about 4 years ago - Hello Games - Direct link
Hello Everyone,

First of all, thanks so much to everyone who has already spent time playing No Man's Sky and letting us know about any issues you’ve experienced.

Steam users are able to opt-in to the Experimental Branch, where we have pushed a patch to address some problems. We’ll be rolling out these fixes to other platforms as soon as possible.

To play in Experimental, right-click on No Man’s Sky from the Steam library page and select “Properties”. Among the available tabs will be the “BETAS” tab. Enter “3xperimental” in the textbox and press “CHECK CODE”, then select it from the dropdown menu.

The patch notes are as follows:

Experimental Branch Update 07/10
  • Further VR optimisations.

Experimental Branch Update 05/10
  • Fixed an issue that prevented players from using the Multi-Tool upgrade terminal in VR.
  • Additional fixes to provide a smoother framerate in VR.

Experimental Branch Update 01/10
  • Fixed an issue that caused frozen dead worlds to report overly warm temperatures.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause your ship to teleport inside buildings when visiting bases.
  • Trader ships that land on the planet's surface will now crush any objects they land on.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the Photo Mode cloud coverage option to be unavailable on some planets.
  • Fixed an issue that caused items awarded by the Planetary Archive vaults to change rarity after save/load.
  • Fixed a number of minor errors in interactions.
  • Players may now use the back-out button to select the 'Leave' option in an interaction.

Experimental Branch 30/09
  • Fixed an issue that allowed the personal forcefield to activate while using the Analysis Visor.
  • Fixed an issue that caused a different mission to be selected when moving from one step of the Artemis story to another.
  • Increased the likelihood of meteor showers on dead planets.
  • Fixed an issue that caused an occasional checkerboard pattern to appear on the terrain on frozen and volcanic worlds.
  • Fixed a number of audio issues with creatures.
  • Improved the controls in Photo Mode, adding acceleration to the camera movement to allow more fine-tuned adjustments.
  • Added the ability to tilt the camera in Photo Mode.
  • Fixed an issue that caused screenshots taken in Photo Mode to be cropped to the wrong FOV.
  • Weather warning decals are no longer visible in Photo Mode.
  • Fixed an issue that caused vegetation and other planetary items to be spread too thin when viewed at a distance.
  • Fixed an occasional visual glitch that caused stretched polygons in the grass.
  • Improved the icon for the Data Packet.
  • Fix an issue that caused the Vy'keen smuggler to only say 'Grah!'
  • Fixed an issue on PC that prevented base thumbnails from showing in the teleporter.
  • When using the Analysis Visor, more distant markers are now shown slightly faded out.
  • In Photo Mode, props will now be shown at the highest possible detail setting.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause players to very occasionally warp into a system inside a planet.
  • Fixed an number of flickering issues present when using DoF controls in Photo Mode.
  • Fixed an issue that made it difficult to summon the starship on some planets.
  • Fixed an issue that caused incorrect discovery counts to appear on planets where nothing had been discovered.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the Local Information Register to display the system name as the planet name and vice versa.
  • Exchanging an artefact at a Planetary Archive vault now correctly awards standing with the relevant faction.
  • Fixed an issue that blocked other players from using the vaults at the Planetary Archives in multiplayer.
  • Virtual keyboard is now supported in Steam VR.
  • Fixed a number of clipping issues in the UI.
  • Fixed a number of text issues.
  • Fixed an issue where using the Steam VR desktop overlay would spin the game camera.
  • Fixed an issue that caused incorrect thumbnails to display on the Discovery Page.
  • Opening the Discovery Page immediately after discovering something now correctly takes you straight to the details of that discovery.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the discovery thumbnail in the Analysis Visor to occasionally appear corrupted.
  • Fixed an issue that caused oxygen plants and carbon crystals to award too much of their substance on some planets.
  • Fixed an issue that caused distant thunder audio to only play occasionally.
  • Fixed an issue that caused some creatures to appear at an incorrect position or scale when viewed on the Discovery page.
  • Fixed an issue that caused some flying creatures to be classified as 'Ground' by the Discovery Page.
  • Fixed an issue that caused jellyfish to face the wrong way while swimming.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented teleporter destinations from other galaxies from being visible on the teleport page.
  • Fixed an issue that caused some PC users with Windows hardware acceleration enabled to only see a white screen on boot.
  • Fixed a number of audio and rumble issues with the Sandworm in multiplayer.
  • Improved the displacement effect on vegetation when it is pushed by the player or creatures.
  • Fixed a rare softlock that could occur when entering the ship at the moment you die.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause poor framerate on PC VR.

As always, thank you to all players who use Experimental and take the time to report any issues you encounter.

Please note there is the possibility that experimental builds may introduce new issues that haven't been caught in test. We'd like to recommend that all players back up their save files, by making a local copy of the st_[userid] folder found here: %appdata%\HelloGames\NMS\

Note that we don't anticipate any issues here. However, performing your own backups could mean the difference between resuming play immediately, or waiting for the next patch.

If you decide to opt out of experimental and return to the main branch, we strongly recommend resuming from a backed-up save from the main branch, rather than taking an experimental branch save back to main, which may cause unexpected behaviour.

Feedback and reports of new bugs/issues being found on Experimental are welcome, so please reply to this thread or submit a ticket to https://hellogames.zendesk.com/ with the phrase "Steam Experimental" in the ticket title. If you are running any mods for the game, please list them along with your bug report.