No Man's Sky is now out in the wild, and gamers across the globe are now exploring its near-infinite universe. Just don't explore it too fast.
That's the advice coming from Digital Foundry, which regularly puts new games through their paces to test their performance. No Man's Sky runs at a silky-smooth 30 frames per second cap the vast majority of the time, especially while on foot. The terrain or amount of creatures on screen seem to have no effect on the game's performance while exploring on the ground, which is an accomplishment definitely worth celebrating, given how much goes on behind the scenes to generate entire planets in an instant.
It's once players get in their ship that they may start to notice some severe framerate drops. While flying in space or over previously-discovered terrain doesn't appear to cause any problems, flying rapidly using the ship's boost across undiscovered terrain (which No Man's Sky is generating on the fly) can cause some severe framerate drops: all the way down to 14 fps, according to Digital Foundry's video. However, slowing down or doubling back to fly across already-generated terrain quickly fixes the issue.
Is a fix possibly in the works? No doubt, developer Hello Games is aware of the issue. A day-one patch for the game dramatically altered many of the game's core systems, and creator Sean Murray has already outlined new features, such as base building and freighters, which will be coming to the game in future updates. So far, there's no word on whether or not the game's ship-boost framerate problem will be addressed, but it seems possible.
Of course, the 30 fps framerate cap and frame drops likely won't be an issue for PC players. Expect higher framerates and less severe frame drops for those with powerful gaming rigs, but otherwise, PC players can expect to have the same experience as PS4 players once No Man's Sky arrives on PC Aug. 12.
You can read more about what to expect from No Man's Sky (straight from the creator of the game himself) here. If you're planning on picking the game up, be sure to check out our preorder bonus guide to make sure you get the most bang for your buck.
Are you enjoying No Man's Sky so far? Let us know in the comments below.
