Hello Games has been working on something big for its next update to sci-fi universe No Man’s Sky. Previously announcing that the title would be coming to Xbox Game Pass, the studio has now confirmed that the Windows 10 version of the videogame will also be Game Pass compatible. What has this to do with virtual reality (VR)? Well, Hello Games want’s to create one big universal family, so it’ll be rolling out cross-platform multiplayer.
That right, from tomorrow no matter which platform you’re playing No Man’s Sky on, you’ll be able to meet up with mates. Using a PlayStation VR and your friend has an Oculus Rift, that shouldn’t be an issue.
“We are excited to be able to announce that, starting tomorrow, PlayStation 4 players, Xbox One players and PC players will all be able to explore, journey, survive, build, and trade together. Excitingly, No Man’s Sky is joining what is at the moment a fairly small group of games which support cross-platform multiplayer,” says a Hello Games blog post.
The studio notes some of the key features when it comes to the cross-platform multiplayer and the friend’s system:
Replaced the entire network backend, so that players can now make multiplayer connections across all platforms.
Ambient multiplayer on the Space Anomaly, in space, or on planets, can now match you with players from any platform.
When face-to-face with another player, a quick interaction has been added to smoothly create a new group or invite new players to your existing group.
No Man’s Sky Friends can also be added at any time by means of a unique code.
Alongside all of that here are the VR specific improvements and bug fixes arriving in the update:
Upgraded the OpenVR implementation to 1.10.30.
Cockpit exit handles can now be grabbed both ways up.
Added an option to show the player’s body when playing in VR.
Camera height now reflects the height of your character in VR.
Improved the accuracy of hand tracking in VR.
While No Man’s Sky has been available since 2016 it wasn’t until last summer that Hello Games released No Man’s Sky: Beyond, adding VR support in the process.
This new update arrives tomorrow, Thursday 11th June. For further No Man’s Sky announcements, keep reading VRFocus.
No Man’s Sky (2016) has been on a roll lately with its continuous updates ever since its big ‘Beyond’ refresh in Summer 2019, which brought along with it VR support for PS4 and PC versions of the game. Now, developers Hello Games have released its ‘Living Ship’ update, which brings the first new starship since ‘Atlas Rises’, it’s 1.3 update released in 2017.
Hello Games founder Sean Murray says in a Steam blog post that the update presents a new series of missions that takes players through the ancient Korvax experiments that led to the birth of the ship-like interstellar beings. Starting today, players will be able to incubate, grow, and fly their own living ship by visiting the Space Anomaly and following “the call of the Void Egg.”
Here’s Murray’s description of the new living ships:
These beautiful, organic, slightly psychedelic ships are uniquely grown (and, as with everything in the No Man’s Sky universe, procedurally-generated).They can’t be upgraded in the same way as a traditional ship: each one is individually hatched, with a unique set of internal organs that determines its abilities. If you want a fast hyperdrive, you’ll need to nurture the right sort of life within your ship…
As much attention has been given to the interior of the ships as the exterior. Void ships house you within strange, organic cockpits, requiring players to fly their ship by grasping vein-covered tendrils. It looks and feels suitably unsettling to fly in VR!
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Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
Image courtesy Hello Games
The Living Ship update also includes new discoverables such as “new space encounters to the off-planet experience,” the studio says, as well as “[s]trange new lifeforms and mysterious objects [awaiting] between the planets, bringing more variety and unique experiences to space travel.”
Furthermore, Murray reveals that this January has seen more players than any previous year. In-keeping with its more regular updates, Murray also calls this update “hopefully the first of many in 2020.”
The Living Ship update comes hot on the heels of the ‘Bytebeat’ update in December and the ‘Synthesis’ update in November, which brought with it VR creature riding, VR photo taking, and a number of quality of life updates.
The road toUploadVR’s Best of 2019 awards starts here! Every weekday for the next fortnight, we’ll be revealing one of the ten nominees for our Overall VR Game/Experience of the Year, counting down to the reveal of our full list of categories and nominees later in December. Today we’re looking at the limitless possibilities and breadth of content offered in No Man’s Sky, which received an ambitious VR patch earlier this year.
When No Man’s Sky first released as a timed-exclusive on the PlayStation 4 a few years ago, it had more hype than most AAA games. Once it arrived and gamers were met with bugs and missing features that had been promised, it didn’t take long for the sky to fall on Hello Games. But despite that, they persevered.
In the years since it has received a slew of massive updates and with the launch of No Man’s Sky Beyond, it got fully integrated VR support on top of a massive foundational overhaul and revamp of its multiplayer. It was like a brand new game.
If you listed out all of the things you can do in No Man’s Sky, while in VR, it would sound too good to be true. Explore an uncharted, procedurally generated, nearly infinite galaxy full of solar systems, planets, moons, space stations, and more? Check. Land on planets, drive across them in vehicles, and dig deep below the surface to uncover resources? Check. Build bases and outposts, wherever you want, across the galaxy? Of course. Engage in epic space combat against pirates and track down dangerous bounties? Definitely.
Oh and did I mention you can do all of that online, with your friends, and run into strangers as well? It’s a bit staggering. On top of it all there’s a loose narrative to follow about reaching the center of the galaxy and a brand new Nexus hub where you can meet up with others to embark on shared multiplayer missions or just hang out.
Being able to reach out with your hands and mine for minerals, control the ship with virtual joysticks, and shoot down enemies by actually aiming with your arms feels great. Meeting up with people on Planet Upload Centauri, building a bass, and going on adventures together are some of my favorite gaming memories of all-time, not just in VR and not just this year.
I have no doubt that Hello Games will continue to iterate, continue to improve, and continue to make sure that No Man’s Sky keeps evolving and getting even better and it’s already one of the best this year.
You can get No Man’s Sky on Steam for PC VR headsets or on PS4 with PSVR support. All versions are fully playable outside of VR as well on the same installation and same save files.
Having launched VR support for No Man’s Sky (2016) back in August, Hello Games is nearly ready to launch the latest update to the open-world sandbox game, which is slated to include a mess of community requested features and bug fixes for both VR and non-VR players.
Dubbed ‘Synthesis’, the update is slated to arrive tomorrow, November 28th, on all supported platforms including PSVR, SteamVR headsets, desktop, Xbox One, and PS4.
Hello Games’ studio head Sean Murray says in a PS blog post that while the list of changes is quite large in Synthesis, that the studio is working on something “even more impactful.” Just what that will be, we’re not sure.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s new in Synthesis:
VR Photo Mode: see an amazing vista in PS VR? Shoot it and share it.
VR Creature Riding: saddle up on your favorite pet in full Virtual Reality.
Starship Scrapping and Upgrading: trade in unwanted ships for valuable technologies or add inventory slots to your favourite starship, or spend nanites to upgrade its class.
First Person Exocraft: now available to non-VR and VR players alike.
Multiple Multi-Tools: added the ability for players to own more than one Multi-Tool. Purchased Multi-Tools will be added to the Quick Menu for easy swapping.
Terrain Editor Enhancements: flatten or restore terrain at the press of a button.
Personal Refiner: refine materials on the go, wherever you are.
Multiple Outfits: save a range of custom outfits to quick change into.
New Technologies: long-distance inventory management; mid-air jetpack recharging; emergency warping to flee from combat.
New Base Parts: square is good, triangle is better!
Starship Space Map Enhancements: improved quality and clarity of the visuals.
You can check out the full release notes here, which includes a comprehensive list addressing some VR specific bugs.
You’ll find No Man’s Sky on Steam (Vive, Index, Rift) and the PlayStation Store (PSVR). If you’re wondering whether or not to jump in, make sure to check out our deep dive review to find out why we gave it a [7.5/10].
When No Man’s Sky Beyond launched in August of this year it took the VR world by storm and Hello Games have quietly been toiling away at updates ever since. Now, the Synthesis Update, is the biggest one since Beyond essentially relaunched the game as a whole.
According to an email received from Tim Woodley, head of publishing at Hello Games, the No Man’s Sky Synthesis update includes nearly 300 different bug fixes and feature updates. It’s essentially an amalgamation of several improvements and changes that just hadn’t made their way into a previous update round yet.
“The Synthesis Update is our eighth major free chapter since launch,” says Woodley. “It’s a stepping stone on the way to much larger plans, but contains a lot of features fans are hungry for.”
While we weren’t provided with the full No Man’s Sky Synthesis patch notes prior to the embargo lifting, but they should be live here if you’re reading this. However, we did get a sneak peek at some of the biggest changes, according to Hello Games:
We’ve added some of our most requested smaller features. You can now upgrade your starship, or salvage ships for parts. Players can own and customise multiple Multi-Tools and create multiple characters in the customiser to switch between.
We’ve matched up features across VR and non-VR, so VR players can now ride creatures and take photos, and non-VR players can drive vehicles in first person. As well as a host of VR specific improvements based on feedback from players.
We’ve streamlined, sped up and clarified lots of inventory and UI issues, including a whole new space map and a Personal Refiner you can use directly from your inventory.
There are new technologies and base parts – we’re excited to see what players do with these, especially with the Featured Bases we recently introduced to show off the best the community comes up with.
We’ve overhauled and optimised the terrain manipulator, with new visual effects and new ways to carve your mark in the landscape. As well as undo functionality and the ability to make a permanent stamp on the world with your edits.
And there are literally hundreds (297 in all!) of other bug fixes / small features / bits of polish that lift and bind the game together.
Let us know what you think of the No Man’s Sky update down in the comments below!
Rejoice! Today’s update for No Man’s Sky Beyond drastically reduces the blur for PSVR players. But there are some strings attached.
As Hello Games previously promised, Update 1.12 for the game tackles some of the blurriness we first saw when the game launched last month. The visual hit was enough to make us score the PSVR version of the game slightly lower than the PC VR version (which also launched with its fair share of issues). Hello Games has been cranking away at constant updates since, though.
You can see the results of today’s update in the video we took above. Bear in mind this is directly captured from a standard PS4, though there’s no mention of official PS4 Pro support yet, either. It records in 720p, so the difference isn’t quite as pronounced as it is inside the headset itself.
Jumping into the PSVR version of the game with improved visuals feels like a breath of fresh air. Textures are much crisper, giving the world a much more polished feel and draw distances seem to be improved too. We’ll have a side-by-side video coming soon to help. But it’s not a perfect solution.
I tried Update 1.12 on two planets. The smaller of the two ran perfectly fine but, on the larger planet I noticed significant stutter when turning my head. You can’t really see it in the video, but it’s why I’m moving my head so much. To double-check, I went off-planet and traveled to the smaller one. No issues there. But, when I reloaded the game and returned to the original planet, the stutter came back.
Today’s update is also meant to bring further improvements to the PC VR version of the game, though we haven’t gone hands-on with those yet. The full changelog is right here.
The ‘Beyond’ update to No Man’s Sky (2016), which brought VR support to the game alongside a host of improvements, is admittedly far from perfect. Hello Games seems to be chewing through some of the biggest gripes VR gamers have though, notably the game’s graphical fidelity on PSVR.
To that effect, the studio announced that they’re bringing some optimizations to all VR platforms, and not just PSVR.
No Man’s Sky’s Beyond update was big enough to put the game back in PlayStation’s monthly Store charts.
The game, which got full PSVR support in the update, came in 15th on the US PS4 Chart for August. Over in the EU, it came in at 12th as a re-entry. Sony’s monthly charts only track performance on the PlayStation Store. In other words, this doesn’t include physical copies. The game got sent back to retail as part of the update, too.
Sadly as it’s a VR optional game Sony doesn’t group No Man’s Sky with the other PSVR games. Beat Saber topped that chart yet again in the US. Blood and Truth took the top spot in Europe, meanwhile. Neither list is particularly interesting; No Man’s Sky was August’s only really big PSVR release. Other titles like Superhot VR, Job Simulator and Five Nights at Freddy’s VR populate the rest.
Still, we’d love to know where No Man’s Sky ranked in comparison with other VR titles. The game’s been out for three years now and has had other major updates so we don’t necessarily know it would have topped the PSVR charts. Still, Hello Games’ Sean Murray once told us that the game’s last update, Next, sold incredibly well.
The PSVR version of Beyond is a stunning achievement. It brings the game’s entire procedurally-made universe into VR. The console version is a little blurrier than its PC counterpart but still worth playing.
September ends the PSVR drought in a big way, however. Later this week we’ve got Battlewake from Survios, and Espire 1: VR Operative hits towards the end. In fact, we’ve compiled a whole list of PSVR games to look forward to for the end of the year.
Attaining your first freighter in No Man’s Sky VR (read our review here) is an absolute joy. You can warp it into existence from nearly anywhere, making it the perfect mobile base of operations. But how does one come into possession of such a titanic craft? Well, it’s actually much easier than you might expect.
But before I explain how to get your first freighter (for free) in No Man’s Sky VR, I want to break down the way that freighters are classified. No Man’s Sky VR boasts ‘regular’ freighters and ‘capital’ freighters, which vary wildly in inventory size and exchange value. Inside of each category, there are then C, B, A, and S-class freighters.
Regular freighters range from 15 to 19 inventory slots and are valued between 8 to 15 million units. Capital freighters, meanwhile, range from 24 to 34 inventory slots and are valued between 26 to 178 million units, respectively.
Do Not Buy Any Freighters Below Class A
Freighters are expensive. They’re also easy to get as a quest reward very early into the game, without much effort or investment at all. Unfortunately, this isn’t explained too well through regular gameplay. You will often see lower-tier freighters in No Man’s Sky VR warp into systems and pitch themselves up for sale, enticing players that have saved up just enough past the opening hours of the game. This is a shame for anybody who invests their hard-earned units on a ship they could easily have gotten for free.
That said, you can only have one freighter at a time, and you can’t sell additional freighters outright, so buying a C-class or B-class freighter is useless. Especially considering you’ll quickly learn that you can earn a freighter of equal or near-equal value for absolutely no units at all.
It’s possible for your free freighter to be an A class or even an S class freighter, despite the likelihood being far, far lower than with the other classes. What I’m saying here is that you might just not want to buy any freighters at all. Let the game do its thing, then upgrade once you find the one you’re satisfied replacing your free one with.
Do Go Looking for Trouble in No Man’s Sky VR
In order to stumble over the quest, you’ll need to go hunting for pirates. Not just any garden-variety No Man’s Sky VR pirates will do in this case, either. Once you’ve completed the first series of tutorial missions and acquired the hyperdrive, start moving from solar system to solar system as you please until the quest springs up. Using a Conflict Scanner to tell which systems are more dangerous than others might not prove useful here, since the game actually calculates whether it’ll give you a rescue mission based on the number of times you’ve warped.
Once you find the quest, you’ll know it. You’ll get a distress signal in your ship communicator from the captain of the gigantic ship sitting in front of you that’s being attacked by no fewer than six pirates. While you can accept this and complete the mission as requested, you can also turn the captain down and fly off, or worse, shoot down the freighter’s cargo pods and take whatever precious loot you find, essentially aiding the pirates.
Unfortunately, becoming a pirate and siding with the attackers won’t help you get a free freighter in No Man’s Sky VR, so we’ll go with the first one.
Blast all of the pirate ships in the area, which should be easy with even the most basic starter ship, and land your ship inside of the freighter afterward. You should have gotten a message from the captain once all of the pirates were shot down, and they should now be waiting to speak with you up in the ship’s bridge. Proceed from the docking bay up the stairs and follow the corridor to the bridge.
Speaking with the captain will quickly reveal that they’re way too old for this job and they’d prefer not to have to run such a massive ship on their own anymore. Guess who’s extending an offer to replace them? The captain will give you the entire freighter for the grand price of 0 units, which is quite fair given that you saved their life and all of their cargo a few moments prior.
Currently, it’s possible to earn a capital freighter rather than a regular freighter by not accepting the first free freighter you run across. When you break the siege on the second freighter you discover under attack, you should receive an offer for a free capital freighter with greatly expanded inventory slots over the first freighter you ran into previously.
Enjoy Your New No Man’s Sky VR Freighter
Freighters in No Man’s Sky VR are useful for a number of things. You can warp them to you from the ground or from space without incurring any fuel cost. But what’s the point of warping your freighter around at all? First of all, it operates as a mobile parking garage that stores all six of your regular-size starships. Second, any vacant parking space can be occupied by an NPC ship, which means that it’s a mobile trade hub as well. Third, you can amass a fleet of frigates to send out on missions that foster pretty sizeable monetary and mineral rewards.
You can remotely teleport items from your exosuit and ship inventories to your freighter inventory, clearing up space on the fly. And then you can build the freighter’s interior out as much as you’re able to afford, meaning that you can construct a very large but aesthetically consistent base right here, then take it anywhere you go.
While expanding your freighter base, also note that you can put cargo containers in for immediate remote access to any of those fine storage slots you’ve been filling up at your planetary bases. If you put a valuable item into storage on Planet A, you can pluck it right back out while you’re onboard your freighter, and vice versa.
On a final note, your new No Man’s Sky VR freighter will also spawn ships to defend you from pirate or even Sentinel attacks, making it the perfect floating fortress from which to stage interstellar heists or defend trade routes. If the heat gets too hot in space (despite space being mostly vacuum) you can always fight in style — with a freighter and an entire personal fleet at your back.
For more on No Man’s Sky VR, don’t forget to check out our coverage hub and read our other guides on getting started in VR, making money fast, and base building basics. Or read/watch our full review here. And keep an eye on the official website for updates.
