

A Starfield fan has released a long-awaited update to a mod that removes one of the most annoying features of the Bethesda game. Players can now enter and leave the atmosphere of any planet without a loading screen.

User Frederik Wessberg posted a YouTube video showing off seamless landings akin to No Man's Sky. For Starfield, it's a major change to core gameplay, since players have long complained about the abundance of immersion-breaking loading screens.

In the description under the video, Wessberg went into detail about the work, which took roughly six months. He spent that time rebuilding the planet-rendering technology on Creation Engine 2 to get rid of loading screens entirely. The game has an active modding community that keeps trying to improve Bethesda's space sim.

The mod supports both manual flight and autopilot. Players can move freely around the ship's interior while it lands on its own, something impossible in vanilla Starfield. Ships can also touch down directly on ocean surfaces, whereas the base game only allowed landings on pre-selected tiles.

Like No Man's Sky, the mod adds atmospheric effects for a realistic entry, including heat-shield burn, ash effects, and atmospheric scattering built on actual planet composition data. Wessberg also overhauled the 2D planet rendering in Starfield and implemented 3D space-to-surface rendering from scratch.

Despite the criticism the game has drawn from the community, Wessberg praised its technical foundation, calling Starfield "amazingly physically accurate, and in many ways a true space simulator." The depth and complexity of its systems never truly reach the player, he added, because of loading screens and traversal limitations. He was able to "leverage" the engine's hidden capabilities to get the mod working.

Other space sims like No Man's Sky and Star Citizen build their core loops around real-time atmospheric entry. Against that backdrop, Starfield drew fan ire when it launched in 2023 for its segmented fast-travel system and limited player freedom. The game felt dated from day one.

Players are taking the future of the game into their own hands with big user mods like Wessberg's. Bethesda previously cited engine stability and object persistence problems as the reason for loading screens between space and planets. The mod shows that Creation Engine 2 can be stretched much further.

Wessberg's work has won plenty of praise online. Many commenters under the video thank him and urge Bethesda to hire him. The project is still a work in progress and is only available on PC through the Starfield Script Extender.