The updates keep on coming for No Man’s Sky. Last month, Mass Effect’s Normandy spaceship appeared in one of the space game’s expeditions, and now something else – and pretty different – is on the way today. Hello Games is dropping the latest update – 3.5, or Prisms if you’re feeling fancy – today (June 2), which brings a visual overhaul to the game.
“Update 3.5, Prisms, dramatically refreshes the No Man’s Sky experience with a range of new visual features and technologies,” Hello announces in the notes. “The universe has never looked better, with reflections, new texture effects, more biome detail, improved lighting, new skies, new warp effects, creature fur, and a host more besides.” As this implies, basically every element of the space survival game has been given the virtual rework treatment, which is underpinned with some new tech.
The game now supports SSR – screen space reflections – which create much improved reflective surfaces and lighting, giving the game a new level of realism. For example, ships and lifeforms’ movement will now create reflections. Plus, new volumetric lighting styles – coloured and volumetric – have been folded in, which add extra touches of atmosphere and glow to aspects of the universe.
The list of changes is pretty immense, but other highlights include parallax occlusion mapping, which gives previously flat surfaces new levels of depth and definition, extra planetary details for PC players using ultra settings, improved light shafts, and all-new refractions, which can be seen across a whole bunch of different facets. Oh, and there are now fuzzy creatures that are really, super fuzzy. Huzzah.
There’s new content with the Prisms update, too. The range of critters you can adopt to be your companions has been “hugely increased to encompass virtually every lifeform you encounter”, and hazardous weather events now have a chance of dropping valuable goodies.
For the full rundown, head to Hello Games’ patch notes here, and the clip above should help give you a taste of what you can expect to see next time you boot up the game.