With the release of No Man’s Sky, it’s hard to dispute just how well the game runs overall. Complete with what might as well be a limitless universe of planets, and the ability to hop from planet to planet within a system without loading screens, there is a lot to admire. That said, at rare points the frame rate can drop pretty dramatically.
Putting No Man’s Sky through the paces, Digital Foundry found that, in almost all cases, the game sticks to it’s promised 30fps. When first arriving on a planet however, if the player boosts and shoots across the surface of the planet, forcing the game to procedurally generate everything as they go, that frame rate can plummet. The study lists framerates as low as 13fps. Thankfully though, it seems all the player needs to do in order to fix the issue is slow down or even just turn around.
“So there’s an easy fix, but why is this happening? Well, logic suggests that the procedurally generated approach to world creation in No Man’s Sky is going to be CPU-driven,” Digital Foundry explains. “Everything has to be calculated ad hoc. These drops are essentially a trade-off for not having any loading times, and letting everything render in seamlessly.”
No Man’s Sky is out now on PS4 and will arrive on PC August 12.