Playstation VR 2: No Man's Sky update improves foveated rendering
No Man's Sky is a fantastic experience on PSVR 2. An update improves the foveated rendering and resolves an issue with particle effects.
In the summer, Hello Games surprised us with an update that enabled foveated rendering on the Playstation VR 2. This rendering technique renders only the area of the image that the user is looking at in full resolution and detail, saving an enormous amount of computing power. The visual trickery behind it is largely unnoticeable.
In the case of No Man's Sky, the visual difference is night and day and has amazed many fans who have strapped on the VR headset after the update. Where the game previously suffered from low resolution and detail, it now shines in all its glory, thanks to foveated rendering and engine programmer Martin Griffiths. The studio's graphics wizard spent four months implementing the rendering technology into the No Man's Sky engine. Since then, the game has become a visual highlight and a must-have title for Playstation VR 2.
No Man's Sky: Render pipeline now fully "foveated"
However, the implementation was not perfect: I and other VR users noticed that many particle effects appeared unusually large and coarse, which marred the overall visual impression.
This graphical anomaly has been fixed in update 4.46 so that particles are now rendered correctly. In a tweet, Griffiths explains that the foveated rendering did not take into account certain particle systems and that the issue has now been fixed. I put on my Playstation VR 2 to see the changes for myself and can confirm that the particle rendering bug has been fixed. No Man's Sky looks even better now.
A few improvements to PSVR2 made it into the No Man's Sky 4.46 release today - in particular a large class of particles weren't foveated in the original release - these are now resolved... a final fix for terrain edits means that all render stages in our pipeline are now foveated! pic.twitter.com/hborVqMK8f
- Martin Griffiths (@Griff_) December 8, 2023
Griffiths also fixed an issue with terrain, which is now fully foveated like the rest of the render pipeline, and improved the latency of eye tracking when using the render technique. In addition to these PSVR 2 specific improvements, update 4.46 brings a left-handed mode for all VR platforms on which No Man's Sky is available.
It's great to see Hello Games continuing to provide updates and improvements to the VR version of No Man's Sky. We hope that the studio's new big project, Light No Fire, will also get VR support at some point.
Note: Links to online stores in articles can be so-called affiliate links. If you buy through this link, MIXED receives a commission from the provider. For you the price does not change.
