No Man’s Sky Worlds Part 1 – Patch notes and highlights for the game’s massive update

No Man’s Sky World’s (Part 1) is a huge update, not only to content and expeditions but just the way the game feels. New weather systems, and cloud and water effects make NMS feel more alive than it ever has, and it used to feel as though you were on alien planets at times anyway.

These new effects that have come into play are a game changer – although I will admit, it hit my frame rate and caused more than a little stuttering when I tried it out with my save game from a couple of years ago. This will need more investigation but with the increased tech hit, I may need to tweak my settings south a little.

No Man’s Sky Worlds Part 1 – Patch v5 highlights

The patch notes are huge and you can read them all here if you have the time, but we have plucked the main highlights around what makes the game so different now. There is rarely exciting stuff in patch notes, but some of the things in here are certainly exciting if you are a No Man’s Sky fanatic.

SKY AND CLOUD RENDERING

• The atmospheric and volumetric cloud rendering system has been completely rewritten for vastly increased detail and definition.
• Planets now exhibit a greater range of cloud coverage: over time; from planet-to-planet; and in response to weather conditions.
• Planets with rain will no longer use the ambient rain effect when cloud coverage is insufficient.
  Daytime sky colours are now significantly more varied.
• Night-time ambient lighting is no longer always blue, and can vary according to the planet’s natural environment.
• Night-time darkness levels now vary as the night progresses.
• Night-time darkness now varies from planet-to-planet, with some being significantly darker than others.

WATER RENDERING

Water rendering has been completely overhauled, and now uses a mesh-based system that allows for true wave and foam generation.

• Water conditions vary over time in response to both local weather and the depth of the water at any particular location, producing effects from stormy seas and huge ocean swells to tranquil still ponds.
• Water now reflects the sun and features ambient planetary reflections for dramatically increased visual quality.
• Water colour variety has been significantly increased.
• Base parts with glass now accurately render the water conditions outside.
• Sealed underwater base parts will no longer “leak” water into the base.
• Ships now leave splashes and trails in the water when flying low.
• Underwater jetpack effects have been significantly improved.
• Swimming effects have been significantly improved.
• Starships can now be fitted with aquatic landing jets, allowing them to land or be summoned just above the surface of the ocean.
• A biological equivalent of this technology has been added for living ships.

GENERAL ENGINE IMPROVEMENTS

• The shadow-rendering system has been reworked to take advantage of screenspace shadowing techniques, resulting in more richly lit planets and more accurate and more detailed shadows.
• The rendering of planetary objects such as trees, rocks, and grass has been rewritten and moved to a more modern GPU-based system, allowing for more objects at a better performance.
• Distant planetary objects now look significantly more detailed and realistic.
• Terrain generation has been rewritten to incorporate dual marching cubes voxel meshing, which reduces vertex count, increases terrain generation speed, improves framerate and saves significant amounts of memory.
• The component system has been reworked for increased speed and improved memory usage.
  Networking systems have been improved for reduced bandwidth usage.
• Significant memory and performance optimisations have been made across the entire game, particularly in metadata usage, texture streaming, LOD generation and procedural mesh generation.

PLANETARY VARIETY

• Planetary variety and diversity has been increased all across the universe.
• New frozen, lush, desert, scorched, radioactive and toxic worlds await discovery and exploration.
• Underlying terrain shapes have not been reset and existing planetary bases will not be moved.
• The chance of a world having ancient bones or salvageable scrap has been increased.
• Worlds with salvageable scrap occasionally feature additional rusted remnants to collect.

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

• The wind simulation has been reworked to bring planets to life and provide a consistent effect across each world, moving trees and leaves, smoke effects, rain, fog, and snow all in a unified system.
• Fogging and particle systems have been improved for increased fidelity and better performance.
  All ambient planetary environment effects have been totally reworked.
• Storm effects have been completely overhauled.
• Planets can now have a range of additional atmospheric effects that match their ambient weather and hazard conditions.
• The visual effects for the jetpack have been overhauled.
• The visual effects for storm crystals have been reworked and improved.
  Footstep effect colouring has been improved.
• Fixed an issue that caused starship contrails to display a low speed.
• CREATURES
  A new type of procedurally-generated arthropod-style creature has been added and may appear on any world.
• New types of procedurally-generated plant/animal hybrids have been added and may appear on any world.
• New types of procedurally-generated synthetic constructs can now be found on selected worlds…
• A new type of hostile creature has been added – the Brood Mother.
• Some worlds have become infested with the Vile Brood. On such worlds, players can now find juicy grubs. Structurally harming these grubs will summon the Brood
  Mother to project their young…
• A new multiplayer mission has been added to the Nexus to find and destroy the vile brood.
• Players who defeat brood mothers in combat may earn a variety of new titles and insectoid-themed helmet customisation options.
• Over 40 new cooking recipes have been added, making use of products harvested from new creatures.
• Biological horrors now drop cookable meat when killed.
• When under AI pilot control, the Minotaur will now target and exterminate biological horrors.
• The camera shake generated by the footsteps of colossal creatures has been reduced.
• The “boss battle” style UI used when fighting capital ships is now also used when fighting Sentinel Walkers and the Vessel of Many Mouths, giving extra details about their health and status.
• The Vessel of Many Mouths has been given additional ranged attacks, increasing the challenge of their encounter.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the acquisition of worm-cult story documents from the titan worm’s vile spawn.