Hello Games’ massive new update for No Man’s Sky, Beyond, is now available. It’s free for players on all platforms and delivers 32-player support in the universe (with 16 players in the Space Anomaly), a massive social hub called the Nexus, new types of multiplayer missions and much more. The tutorial has also been reworked along with the early mission flow to help ease new players in.
There’s new story content for the Atlas Path, the Space Anomaly’s journey and Artemis’s tale. Along with visiting other players’ bases via the Space Anomaly, there will also be a “Featured” tab for the best bases. This lets you browse them and experience even more amazing sights.
But perhaps the best quality of life improvement is the relaxation of inventory space. It’s now possible to carry up to 10,000 of a single substance, up from 250. While more storage slots are good for carrying a variety of substances, this is still a much-needed quality of life changes. Check out some of the patch notes below with full notes here.
UPDATE NOTES
VIRTUAL REALITY
- No Man’s Sky is now fully playable in virtual reality.
- Many interactions have been given special VR-only options, including: grabbing plants and other collectables with your hands; physically opening the cockpits of ships and exocraft; piloting starships directly with a VR stick/throttle; and punching objects to cause damage.
- Introduced special VR menus: including controlling Multi-Tool options via a menu embedded on the in-world Multi-Tool; and browsing the quick menu and inventory via a personal wrist-mounted display.
GRAPHICS AND PERFORMANCE
- OpenGL has been replaced by Vulkan. Many players, particularly players with AMD graphics cards, should see a performance improvement.
- Significant optimisations to asteroid generation.
- Significant optimisations to planet generation.
- Improved loading times.
- Significant optimisations to 2D rendering.
- Reduced memory usage across the game generally.
- Significant optimisations to cloud and terrain shaders.
- Significant optimisations to the animation LODing system.
- Added level-of-detail mesh optimisations to the majority of in-game assets.
- Significant optimisations for large bases.
- Revised HDR support, updated output curve in line with advances in HDR calibration.
- Adaptive and Triple-Buffered V-Sync are now selectable from Graphics Options.
- Players with more than one GPU can now select which is used from Video Options.
- Many graphics settings no longer require a restart to apply.
- The ‘LOADING SHADERS’ load step has been removed, improving the loading experience.
CONTROLS AND OPTIONS
- Added support for full rebinding of PC controls via Steam and OpenVR.
- Reworked all settings and options pages, making graphics settings more clear for PC players.
- Added options to disable vignette and scanline effects.
- Added the option to remove button holds and make all non-destructive clicks instant.