NO MAN’S SKY PRISMS UPDATE: THE SKY’S THE LIMIT
June 7, 2021
No Man’s Sky has made headlines over the years, and it hasn’t always been good news. Happily, the survival game has gone from strength to strength since its original release in 2016. On June 2, Hello Games announced the latest in a string of updates: Prisms. Here’s everything you need to know about what’s included in the No Man’s Sky Prisms Update.
No Man’s Sky Prisms Update
Dark Side of the Moon
In a blog post, Hello Games founder Sean Murray introduced the update by saying: “Whilst exploring the universe, how you perceive the sights around you is so important. That is why we’re so delighted to be able to give No Man’s Sky a visual overhaul with this update. We wanted to allow you to see everything you encounter with new eyes, and we hope your screenshot button is about to get even more use!” The Prisms update is all about making the game look better, “Whether in the depths of space, on synthetic structures, or on organic planetary life.”
Here’s a summary of shiny new updates to the visuals:
- Refractions: new lighting technology means that you’ll now see refractions in NMS, including glass base parts, alien bubbles and even rain. This feature might have been the inspiration for the name of the update!
- Screen space reflection technology: NMS will now support SSR technology for PCs, next-gen consoles, and Xbox One. Basically, this update will add reflective surfaces that will look particularly snazzy in busy areas with moving starships and lifeforms.
- Deep Learning Super Sampling: if you’re a PC player with an NVIDIA RTX graphics card that can take advantage of DLSS, you’ll get vastly improved visual performance in-game.
- Volumetric lighting: coloured and directional volumetrics will make features such as bioluminescent flora all the more atmospheric. The Exosuit torch and light shafts have also been visually upgraded.
- Dramatic starfields: if you’ve come to NMS for some stargazing, you’re in luck, as the developers have enhanced the night sky.
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Wish You Were Here
With all these visual enhancements, it’s fitting that Hello Games has also updated the photo mode with better depth of field quality and controls, as well as giving players manual control over bloom settings. If you’re wondering what you might want to snap as a space tourist, one of the updates for Prisms is the addition of extra planetary details for next-gen console or PC users who use Ultra settings. Hopefully that bioluminescent fungi is ready for its close-up!
Learning to Fly
Arguably the cutest addition to NMS with this update is the expansion of creatures that can be adopted as companions, apparently including nearly every critter that you encounter on your interstellar travels. What’s more, some of those creatures can now have fur. According to the No Man’s Sky website, the extra fluff brings “extra variety and additional fuzziness to exploration and companion taming.” Low-flying creatures such as giant beetles and butterflies can now be your noble steeds, allowing you to fly around planets at a low altitude.
The Great Gig in the Sky
It’s not just the visuals that have been upgraded, it’s the audio too. During interstellar travel, the audio and visual effects during warping have been reworked. Another audio improvement is the ability to save tracks in the personal library of your Bytebeat synthesizer so you can customize the in-game soundtrack. The Bytebeat library will also allow you to share tracks with other players.
Another Brick in the Wall
A new Synthesis Laboratory is being added to the blueprint research area of the Space Anomaly. This automated research station provides receipts for crafting recipes in exchange for nanites. In terms of other infrastructure, there are now movable freighter bases. If you purchase a new base, your existing one will be automatically transferred and reconstructed. You will also now have the ability to reset freighter base layouts at any time from the Freighter Upgrade Control Terminal. Other miscellaneous upgrades include an improved UI for the Appearance Modifier and the addition of valuable items being spawned during hazardous weather conditions such as lightning impacts. Shocking stuff!
With the new No Man’s Sky Prisms update, not only is the world (or rather, sky) your oyster, it now looks incredible as well!
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Article author: Florence Smith Nicholls can be found on Twitter via @florencesn
