No Man's Sky

[Art Blade]

in case you haven't yet set your shadows to lowest, try it. In all those years, and respectively different PCs, reducing shadows has always helped me. Additionally, low to no anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering usually gives a few extra frames.

[fragger]

Yep, did that. Everything is either turned off, or if it can't be turned off, set to its lowest setting. Lowest possible (usable) res, Vsync off, AA off, HBAO off - everything that can be off is off, including things like mouse smoothing. I've experimented with the game's Frame Rate setting until I'm blue in the face. I've been down every possible avenue there is in the game's Graphics Options menu.

It's just a picky and cantankerous game, I think. Even those suggested fixes I mentioned seeing online yield very inconsistent results, according to the feedback - they w0#k for some people and not for others. None of them seem to w0#k for me thus far.

When it's at its worst, I can almost visually count the frame rate - like about 5-6 FPS. Mind you, it's only like that if I'm on foot on a planet with fauna, flora and grasses, or seas. I don't get such an atrocious rate in ANY other game. GTA V, with all that varied traffic, scores of people wandering around, ever-changing weather, aircraft flying overhead, and an absolute ton of detail, both 2D and 3D (and with that large draw distance), runs beautifully - at 1920x1080 native res, with most options at around medium setting (no AA though), and I have no probs whatsoever with it.

It's just NMS. It's overly finicky about certain hardware configs, it seems to me. A better graphics card might help, but then again it might not. There are people out there who have whizz-bang cards and even they have probs with the game - yet there are those who do not, and they do not. Anyway, I'm not about to fork out for a new graphics card at this point in time for the sake of one game.

There's still some settings in NVidia control panel I can try, going to look at that next.

[LowPolyOWG]

Shadows are usually CPU bound. MSAA can be taxing, deferred render engines usually don't play well with that. Developers have opted for post-process solutions instead (SMAA, or supersampled AA). AF should not be a performance hit.

What is your GPU, fragger?

[fragger]

It's an old one, GeForce GT 545. Still, it does the job with everything else OK. I know it's getting long n the tooth, but new PC hardware is well down on the list of priorities at present.

Just tried a NVidia settings fix, which apparently works for quite a number of NVidia users: Power Settings to "Prefer Maximum Performance", Shader Cache OFF, Vsync ON (turned OFF in NMS's graphics settings), "Set Pre-rendered Frames" to 1 and Triple-Buffering enabled.

No joy, still jerky as ever when in the situation as described in the last post - fauna, flora and grass - but particularly bad with all those things while near buildings. In space or on planets with no fauna/flora, pretty smooth. Even at best, NMS has never been a star performer on my rig.

[Art Blade]

well. Only visit planets without fauna, then

[fragger]

 

I don't like that planet with the dinoparrots anyway. I have to look over my shoulder all the time when I'm there Unfortunately, it's the one planet in the system with lots of habitations and valuable stuff on it

I tried building some of those transmission towers which you can set up yourself, and was able to use them to find drop pods. Maybe they changed things since the last update, but they don't appear to act as waypoints. Once I leave them, unless I'm lucky enough to accidentally stumble across them again later, their locations aren't indicated in any way, so they just become lost.

When a wreck is located as a result of interacting with a terminal, I could just abstain from going there immediately, in which case the wreck marker will stay on the HUD so I can find it later - but then I won't know what kind of ship it is nor what's required to salvage it. If I go there to find out, its location marker will disappear and I probably won't be able to find it again if I have to fly away to get the stuff. Catch 22.

Only other way is to carry everything I think I might need for a salvage - things like Dynamic Resonators, along with lots of the most commonly used crafting resources like Iron, Carbon and Plutonium, and just hope I have everything covered for a potential salvage on the spot

[Art Blade]

that sounds as if in theory they had the right idea but didn't really test it.

[LowPolyOWG]

PCGamingWiki's NMS article


Lots of issues there being reported

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, the beacon is what you want to create a waypoint to go back to, a lot of the places you find, even if you tag them as found in the discoveries list, don't stay as icons on your HUD anymore, to keep them from over crowding, I expect.

I finally finished the armory mission last night, by defeating the sentinels in orbit. I loaded up on iron and other metals to recharge my shields and had a go at it. First try I flew close to the big ship and shot out all the turrets on one side and used it as a shield, and was able to shoot down a couple of the fighters, and actually got the message that the mission was complete and to report back to the armory, but I got greedy and went after one more ship only to get destroyed. Second try I flew into a group of freighters and used them as shields but I couldn't maneuver around them fast enough, so that failed. I did get the sentinels to shoot at the freighters, though, and they actually destroyed part of one, but the freighters never shot back.

Third time, I went back to my original tactic and used the large sentinel ship as a shield, and got very familiar with the quick buttons to recharge my shields, and just barely made it to the message to complete the mission. I had no shields left, no materials to recharge them, and one life icon left. My phase cannons were out of power and I had nothing to recharge them either, so I hightailed it back to base. The ships followed me for a certain distance then broke off when I hit atmosphere. When I landed, the local sentinels were all mad when they are usually pretty laid back on this world, so I had to shoot two or three of them once I got out of my ship. Once inside, the armory missions done, I moved on to the dune buggy missions and built the parking area for that and drove it around a bit. I now have to go destroy some depot and get the stuff from it, but I have no marker to go by so I have no idea where it is, or if I'm supposed to take the dune buggy or fly there.

Oh yeah, I tried the new "tethered" flight controls and really don't understand how that's supposed to w0#k. I went back to the normal controls, at least they respond a little better. Maybe I'll try flying with the controller next time, not sure if I ever tried that before or not.

[Art Blade]

I flew close to the big ship and shot out all the turrets on one side and used it as a shield

clever, good tactic

and got very familiar with the quick buttons to recharge my shields

hehe

[fragger]

That sounds like something to look forward too... Thanks for the warning, D_B

I don't know what I have to do to get blueprints for Multitool upgrades now. The only one I've gotten so far is "Beam Intensity 1". The blueprint merchant at the station only has a couple of (new types of) Multitool upgrades, a "Flora Analyzer" and a "Fauna Analyzer" (or something like that) which I think increase the scanning range and/or speed for scanning each of those things respectively. No Combat Beam upgrades or Beam Coolants or Boltcaster or Plasma Launcher/Grenades - nothing super useful, in other words. I don't know how you get those now, or ship upgrades - maybe you have to go interstellar and try at other stations. I did get a suit upgrade blueprint from a Korvax guy in a structure on a planet via "bartering". You can barter money or resource with them for stuff, but you never know what you'll get in return, i.e. you might just as likely get a bunch of Nanites from them as a blueprint.

All the other blueprints for sale from station-guy are Exosuit ones like Shield Boost and Environment Protection (radiation, heat, etc). The only really useful suit upgrades I've bought from him so far are for Stamina and Jetpack (level 1 and 2 for each).

Maybe I'm missing something, or there's more I have to do to unlock more upgrades. In classic NMS fashion, there is no indication of how to go about these sorts of things - you just have to try things and see what happens.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Since I already had the upgraded weapon, I didn't get into that situation, the guy at the station had a bunch of new things like a Javelin something or other, but since what I already had works well enough for me, I didn't bother. I bought some of his stuff just to get rid of the things you buy with, as they take up inventory space unlike money which doesn't and he's the only one that takes those. The drop pods still take money to buy new suit inventory slots, as does the guy who sells you blue prints for base building. Not sure why they thought it necessary to create another money unit for the sole purpose of weapon upgrades, that take up inventory space.

[Art Blade]

that's stupid.

[fragger]

Yes, it is.

I've noticed that now, in addition to your regular suit slots, you can also purchase large-capacity slots for your suit (which cost more, of course) and "Tech" slots from Drop Pods. I think you can put your upgrades in the Tech slots, so that the upgrades don't take up any room among your regular slots. I've started the game with four tech slots but it looks like you can have up to ten of them (you may be able to have more, I don't know yet, but there is a kind of "frame" around the existing slots which appears to indicate a total of ten. I don't know how many large capacity slots you can have). When you interact with a Drop Pod, you can choose to buy one of these three slot types. You can move resources between the regular slots and the large capacity ones, just like you move things between your suit and your ship, and vise-versa.

I think you can only put "stackable" items in the large capacity slots, such as resources. I don't think you can put a single recharging or trading object like a Power Cell or a Fascination Bead in them (am yet to verify that). You can put Nanite Clusters in them however, which you use to trade at the station for upgrades.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, that's what I've been using the high capacity suit inventories for, storing the money used to buy upgrades. Once they over flow, I go to the station and buy everything available just to get rid of them. I haven't had the option to buy a new tech slot yet, just the large storage slots, or I didn't look at the interface close enough to notice if there's another option. Since I already have my normal suit maxed out, I only get the option to buy the cargo slots.

I didn't think of putting anything in the tech slots, I'll have to see what I can put there, I've only got the special gloves needed to harvest certain dangerous materials that will go there as far as I know.