No Man's Sky

Although this product has been released, it remains under active development - information may change frequently and could be outdated or irrelevant.

No Man's Sky

Developers
	Hello Games
Release dates
Windows	August 12, 2016
macOS (OS X)	June 1, 2023
Reception
Metacritic	61
OpenCritic	72
IGDB	74
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Microtransactions	None
Modes	Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing	Real-time, Persistent
Perspectives	Third-person, First-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Action, Survival, Exploration, Open world
Vehicles	Off-roading, Space flight
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Space, Sci-fi

No Man's Sky is a singleplayer and multiplayer third-person and first-person action, survival, exploration and open world game.

Key points

Active modding community. See Mods.

General information

PC Report

GOG.com Community Discussions

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
GamersGate
GOG.com
Green Man Gaming
Humble Store
Microsoft Store		Xbox Play Anywhere. Xbox Game Pass for PC
Steam

Monetization

Type	Notes
One-time game purchase	The game requires an upfront purchase to access.

Microtransactions

Type	Notes
No microtransactions	Game does not contain any microtransactions.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\Binaries\SETTINGS\
macOS (OS X)
Microsoft Store	%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\HelloGames.NoMansSky_bs190hzg1sesy\LocalCache\Local\Microsoft\WritablePackageRoot\Binaries\SETTINGS
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/275850/pfx/

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%APPDATA%\HelloGames\NMS\
macOS (OS X)
Microsoft Store	%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\HelloGames.NoMansSky_bs190hzg1sesy\SystemAppData\wgs
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/275850/pfx/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud
Xbox Cloud		Game saves sync across Xbox and PC if using the same Live account.

Transfer a Gamepass save to Steam

Note: This guide is not yet updated for the latest updates, like companions and expeditions. Use NomNom Save Editor to open your Gamepass cloud save and save it as JSON. Create a dummy save in Steam with any simple item built. Use Goatfungus's NMSSE to open the JSON of the dummy save and note your UID and USN. In the NomNom exported JSON file, make the following changes (with your favorite text editor): For "BaseStatId", "CurrentMissionId", "PreviousMissionId", "MissionId", "ObjectId", "TraitIds", and "MultiplayerLobbyId", replace "Id" with "ID" Replace all "XB" with "ST" (Optional) Replace all instances of "0000000000000001" and your old MS UID value with the new UID value from Steam Replace all instances of your old MS USN with the new USN from Steam. Copy all of the edited JSON and overwrite all the text in the NMSSE JSON editor. Save and exit and your Gamepass save should be cloned to Steam.

Video

General settings.

Video settings.

Graphics settings.

Graphics feature	State	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)		Up to 100 (arbitrary number, not actual FOV in degrees); for higher values, see Field of View (FOV) or use this Extended FOV Changer.
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed		Natively displays an option for Borderless Windowed Mode, but the option behaves similarly to Fullscreen. It seems to be setting itself to 'topmost' with a high Z-level, overriding other applications attempting to be topmost. Choosing Bordered and using a de-bordering app results in a more standard Borderless experience.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		Up to 16 samples. Forcing gives much better quality.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		FXAA, TAA, TAA+FXAA, TAA (Low), DLAA. TAA option was added in the Foundation Update. DLAA option was added in the Sentinel Update.
High-fidelity upscaling		DLSS 2.0, FSR 2.0 DLSS option was added in the Prisms Update.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		Double buffered (On), triple buffered, or adaptive.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		There is a framerate limit slider that goes up to 240 FPS.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		HDR400, HDR600, or HDR1000 No black level slider.
Ray tracing (RT)

Field of view (FOV)

The FOV can only be set up to 100 in-game. It is possible to go past this by editing a configuration file.

Instructions
Go to the configuration file(s) location. Open TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML with a text editor. Find the following lines and replace X with the desired FOV: <Property name="FoVOnFoot" value="X.000000" /> <Property name="FoVInShip" value="X.000000" /> Notes: Mods such as Better Ship Seat may modify the FOV regardless of what FOV is set.

Input

Input settings.

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity		Vertical sensitivity is approximately half the horizontal sensitivity in the default third person perspective on-foot. Vertical and horizontal sensitivity are the same in first person perspective on-foot or in flight.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion		Separate inversion options for walking and spaceflight
Controller
Controller support		on the Steam version: Steam Input API will be used instead of in-game Native Controller Support.
Full controller support
Controller remapping
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion		Separate inversion options for walking and spaceflight

Controller types

XInput-compatible controllers
Xbox button prompts
Impulse Trigger vibration

PlayStation controllers		DualShock 4, DualSense, DualSense Edge For the Steam version, Steam Input must be enabled.
PlayStation button prompts
Light bar support		Blue
Adaptive trigger support		For the Steam version, Steam Input must be enabled. Also works wirelessly.
DualSense haptic feedback support
Connection modes	Wired, Wireless (Bluetooth)

Tracked motion controllers		Oculus Touch, Valve Index, Vive Wand
Button/gesture prompts

Generic/other controllers

Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M		Added in Fractal Update.

Steam Input
Steam Input API support		Steam Input API support (added in the Pathfinder Update.) is enabled by default.
Official controller preset(s)		DualShock 4, DualSense, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, Steam Controller, Steam Deck (includes Gyro Aiming-centric config)
Steam Controller button prompts		Steam Input API's button prompt detection is used for both in-game and Steam's built-in button prompts, based on controller type.

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Music, SFX
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost		It doesn't mute when playing in multiplayer mode.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Czech				Fan translation.
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Spanish

Network

Network settings.

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Players	Notes
Local play
LAN play
Online play		32	Co-op

Issues unresolved

Adaptive triggers not working on DualSense/DualSense Edge after certain game updates

Periodically, the game will be updated with newer controller template for the DualSense and DualSense Edge. However, the new controller template is not automatically applied, causing the adaptive trigger to not work. This usually happen when the user has a customized controller template on Steam prior to the game update.

Reapply Steam Input controller layout

Open the Controller Layout of the game on Steam. This is usually done with either right clicking the game on the list and select it from the drop list, or click on the button with a controller logo on it when the game is selected. Click on the right arrow icon on the current controller layout to open the Load new Layout menu. In the Load new Layout menu, click on the Official Layout for No Man's Sky under the recommended tab. Apply the layout.

Issues fixed

Lost Connection to Host

Go to <path-to-game>\Binaries\Settings\. Delete the 3 .MXML files. Try connecting again.

Heavy game stutter/stutter in general

This section may require cleanup to meet basic quality standards. The specific problem is: Section needs citation and complete rewrite. It is currently a combination of potentially long-out-of-date information and in-fixbox notes which should actually be implemented into the fix. You can help by modifying the article. The discussion page may contain useful suggestions.

[citation needed]

Go to <path-to-game>\Binaries\SETTINGS. Open TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML and change the value of NumHighThreads and NumLowThreads to 0. The above no longer works -- those game settings aren't actually read from the file anymore. Instead try one or more of the following: Set process priority for NMS.exe to Low (this alone should be sufficient at 1080p) Go to registry key: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\PriorityControl\Win32PrioritySeparation a) Export the key with the current value so you can revert back b) Set it to hex value 24 (Note: this will affect the entire system, and will most likely reduce performance in other games) c) Export the key with the new value so you can more easily change back to it before starting NMS See this link for more info: https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?t=8535 The reason the above works is it tricks the game engine into loading textures slower than it otherwise would. The higher the resolution, the more textures it wants to load at once, and so at 1440p or higher you may need to do #2 as well to eliminate stutters. Textures will load in slower, BUT it'll look way better than forcing texture streaming to On. 3) Use PSArcTool to unpack NMSARC.MeshMisc.pak (found in PCBANKS folder), and place the extracted MODELS folder into the GAMEDATA folder. Then rename NMSARC.MeshMisc.pak to NMSARC.MeshMisc.pak.bak (if pre-caching, also move it out of this folder). This will remove the long stutter when exiting a planet's atmosphere -- there's no other way to fix this single specific long stutter. PSArcTool: https://github.com/periander/PSArcTool 4) Unpacking other .pak files that contain meshes can have a positive effect (albeit minor compared to the above), but ONLY if you have plenty of extra ram available (~32gb of ram, in addition to a rather large pagefile to handle the large nms.exe commit size) to pre-cache the MODELS folder because it will contain a lot of very small individual files. The ones to unpack that will have some positive effect are: NMSARC.MeshCommon.pak, NMSARC.MeshPlanetBIOMES.pak, NMSARC.MeshPlanetCREATURES.pak The reason unpacking can reduce stutters is because the .pak files are heavily compressed. If there was an easy way to re-pack them with a lighter compression algorithm (one that's specifically designed for fast uncompressing speed), it might be preferable. 5) Pre-cache the GAMEDATA folder. If you have 16gb+ of ram (preferably 32gb), and a sufficiently large pagefile due to the large commit size of nms.exe, you can pre-cache the contents of the GAMEDATA folder (specifically PCBANKS and MODELS subfolders). The slower your disk drive and/or the smaller the files being pre-cached are, the more this will have an effect. If you've unpacked any .pak files, be sure to move them out of the PCBANKS folder (even if you renamed them), so that they're not pre-cached. The reason this works is because: a) Windows will cache files as they're read; b) NMS doesn't bypass the file cache when it reads files from the disk; c) ram is way faster than any disk drive. Link to Java code to precache a folder and subfolders: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mkFZr_9cvOI6ErouNGKyFoMZmcgdlqz_/view?usp=sharing

Old save from 2016 and 2017 doesn't appear in menus

Rename "mf_storage.hg" and "storage.hg".
Go to your save game data location. (See Save game data location for instructions based on operating systems.) Look for files starting with "mf_storage" and "storage". (Some might be numbered.) If present, rename those files by replacing "storage" with "save".

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Vulkan	1.0	Replaced OpenGL 4.5 as part of the Beyond Update.

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Physics	Havok
Audio	Wwise

Mods

Many mods can be found at Video Game Mods and Nexus Mods.

Mods almost always need to be updated by their creator after a major game update (Atlas Rises, NEXT, Beyond, etc.).

• Lens Flare Removal
• 21:9 / Surround / Eyefinity HUD Mod

System requirements

Windows

macOS (OS X)

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	7, 8.1, 10
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core i3 AMD Phenom X3	Intel Core i5 Quad Core AMD Ryzen 3 1200
System memory (RAM)	8 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	10 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 AMD Radeon HD 7870 2 GB of VRAM	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 AMD Radeon RX 480 4 GB of VRAM

A 64-bit operating system is required.

Requires Vulkan 1.0 or higher

Requires a processor supporting SSE2.

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	12.3
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core i5
System memory (RAM)	8 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	15 GB
Video card (GPU)	AMD Radeon Pro 570X

A 64-bit operating system is required.