Updates

• 29/09/23: Now checks the player is in 1st person before removing the chameleon effect. Also removed a macro.
  

This is a "bug" that predates Starfield itself by quite some years. Since Fallout 4 it's been almost impossible to use a weapon with iron sights or reflex sights while wearing armor that has the chameleon effect, and in Starfield this also applies to the higher ranks of the Concealment skill; your weapon and its sights become invisible, forcing you to either guess where you're shooting or switch to third person to get your reticle back.

The fixes for previous games have relied on Creation Kit mods or console commands that no longer work, but I've managed to find a workaround which (with some caveats) is I think worth sharing, and is certainly better than trying to shoot blindly or giving up on chameleon items altogether. Here it is in action:



What this is doing is binding a command to a key/button of your choice to remove the visual effect, while also activating aim down sights mode. If your weapon is holstered, it will unholster it first, just like the default key for secondary attack does. There are some limitations to work around however. I cannot see a way in the console to check if the player is currently aiming down sights (the commands to do that seem to be papyrus only) so I cannot make this a true toggle like the regular button is. You will still need to use your existing secondary attack key to exit aim down sights mode. There is also, as you can see in the video, a slight delay before the chameleon effect disappears.

However there may also be advantages to doing this as a simple console hotkey too, the Fallout 4 mods to remove the effect sometimes had unintended consequences. This shouldn't cause any problems. For one it only affects the visual effect, your stealth isn't harmed as a result of removing it.

As with all other "mods" here that use hotkeys you'll need to make/modify your StarfieldCustom.ini, as well as your hotkey ini (StarfieldConsole.ini unless you've installed another mod that changes it to something else) and these both go in your Documents\My Games\Starfield folder. I've uploaded both of those files here, although you'll probably want to merge them with your own rather than overwriting. For anyone who doesn't want to download a file just to see some console commands here they are, I have mine set to mouse button 3 but you can bind it to any valid keybind that you've not defined in-game:

[Hotkeys]
Mouse3=if player.isPC1stPerson == 1; player.sme 19AFF2; endif; if player.isWeaponOut < 2; player.pa 132AF; endif; player.pa 4A57

If for some reason you wanted to bind a hotkey to toggle off aim down sights mode rather than just using your secondary attack key, player.pa 4A58 is the command for that. If anyone knows a way to tell in the console if the player is currently aiming down sights, please let me know so I can improve on this.