No Mans Sky

So i cant wait for this game to be released.
The release date is set in June and it seems its going to support both the Morpheus for the PS4 and Oculus Rift for PC.

Anyone on else following this game?

For those who don't know what No Man's Sky is, its an adventure/explorer game and a literal Universal scale,
It has 18 Quintilian planets to explore but you wont be able to visit them all in your life time. Even if you where to somehow visit each planet for 1 second our own Sun would of died out.
Obviously you cant store all game information on your HDD as it would be around the 400 petabyte region or greater. So the Developers have designed a procedural game engine based on the laws of our universe as we know it (and added some) to create a universe that exists but also does not.
The nature of Procedural generation is unique in this aspect as they create each planet, mountain, rock, plant, animal, grass and down to tiny pebble without requiring thousands if not millions of models for each.
The engine takes a base model and using mathematical algorithms morphs it to a required specification dependent on other variables. Example, Gravity, makeup of atmosphere, size of the planet, day/night cycle, distance from its Sun.

The engine has been designed to render what is needed in front of the player and throw away everything else (Not storing it to HDD). If you where to visit a planet and then leave. When your no longer in range of the planet to be rendered the engine simply delete it. When you return it will be the same planet right down to the pebbles. It can do this by the way the engine uses all the mathematical algorithms to render the planet. The outcome will always be the same unless you change the formula.

The game is made out of voxels like Minecraft. Only the game engine looks like it uses a hybrid voxel/polygon mesh. First the voxels are laid down then are smoothed out with a polygon mesh (This is only rumored). Or another method seems to use a shader to turn the many cubed voxels in a sphere (Or a torus) using the players camera a fixed point to create an illusion that the land your standing on is curved. (There was some video material i saw but i can't seem to find it at the moment. I'll add it later when i do.)

With Voxels it means destruction, apparently you can destroy part of the landscape or dig some slight holes. How far down you can go is unknown.
Another point has been raised that if you where to dig around the waters edge, will the water flow into the hole? Who knows thats the fun.

If anyone has any questions about the game i'll attempt to ask them, im no expert in the game but i have been keeping track of its development for about 2 years now.

http://www.no-mans-sky.com/

 

That is awesome Aus. Seriously. I know of the game but not of it's details. Can you give any details on the hardware it might take to run it when released?

 

Theres been no official release of Specs but im going to assume some average specs.

i5-4570
6GB of RAM
5-10GB of HDD space
GTX970 2GB
Windows 7 64-bit

 

I must admit though not a gamer, this one sounds very interesting to me. Thanks Aus.

 

Well usually when devs release specs initially they are overstated a bit, then the patches come because either AMD or NV users rant about low FPS etc and over time even very modest rigs can run a game. This game looks very promising and offers some very different type of gameplay. Those specs sound in line with the game engine and the possible release date. I would bet even the venerable I5 3570k and a GTX 960 would do ok with the game as long as the resolution of 1920*1080 was being used. Can't wait to find out!

 

Yeah its possible those would be a minimal requirement. Ive based mine off the fact that they are now working on patching the Oculus Rift into the game and as it stands the Oculus needs a GTX970 (Equivalent ATI) card to run.

 

Right now I have a 4790k @ 4.5 ghz and a GTX 980 so I should be ok.

 

Steam has "No Man's Sky" up for Pre-purchase $59.99 USD. Release date is set for Jun. 21, 2016.