LogInIt's common practice in game development.
Image credit: Bethesda, thelastfastbender
You know those cartoons where a character is followed by a cloud above their head when they're blue? Well, Starfield is not so different, apparently. As some players noticed while toying with the photo mode, rain exists only around you in the game, and everything else is fine and dry.
However, "fake" rain is not some kind of Bethesda-exclusive workaround but a popular technique used by many game developers, although usually, they stick it to the camera, not the character.
Thomas Francis, the lead visual effects artist at the Darkest Dungeon studio Red Hook, told Polygon that this trick is used to optimize performance "by not rendering every rain drop, only what is important in front of the camera."
“The technique can also be used for snow, wind, leaves falling, dust,” he said. “All sorts of environmental visual effects.”
Image credit: Bethesda
Iron Lung's creator David Szymanski shared that rain is usually made with a particle system, which requires plenty of processing power to have so many raindrops on screen. “If you tweak the size and number of raindrops right, you can have a relatively small area that’s actually ‘raining’ but still looks like a torrential downpour from the player’s perspective."
3D environment artist Karl Schecht noted that what you see on screen is often different from what is behind it, and this screenshot from Starfield demonstrates it well.
“You see, everything in a videogame, whether it’s lighting, reflections, weather stuff, and scenery are all part of a built system. They’re set up to look and feel real, but also to run smoothly on your console or PC. Let’s take the rain in Starfield as an example. Whether you’re in first or third person, the rain looks solid. But switch to photo mode, zoom out, and you’ll see the rain is actually a small particle system, about 3x3 meters, that hangs out above your character.”
The fact that it doesn't rain everywhere in the game is not that surprising if you think about the costs of this effect. If rain wasn't tied to the camera or characters, it would probably be harder to find a smooth sailing game.
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