As of BEYOND v2.0, there’s talk about it, but nothing solid. When questioned, Sean said, “It’d be interesting to see what could be done”, but mentioned their pretty content, atm. There’s a quiet underground buzz, where players express a desire toward it, but question whether Hello Games could even pull it off, let alone do it right — Why? Because…
Nintendo is an even weaker system than PlayStation, and NMS pushes all limits and boundaries even there — And yet v2.0 somehow defies all logic and now delivers NMS PS4 Virtual Reality — We do not comprehend what we see, as nearly the entire community seriously doubted PC VR was even possible, let alone PS VR, but we just merely accept it because we see it - and boy do we experience it!
So where does the VR come from? — NMS Nintendo Switch™ Labo™ VR
Point is ⦂ Nintendo would open up a huge market and a whole other community.
No Man’s Sky Mobile VR
Nothing could be the greater personification of ❝An Infinite Universe in an App❞ than ❝An Infinite Universe in a Mobile App❞. Only thing that could outdo NMS Mobile would be NMS Mobile VR - Well except for the higher quality of NMS PC VR.
The question is clear: How over cellular? - PC is powerful, Xbox One is great, PS4 is decent, Nintendo Switch is a question and Smartphones are, well - Should a mobile version feature super simplified graphics, like Joe Danger or Astroneer? - And yet, Fortnite and PUBG are on Mobile. No?
Go to Walmart and what do all their VR headsets have in common? What gaming system does nearly everyone have access to? I’ll give you a hint: It travels with you everywhere you go and chances are, it’s either in your hand or in you’re pocket, right at this very moment? — Smartphones!
Point is ⦂ Availability on Apple & Android Mobile Devices would reach ALL!!!
Granted, sustained usage of handheld devices do present certain health risks, generally related to ergonomics like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, so it would be a good idea to take breaks. And for mobile, I’d suggest a Bluetooth keyboard & mouse or other controller, with a hands-free smartphone holder.
❝Space? There’s an app for that!❞
Questions:
Is any of this even possible? — How much? — And to what extent?
Is it worth the effort? — Would many buy &/or play? — Would you?
What reception awaits NMS on the Nintendo & Mobile platforms?
What effort would be needed in order to achieve these dreams? ꙳
꙳ Hello Games be like, ❝Define Logic or Defy Logic?❞ — Grit!
For mobile, quite frankly no. I don’t think mobile devices will ever reach the processing power to run something like NMS, the main reason being power consumption. We might get a compact enough processing and memory package one day, but we can’t lower power consumption below a certain point, and while we might even come up with batteries powerful enough to power such a load for a reasonable amount of time, there will always be the heat, which is physically impossible to eliminate.
I honestly believe the only way you can ever conveniently play something this demanding on a cellphone or small tablet is by streaming. But of course your user interface will suck so much that you might not want to.
The switch… difficult to say. The downgrading would have to be pretty severe. I personally don’t see it happening, but wouldn’t consider it outright impossible as I do a mobile port.
For context, let’s ask ourselves an interesting question, which leads to more questions…
What’s the difference between ❝Fortnite Mobile❞ and ❝PUBG Mobile❞, and ❝CS:GO Mobile❞, verses the concept of ❝NMS Mobile❞?
For starters, CS:GO Mobile seems to not officially exist. Or exists as streamed from ‘Steam on PC’ to a mobile device using an App that provides a likewise ‘PC to mobile’ interface — So this concept doesn’t travel in a pocket, and is therefore not what I’m talking about.
However, Fortnite Mobile and PUBG Mobile ‘DO’ officially exist and with 4.5 / 5 star reviews!
Fortnite Mobile has been a thing since roughly mid-2018
File Sizes (Apple): Fortnite 189.2 MB; PUBG 3 GB
Fortnite isn’t on Steam / PUBG is: “Storage: 30 GB available space”
So PUBG is 3 GB Apple verses 30 GB Steam — Why the big file size difference?
Would NMS Mobile require a smaller file size?
Quoting NMS on Steam — “Storage: 10 GB available space”
Compared with other immersive 1st person and graphicly-rich mobile games, like Fortnite, PUBG and any others — Would the procedural nature of NMS be the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or the house that squashed the camel flat? — These appear to be quite intense games, both processing and graphically speaking | Or are they not? — And yet we see it working.
What could this mean for the future of No Man’s Sky?
Yeah, in my estimation the second one hits the nail fairly well. While both of the examples are graphically similarly demanding as NMS (and I would assume have therefore been downgraded massively for mobile), they do not in fact put very high demands on the CPU, just like most modern games.
You have to realise that a capable PC CPU is ridiculously underutilised by most games. This is because most of the calculations required for them (i.e. graphics, graphics, graphics) are not suited to their architecture and would force even the highest-end CPUs to their knees instantly if you were forcing them to do that job. That’s why GPUs were invented. They can do these calculations faster than a CPU by orders of magnitudes, but are conversely physically incapable of doing many tasks a CPU can do with ease due to their serialised nature, where data can only be passed down the pipeline, never back up.
The most demanding task that CPUs generally do in games is pathfinding and collision detection, both well understood problems that have been efficiently solved for decades now and that are further supported by the games design (collision meshes with a fraction of the polycount of the actual graphics mesh, predefined nodes for pathfinding, etc). Now comes NMS, and it does a whoooole lot more on that CPU, and needs a boatload of additional memory. Fine for a PC, there’s both to spare. Problematic on a games console, whose CPU isn’t nearly as capable because you don’t expect it to be used and that shares its working memory with its video memory because you usually don’t need that much of the former, but they managed to pull it off. But Mobile has a distinct shortage on both (The IPhone 11 pro has 6 GB of ram… and while I’m not sure, I would expect this to be shared with the video memory). That’s a problem in and of itself, regardless of the fact that the heavy simultaneous load on CPU, GPU and RAM will drain your battery at ludicrous speeds.
And while downscaling much of the post-tasks of the procgen like polygonisation etc. is trivial, downscaling the procgen backend is probably impossible.
Optional FREE Social Mobile App in Augmented Reality
But first, let’s pick back up where we left off and work our way to the bottom.
Define: Logic
noun : textbook education grounded in strict traditional reasonings
And so there you have it…
NMS Mobile VR — An open and closed case | Unless they “Defy: Logic”
NMS Nintendo — Similar questionings of, “How?” - At the cost of what?
No Man’s Sky’s Strongest Point is Procedural
No Man’s Sky’s Weakest Point is Procedural
NMS shines with all its brilliance on a PC, but Hello Games reaches out to consoles, and in doing so reaches a broader audience, but at the cost of a lower quality presentation on these platforms, and the increased technical challenge of having taken on these technical feats.
One has really got to admire the team for what they actually do!
Procedural Generation in many ways feels like Virtual Reality, a future technology that feels either ahead of its time or perhaps it is that NMS just barely exists on the bleeding edge of some Sci-Fi future civilization. Perhaps NMS shouldn’t exist, but it does, and for that we can be thankful.
Now, if only technology can catch up with Hello Games. Imagine what NMS would look like on a PC with double the strength of what we have now. Yes, that’s the computer I want to be playing!
❝An Infinite Universe in an App❞
❝Space? There’s an app for that!❞ ╭𐎸
FAST FACT:
Did you know that Fortnite is available for ‘CROSS-PLATFORM PLAY’?
This has been a thing for a while now, but just wasn’t fully released until March 2019, once PlayStation finally made a decision to participate and integration was complete, and right along with this came the inclusion of a mobile app. What this means is, players can play together across all platforms — PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC / MAC and Apple / Android Mobile.
What if NMS offered cross-platform play?
The Bubble Bee ⦂ It shouldn’t be capable!
We believe it, only because we now see it.
Should we believe only in what we can see, or hope even… in what we cannot see, possible?
Come to think of it, I’m starting to realize that this reminds me of what I guess has become…
My Own Nativity Story
On June 19, 2017, came the 1st topic I ever created on this forum, and it was to help our Emily with breaking it to people that NMS and Waking Titan were in fact connected. We may recall, that she started encouraging everyone to start learning about NMS, but as soon as the fans showed up and started talking, they just kept being shot down by the ‘strictly ARG’ folks. Seeing the situation, I then joined, started a topic about portals and lead a discussion, which then grew into the everything of NMS.
We were then moved from a NMS Topic into an official ‘No Man’s Sky Category’. And that’s when I started an ongoing series of ‘Screenshots & Multimedia’ topics. Which a year later were dispersed into an official ‘Creative Sub-Category’. And yet prior to that, I had started exploring the concepts of VR and MMOG which furthered into AR, which nearly all doubted and with logical reasonings.… in what they could not see, possible!
However, ‘seeing’ that Hello Games were ‘able to defy’ all of our logical reasonings — As to why NMS VR wasn’t possible on a PC, let alone on an inferior PS4 console — That the Vulcan update portion of BEYOND v2.0 was a major part of their solution, basically a complete overhaul of their graphics engine, as well as a complete overhaul of many other aspects — Seeing their solution in combination with their abilities…
How could NMS Mobile defy all logic?
And for all logical reasonings, based on the traditional textbook understandings that we all have spread out before us across the vastness of the ‘interwebs’, and based on our prior and present reactions, I do certainly predict nearly all of our replies to be either, “No reply”, “I don’t know” or “It ain’t happening, move on.”
Put Simply ⦂ If they pull it off, with what’s before them, it’d be a miracle! - No?
And yet years ago, nobody believed ❝An Infinite Universe in an App❞ was in anyway possible. Such a concept was a writer’s work of Sci-Fi unto itself, and then HG defied all of our logical reasonings and dropped 18 quintillion unique planets into a shared universe, and without all the traditional loading screens — How? And today, we can now attempt an explanation…
Sean Murray, I’ve come to learn something about you and your team at Hello Games, not to underestimate your abilities to push the boundaries of “what is” with Sci-Fi conceptuals of…
What if…
(and that’s a complement)
BRAINSTORMING
Can we invent an internal or external CPU / GPU / RAM / Video upgrade? What options are presently available? Would we be talking hardware or software, or a combo of both? Or is a downgrade the only option before us? Or some new take on procedural? Or, all things considered - Beyond just playing NMS as a mobile game - Should we look outside the concept…
What other uses could a mobile app provide?
And… What if such uses were combined with cross-platform play?
If PC, Xbox and PS could all MMOG / Co-Op play together, the universe would be more alive than ever! — Add Nintendo and Mobile, too? — Oh, if only technology could just catch up. Or if only NMS weren’t procedural, yet we’d have it no other way!
So… Realistically: Could a NMS Mobile App prove to be fun and useful in ways beyond just playing the game. We as players already have social media for social profiles and have access to a suite of useful tools — But there is this one idea that does strike me as intriguing, an absolute in-game immersion…
What if our player-characters had their very own in-game social media system, complete with user profiles that auto-sync and update with chosen in-game stats, details and character mugshots, and present ship/fleet/tool shots and stats, where our character profile and a name we choose for our character could be displayed separate from our player name and social links, complete with ability to follow other users and a newsfeed with ability to post updates and hit like, mimicking that of real-life? ← This would be our equivalent of ‘AR’ (Augmented Reality).
It could be located on nomanssky.com as a subdomain. What would be the most appropriate name?
Options for Accessibility: (1) Directly in-game; (2) FREE download on the Apple / Android Stores.
BONUS: When writing a post, we could have a system of preset hashtags to choose from, like for version and media type, similar to what we have here through Discourse (like ‘category > subcategory’) but more intricate than Discourse (Example: #NoMansSky#BEYOND#Screenshots).
Which would also fix our issue of having to write ‘BEYOND’ in front of all new topics.
And so there you have it…
Mobile-Friendly Social Website
Optional FREE Social Mobile App
Consider replacing this Discourse forum by merging and archiving all contents and user-credentials into a mobile-friendly website, a subdomain on nomanssky.com. And perhaps an NMS Mobile App would be best suited as an optional FREE companion for the purpose of enabling in-game social media, accessible cross-platform anywhere, anytime, 24/7 of 365, and with real time notifications — Now, Tie all that in with Hubs & eSports! — And let’s covert that VR to an AR, and then blend it - Behold!
The NMS Mobile AR App
No Man’s Sky ⦂ ❝An Infinite Universe in V/AR Apps❞
After all…
Waking Titan ARG’s ⦂ ‘WARE’ or ‘V/ARE’ teased ‘VR/AR’ into — Reality!
This is a box 🙼🙼 Should we think inside or outside 🙼🙼 Would HG?
Is the above not grounded in logic? Or is the logic not yet grounded?
About 12 months ago, I examined whether bringing NMS to a mobile app was a farfetched fantasy or a viable possibility. And at that time, the answer was an absolute, “No!” Deflated, I then examined other alternatives, but bringing it to smartphones everywhere, was still the best option. And still impossible.
Today, however…
Technological Celebration!
Immediately after I posted all the above and discussion ensued, came serious talk about cloud gaming.
So I watched and waited, and came the launch of Google Stadia, bringing the most advanced games to smartphones everywhere. The reaction was of course mixed, and it was over the subtleties of quality and some mild latency. Also, not all users have or locations provide a decent internet connection. However, while any sign of latency whatsoever puts esports into question, I would not call any of these major complaints. It just doesn’t work for all users or within all locations, which I think is to be expected of such a thing, or anything otherwise, really. — Right?
Therefore, I see that this could be a very good fit for bringing NMS to mobile. And I’m sure that Google will only continue to improve upon their Stadia cloud gaming service, just as their competitors PlayStation Now, GeForce Now, Xbox xCloud or any others that may rise, will attempt to do likewise.
And so may I present…
NMS Mobile App VR - Solved!
HOT TIP
Put the processing power on the server and not on the end-user. Think cloud gaming!
@Crimsontine : For current discussion we prefer to not post in archived topics. If need be, you can always start a new topic and possibly reference the archived discussion. In this case I have moved your post to a topic where other discussion has been active for the new Steam Deck:
Edit: Actually made the Steam Deck discussion a separate topic as well.
For context, let’s ask ourselves an interesting question, which leads to more questions…
❝Space? There’s an app for that!❞ ╭𐎸
How could NMS Mobile defy all logic? 
This is a box 🙼🙼 Should we think inside or outside 🙼🙼 Would HG? 
Or is the logic not yet grounded?
Always on the bleeding edge of being created ALMOST too soon. 
Crazy!
