VR Archives - NMSspot

Touring Bases in VR and Talking “No Man’s Sky” as Guest on “NMS Wonders” Show

11/04/2023 blakespot Comments 0 Comment

A few months back, Mehalaway of the YouTube channel VR Spaceman reached out to me asking if I would be interested in appearing as a guest on his weekly live VR show, No Man’s Sky Wonders, to walk through several of my recent base builds and just chat on about the game we all know and love so well. That sounded like a pretty good time to me!

On his channel, Mehalawy explores any and all space games that support VR across a variety of platforms and headset configurations. His weekly live show, NMS Wonders, he hosts and records from his perspective in PSVR2. As he describes,

This is a live talk show about No Mans Sky game In virtual reality, every Saturday We will tour some of the most wonderful bases in NMS while interviewing the base builder and listen to their NMS story, all this in virtual reality for a new & fresh experience.

On the show in questions, we were joined by co-hosts Kim and Max (@SparkleRain and @Maxamus88 on Discord) and toured three of my bases: The Lighthouse in the NMSCord Hub, Chimney Rock Overlook, and Blade Peak Chalet. Along the way, we had a nice, wide-ranging chat about life, the game, and even a dip into the topic of retro computing… It was a blast!

The motivation for me to finally sit down and write a post sharing this YouTube base(s) tour was that on the NMS Discord in the @nmscord-hub channel, my base The Lighthouse, which was visited in the video, was recently a featured base for the community. This brought many visitors to the base and quite a few comments sent my way. It’s always fun to have visitors!

Please have a look at NMS Wonders Ep. 25, “Journey to the Past,” as well as the VR Spaceman channel overall and the associated Discord. Thanks for the great time, Mehalawy and company!

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

05/30/2023 blakespot Comments 0 Comment

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.

🍏 https://t.co/D0DSBqCZgL
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) May 29, 2023

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.

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.

…

“No Man’s Sky” Wins Excellence in VR Adaptation Design Award for 2019

01/28/2020 blakespot Comments 0 Comment

No Man’s Sky has won Road To VR‘s Excellence in VR Adaptation Design Award for 2019 in the publication’s third annual Game of the Year Awards.

Road To VR indicates that games ported to VR often come out wanting, due to aging game engines or a lack of commitment to fully realize the VR experience. They salute Hello Games’ work in delivering the full experience to VR with all the bells and whistles intact.

… Here, No Many’s Sky bucks the trend by presenting a fun and fully-playable VR mode, which thankfully came to all users this summer for free as a part of the base game on PC or PlayStation 4. The VR mode is basically exactly what you’d imagine from No Man’s Sky in VR; blasting off into space is magical, exploring planets is awe inspiring, riding around in exovehicles is really awesome. It also looks great too, as the rich and vibrant universe demands even more inspection from the immersive viewpoint of a VR headset. …

No Man’s Sky chief Sean Murray recently acknowledged the win in a retweet of the award results.

Other kudos that Hello Games’ work on No Man’s Sky has garnered over the past year include winning the Game of the Year 2019—Best Ongoing Game award and the Game of the Year 2019: Best VR Experience award.