Say farewell to Starfield's cockamamie distance measurements with a mod that replaces astronomical units with light years

pcgamer.com:

Have you ever thought to yourself, boy, I sure do wish the Starfield HUD displayed interstellar distances in light years instead of astronomical units? If your answer to this question is «yes,» then it might be time to take a break and go outside for a while. Or, instead, you could download this extremely purpose-specific Starfield mod called, quite simply, See Distances in Light Years.

«Does what it says on the tin,» the mod description states. «Makes your ship's HUD display interstellar distances in light years (LY) instead of astronomical units (AU). Also increases the maximum light second (LS) value from 50,000 to 500,000. If anything is further than that, distance will start being measured at 0.02 LY.»

Developer Deebz96 said they created the mod because they «found AU illegible for these sort of distances,» and that the light year measure «is much easier to interpret at a glance, especially if you are used to other space games.» I found that complaint a little odd at first: To my mind, space games are mostly just made-up nonsense anyway (even the «realistic» ones), so who cares if one incomprehensible unit of measurement is swapped with another?

But apparently I'm a bit like an American dealing with the metric system in that regard, as a quick trip around to Reddit reveals that this is in fact an aspect of the game some players genuinely don't care for. Some of that seems to be related to a general lack of familiarity with what an astronomical unit actually is (it's the distance from Earth to the sun, for the record), but there's also the fact that AU measurements can get really big when you're dealing with interstellar distances.

«Astronomers rather tend to use LS (light second) units within a planetary system (or LD — lunar distance in case of NEOs — near-Earth objects), AU units regarding things that are within a solar system, and lightyears regarding stuff that are further away,» redditor Racehorse88 explained in September 2023, shortly after Starfield