No Man's Sky Fractal update ushers in PS VR2 with a new expedition, visual improvements,...

[Cal Jeffrey]

Highly anticipated: Hello Games continues to deliver free content to its labor of love, No Man's Sky. On Wednesday, the studio dropped the latest major installment for the nearly seven-year-old game. It has too many features to mention in a brief article, so we'll cover the most significant few here, as usual.

Fractals is No Man's Sky's 22nd significant upgrade, not counting expedition updates, which can arrive with or without major content releases and overhauls. Like most named updates, Fractals will undoubtedly reinvigorate the fan base and gets players who may have put down the game to pick it back up again.

It is no coincidence that HG chose to release Fractals on the same day Sony launched its PlayStation VR2 because the most noteworthy feature of the patch is support for the new headset. Hello Games has likely had this update ready for weeks but sat on it for this occasion.

No Man's Sky was already compatible with Sony's first VR headset. However, HG completely overhauled it in the PS5 version to take advantage of the PS VR2's features, including 4K resolution with foveated rendering and enhanced textures, Sense controller support, improved HDR (applies to non-VR mode as well), better particle rendering, terrain tessellation effects, haptic feedback, FRS 2.0 support, and more.

Vastly improved HDR

First-generation PSVR fans won't be left out because HG revamped VR mode for both PS4 and PS5 versions to improve overall gameplay. Players can now equip the personal force field in their off-hand and actively move it to block incoming projectiles. Target sweeping and hotspot surveying were tweaked to be more "intuitive" when using the analysis visor. Those and many other improvements to the VR experience should make the game worth picking up again for new and old VR players.

While PC players will not see some of the PS-VR2-specific enhancements, the more general VR improvements too should apply to PC players, as well. Substantive updates always include all platforms.

While certainly a big part, Fractals is not all about the VR update. Hello Games headlines the Utopia Expedition — the latest cross-platform multiplayer season with Travelers cooperating to restore an all-but-lost system to its former glory. As always, explorers who complete the expedition will receive prizes, including a new starship, a cool Darth-Vader-like helmet, base parts, a companion, and expedition-specific patches, stickers, and banners.

The upgrade includes many quality-of-life improvements that apply to VR and standard gameplay. For the hoarders among us, HG ups players' starship liveries from nine to 12. This is probably one of the most requested feature improvements and is the second time the devs have increased how many ships players can own, doubling it from the original six.

Other QoL improvements include better particle and spark visual effects, reworked motion controls (Switch and PSVR), adjustable user interface (VR mode), a "quick charge" button to refuel equipment with a single button press, ambidextrous multi-tool control, and more. It also comes with the usual catalog of bug fixes.

As always, the update is free for PS4, PS5, XB1, XBS, PC, and Switch. You can check out all the features and changes in the No Man's Sky Fractals patch notes.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/97697-no-man-sky-fractal-update-ushers-ps-vr2.html

 

[CapNemo72]

This is something positive in the game industry that learned us that even a small upgrade to a game is often paying DLC and / or even presented as a new game.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

This is something positive in the game industry that learned us that even a small upgrade to a game is often paying DLC and / or even presented as a new game.

Agreed. And TBH, HG has delivered what amounted to almost a new game by way of features multiple times with NMS. I wouldn't say all 23 fundamentally changed the game, but probably about half that did. Many in the small group of about 10,000 players I play with have many times commented to others stuff like, "You have to come play again. It's a totally different experience now," over the years. And it's true -- there are so many things you can do now that you couldn't in the dumpster fire that was the release.

And yeah yeah. Call me a fanboy all you want because I am, but I wasn't always. I was very disappointed at spending $60 when NMS launched. I was one of the ones saying, "Damn! I should have waited for the reviews." I played it for like three days and then wrote it off as a complete loss. But to my surprise, HG kept working on it and fixed everything that was broke in the original game, which was a start but there was still a lot missing that I was promised." However, the devs kept chugging along and added everything I expected and more. I've never seen another developer spent 6 years upgrading a game with this much content for free without also having a microtransactions model in place. So fanboy or no, HG deserves a pat on the back for NMS.

 

[rsmith222]

HG deserves a pat on the back for NMS.

Perhaps. The other way to look at it is that defying the low standard of customer service big corporations make lots of money with is a good way to ensure one's demise, or kneecap one's competitiveness.

What's really needed is for the bar to be raised.

While it could be argued that this particular example helps to work toward that... so long as the big players get away with much much less it's of arguable usefulness.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

Perhaps. The other way to look at it is that defying the low standard of customer service big corporations make lots of money with is a good way to ensure one's demise, or kneecap one's competitiveness.

What's really needed is for the bar to be raised.

While it could be argued that this particular example helps to work toward that... so long as the big players get away with much much less it's of arguable usefulness.

I'm speaking only for Hello Games, nobody else—primarily because nobody else is doing this, at least not in the manner seen with HG, aside from CDPR with Cyberpunk 2077. Most other studios that spit out trash might make a token effort to to fix it, but ultimately most just abandon the game. In HG's case, the launch condition wasn't even entirely its faulty. Sony, which invested heavily in NMS, had a big hand in rushing the game out the door. Sean Murray getting wrapped up in his own hype didn't help, but I'm pretty sure he initially started the hype train thinking he was on a 5-year schedule instead of 3—an assumption supported by the fact that by the "Next" update in 2018, which included solid multiplayer functionality, the game lived up to Murray's brags.

Whether other studios follow this example is unimportant as too whether HG deserves kudos for its effort. EA is gonna do EA, damn the players.

 

[rsmith222]

Whether other studios follow this example is unimportant as too whether HG deserves kudos for its effort. EA is gonna do EA, damn the players.

It depends on one's priorities/point of view. The trouble I was speaking to is the underlying corporate model that isn't about altruism (making a product that is good and therefore enriches quality of life). It's about profit for shareholders. Those two divergent goals often create divergent results.

The problem for those who are pure of heart is that they are stuck with the economic system that we have which is fundamentally impure.

If a corporation can make a significantly inferior product for significantly more profit that is what the corporation is supposed to do. It's not a charity, where at least the ostensible goal is to help/enrich humanity. Corporations bribe us (particularly those of us who aren't in the financial elite investment class whose main investments are financial rather than in debt — mortgages and similar) into doing their bidding, alleging that their bribes are better than what we'd get if we were to invest our lives and the planet into altruistic goals.

It's a scam and the biggest excuse is that it's the best we can do, which is debatable.