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No Man's Sky lush planet screenshot from MacBook Air
Enjoying “No Man’s Sky” on the Go, on the Mac

Enjoying “No Man’s Sky” on the Go, on the Mac

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On June 1st, Hello Games released the Mac version of No Man’s Sky through Steam, which was first announced at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference last year. And, this is a release I had been quite eagerly awaiting.

For most of the past (nearly) seven years, I’ve been playing No Man’s Sky on the gaming PC which I built for that very purpose. I started out on PS4 and after two or three weeks I wanted to maximize the experience — 60+ FPS, higher resolution, mods — and built a high-end Windows PC to play it on. That PC, which has recently seen a notable parts upgrade, is still my main cockpit, but I do everything else on the Mac.

As soon as Steve Jobs returned to Apple in the late ’90s and it was announced that his NeXTSTEP operating system (along with its UNIX underpinnings) would become the foundation of a forthcoming, new Mac OS, I jumped to the Mac and haven’t looked back.

As a full-stack web developer, I do most of my work (which is now nearly 100% remote) at home on my desktop Mac Studio (M1 Max), with an employer-issued MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) occasionally coming into the mix. For personal use around the house and on travel, I have a MacBook Air (M2).

I was using an M1-based MacBook Air when the forthcoming Mac version of No Man’s Sky was announced by Apple at WWDC 2022. Hearing this good news, I upgraded to the new M2-based Air and spec’ed it up in order to play NMS as well as it could, on the go. This was the Mac I would be exploring the universe on.

The 13-inch MacBook Air in question has an Apple M2 SoC running at 3.49GHz and featuring 8 CPU cores (4 performance, 4 efficiency), 10 GPU cores, 24GB of LPDDR5-6400 shared RAM, and 1TB of SSD storage (which on these Macs is about twice as fast as a PC NVMe unit).

When the Mac version appeared on Steam, I installed it (for free, having already purchased the Windows version), fired it up, and was very impressed by just how well it ran.

On the 13-inch MacBook Air, I am playing at the default resolution of 1470×956 and after tweaking around a little bit on the settings — most remaining at Ultra, including the hugely impactful Planet Quality setting — I am seeing framerates usually pinned at 60fps. Apple’s Metal 3 3D API and its new MetalFX upscaling framework (something like a cross between AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS) helps with this; I’m using it on the Quality setting and am using Metal’s highest quality temporal anti-aliasing mode. The MacBook Air’s display runs at 60Hz max, so it’s hard to say how high above 60fps the game could be rendering on this M2. There are occasional dips into the mid 40s, mainly around complex bases. The overall visual quality is superb.

The quick-and-dirty chart, below, shows the performance of the M2 MacBook Air described here as compared to various systems I’ve used of late, including the aforementioned gaming PC in its original and upgraded configuration, by way of Geekbench 5 CPU and GPU compute benchmarks.

I still do most of my NMS exploring on the more powerful gaming PC with its large, 144Hz display, but it’s great to be able to have a full, no compromise excursion into the No Man’s Sky universe whenever I want, wherever I want. And with cross-save support between the Windows and macOS versions via the Steam Cloud, I can pick up right where I left off. In fact, I completed the last milestones of Expedition 10 Singularity at 25,000 feet on my flight from Boston back to DC this past weekend. Good times!

No Man's Sky on a MacBook Pro
A Tweet of Two Apples: “No Man’s Sky” to Land on Mac and Apple AR/VR Headset

A Tweet of Two Apples: “No Man’s Sky” to Land on Mac and Apple AR/VR Headset

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When something new is about to land in the world of No Man’s Sky, Hello Games’ chief Sean Murray, tweets a teaser emoji to start people speculating wildly. On Monday morning he posted a simple red apple emoji, which started the hype-train rolling and then several hours later, followed with another tweet — this time a green apple emoji, which switched the train into overdrive. Given that I have been keeping my eyes wide open for any more news of the long-known, impending Mac port of No Man’s Sky, I am quite certain that this is Sean’s indication that the Mac version of NMS is imminent. And the timing makes perfect sense, what with Apple’s yearly World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) being set to kick off with Monday’s (June 5th) keynote event.

A year ago, at WWDC 2022, Apple highlighted the coming Mac port of the game as a platform utilizing it’s new Metal 3 3D API, which offers close-to-the-metal performance, along with a feature known as MetalFX Scaling which is something of a mix between AMD’s FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) and Nvidia’s DLSS. Apple featured No Man’s Sky as a sort of poster child for this tech during that keynote. They indicated that the game would be landing by year’s end (which it didn’t) and later that day in a press release indicated that not only a Mac version but also an iPad version of the game was forthcoming.

At 2022’s end, No Man’s Sky had not landed on any Apple hardware, though Apple did again shine the spotlight on No Man’s Sky in their January M2 Silicon event. Some speculated that Hello Games decided to coincide the release of the Mac version with the PS5 update to support the new PSVR2 in February, but that didn’t happen either, though the No Man’s Sky Fractal (v4.1) update that brought said support also delivered a nice array of other things for players, including the Utopia Expedition.

Where's the Mac version?

Interestingly, on May 5th a new development branch of No Man’s Sky appeared on SteamDB (for the first time ever) named “bejryy”. On the NMS Discord, it was soon discovered that a Caesar cypher decodes this string to “Orwell.” The original Macintosh was announced in January 1984 by way of the highly famous “1984 commercial,” depicting the Orwellian dystopia presented in the book 1984. It seems likely this branch is or pertains to the imminent Mac release.

Now, one of the main expected announcements out of WWDC 2023 is Apple’s long-rumored AR/VR headset (possibly to be called the “Reality Pro”), which the company is taking very seriously. It is rumored to be a standalone unit (that can also connect to a Mac and serve as its display) which will feature not one but two Apple M2 SoCs, which would give it the considerable computing and graphics power needed to drive its expected two 4K micro-OLED displays (at up to 3,000 pixels per inch) to deliver an 8K headset gaming experience. The headset is reportedly the most complicated product that the Cupertino-based giant has ever engineered.

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No Man's Sky running on Mac mini
“No Man’s Sky” Featured in Apple’s January M2 Silicon Event

“No Man’s Sky” Featured in Apple’s January M2 Silicon Event

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During Apple’s WWDC 2022 keynote back in June, Apple announced that No Man’s Sky would be coming to the Mac, featuring the game as an example of one of the first apps to utilize Apple’s new Metal 3 graphics API along with one of the new features it brings, MetalFX upscaling. During the demo, Apple’s Senior Director of GPU Software, Jeremy Sandmel, said that the game would be “coming to the Mac later this year.” And in early October, Hello Games’ front man Sean Murray tweeted,

2022 has already been a busy year for No Man’s Sky – Sentinel, Outlaws, Leviathan, Endurance, SteamDeck, MacOS, PSVR2, Switch and several expeditions… and we aren’t done yet!

But as we saw, the year drew to a close without a Mac No Man’s Sky release. (Several other games slated for Mac release by year’s end were also delayed, for what that’s worth.) And, with 2023 underway, posts across various web forums from anxious would-be Mac Travellers have started to appear, asking about any updates on the status of the coming Mac release.

Those waiting anxiously may be pleased to hear that Apple held a press event today announcing new MacBook Pro laptops and Mac mini desktop models featuring new iterations of Apple’s M2 processor, and in that event, No Man’s Sky was again showcased, this time by Senior Engineering Program Manager, Mac, Erin Turullols, as can be seen in the bookmarked video clip below.

And the new Mac mini is also great for games, running demanding titles like No Man’s Sky at even faster framerates. With this supercharged performance, the new mini with M2 runs laps around the competition.

The No Man’s Sky section of the event showed the game running on an Apple Studio Display, with a Mac mini and a Sony PS5 DualSense wireless controller by its side. There is little reason to assume that the demo footage shown in the video was actual footage of the game running on Apple hardware. More than likely, It was a PR clip from Hello Games, generated on a PC.

Unfortunately, no release timeframe was mentioned during the event, however, a bit of fine print shown at the conclusion of the video states that “No Man’s Sky will be available later this year.”

So, for anyone doubting that the game was still on the way — and there’s really no reason to have though that — the game is still on the way. Likely, No Man’s Sky will launch not only sometime in 2023, but soon. Some speculate that Hello Games is waiting for Sony’s Playstation VR2 launch for PS5 on February 22nd to release an update that takes advantage of the new headset while also using that opportunity to release the Mac version. That may be the case, or there may have simply been some setbacks in the development process that forced a delay in the Mac version’s release.

Whatever the reality, No Man’s Sky for the Mac will surely be here soon. (And for the iPad, too, if you believe what Apple stated in their web press release following the WWDC 2022 keynote, though as far as we’ve seen, Hello Games has made no mention of such a version anywhere else…)

Where's the Mac version?
The Clock Winds Down on 2022…

The Clock Winds Down on 2022…

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From Apple’s press release released immediately following their World Wide Developer Conference 2022 back in June,

Immersive Gaming Experiences

The power of Apple silicon enables every new Mac to run AAA games with ease, including upcoming titles such as EA’s GRID Legends and Capcom’s Resident Evil Village. And since Apple silicon also powers iPad, game developers can bring their AAA games to even more users, like No Man’s Sky from Hello Games, which is coming to both Mac and iPad later this year.

Metal 3, the latest version of the software that powers the gaming experience across Apple platforms, introduces new features that take the gaming experience on Mac to new heights and unleash the full potential of Apple silicon for years to come. MetalFX Upscaling enables developers to quickly render complex scenes by using less compute-intensive frames, and then apply resolution scaling and temporal anti-aliasing. The result is accelerated performance that provides gamers with a more responsive feel and graphics that look stunning. Game developers also benefit from a new Fast Resource Loading API that minimizes wait time by providing a more direct path from storage to the GPU, so games can easily access high-quality textures and geometry needed to create expansive worlds for realistic and immersive gameplay.

Will Apple users wake to find 18 quintillion planets under the tree this year?

No Man's Sky on a MacBook Pro
WWDC Surprise: “No Man’s Sky” Is Coming to the Mac and iPad

WWDC Surprise: “No Man’s Sky” Is Coming to the Mac and iPad

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Today, Apple live-streamed the keynote that kicked off its annual World Wide Developers Conference. Occurring every spring, WWDC serves as an opportunity for Apple to announce product updates to consumers, show off new software and OS features that are on the way, and put its latest development tools in the hands of the dev community.

During today’s keynote, Apple announced the new M2 processor, successor to the extremely performant / low power Apple M1 that kicked off the Mac’s transition from Intel-based processors to Apple Silicon. Apple showcased the M2’s performance in the first machines that will be receiving the chip, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops. The coming, yearly update to the Mac’s operating system, called macOS Ventura, was also demonstrated. As is always the case, the new OS brings with it a variety of new technologies that were detailed during the keynote. One of those technologies is Metal 3.

Metal is a low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated 3D graphic and compute shader API created by Apple. It debuted in iOS 8 during WWDC 2014 and combines functions similar to OpenGL and OpenCL in a single API. Apple moved away from OpenGL as its core 3D API and created Metal in order to improve performance by allowing low-level access to the system GPU. It is comparable to other APIs such as Vulcan and DirectX 12 and is currently utilized by Apple’s macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS. WWDC 2017 saw the release of Metal 2 which brought various enhancements and optimizations. Today’s announcement of Metal 3 brings more features and improvements still, and Apple Senior Director of GPU Software Jeremy Sandmel took the stage today to demonstrate some of these new features.

And that’s when things got interesting. (The keynote video presented herein is cued up to the moment in question.)

The first first new feature of Metal 3 that Jeremy pointed to is MetalFX Upscaling which, it was revealed, is as a scaling technology akin to Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (both of which are supported by the PC version of No Man’s Sky). While he began to speak, saying the following (quote below) about this feature, the keynote stream highlighted a MacBook Pro laptop running a game that looked so familiar to me that, in this completely unexpected context, I had trouble recognizing it.

We continue to improve Metal. It’s the software that powers hardware accelerated graphics on all our platforms, and now Metal 3 brings new features that will unleash the full potential of Apple Silicon for years to come.

Gaming at maximum resolution and quality looks awesome. And, to help game developers increase the performance of realistic and immersive graphics, we’re introducing MetalFX Upscaling which enables developers to render rich, visually complex scenes even faster. It works by rendering smaller, less compute intensive frames and then applies high quality spacial upscaling and temporal antialiasing — and it’s so cool.

No Man’s Sky, coming to Mac later this year, will be one of the first games to use MetalFX Upscaling. The framerate increases give you that responsive feel — and it looks beautiful.

There was … a Traveller … jetpacking up the hill of … a paradise planet… It took a few moments for my mind to take in what I was seeing, and it was at about that time that he stated that No Man’s Sky would be coming to the Mac later this year and that it will be one of the first games to utilize Apple’s new upscaling technology.

This is amazing news of which no one had heard even a hint. Hello Games’ front man Sean Murray didn’t even tweet a teasing emoji leading up to it. This came as a complete surprise to the entire No Man’s Sky community.

MetalFX Upscaling demo clip from the Apple keynote

And, what comes as a further surprise to those who watched the keynote is Apple’s announcement, in their own press release, that No Man’s Sky will also be coming to the iPad later this year. Nowhere during the keynote video was an iPadOS port of the game mentioned, which is a little surprising considering that in 2021, the iPad generated over 90% the revenue of the Mac.

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