No Man’s Sky is getting a major recent Worlds update that gives the space sim’s gazillions of planets a grand overhaul, using tech developed for fantasy sim Light No Fire, which only has one planet, albeit one that’s “literally the size of Earth” with dragons. Watch the detailed Worlds update trailer below.
The Worlds update introduces water features that boast ripples, foam, and reflections, clouds that form and disintegrate in real time, and weather effects like rolling fog, rain, and snowstorms—all sculpted by a revised wind system. The skies have more colors, ice worlds boast more shimmering glaciers, and deserts have more diverse vegetation. They’ve also improved the lighting so that objects from trees to clouds cast shadows relative to the sun’s position.
Glossy ambient flourishes aside, the update introduces recent solar ships, aka space sailboats, the possibility of clever walking homes on weirder planets, and a slew of recent creatures to the menagerie. “We want to do things that people haven’t seen before,” explains studio head Sean Murray in the release, adding grandly, “and of course, all of these new creatures can be pets and mounts.” The Worlds update also introduces a recent Expedition, featuring a flamethrower mech and “inspired by Starship Troopers”—something I suspect also owes to the recent popularity of a certain team-based democratic management game.
The update also brings several performance improvements. “The rendering of environmental objects such as trees, rocks, and grass have been moved to a GPU-based system, allowing for denser worlds with improved performance,” he explains full list of changes“Planetary flora, minerals, and oddities have a higher level of detail from longer distances and a wider range of angles. Terrain generation has been rewritten to include the Dual Marching Cubes voxel mesh, increasing loading speeds, improving frame rates, and saving memory.”
There’s a lot more in this jump, including details of recent cosmetics and underwater bases, but beware that the patch notes are an absolute avalanche of auto-playing videos. My laptop started hyperventilating when I tried to scroll all the way to the bottom.
“Six months ago, we announced Light No Fire,” Murray says in a press release. “It’s an incredibly ambitious game. We’ve learned a lot over the last five years of development, and we’re bringing that to No Man’s Sky. It feels like we’re bringing back technology from the future!” If you want to learn more about Light No Fire, Hello invited me to check it out a few months ago. Personally, I’m a huge fan of kingfishers.