Late last night Hello Games updated the Experimental Branch of No Man’s Sky on Steam with additional fixes for VR users and some of those fixes were specifically targeting Rift this time.
Last week the Experimental Branch was updated with improvements for Vive and Index, but this week the developer specifically listed Rift improvements as an item on the patch notes. According to the developer’s Steam forum, this latest update does the following:
- Further adjustments to PC VR optimisations.
- Improved VR-specific anti-aliasing.
- Fixed a rendering crash.
- Broadened the PC VR optimisations to include Oculus.
- When in VR, removed a number of settings that have no effect in VR.
Since this isn’t the main branch of the game you have to opt into it by right clicking on No Man’s Sky in your Steam Library, selecting ‘Properties,’ navigating to the ‘Betas’ tab, and then typing in ‘3xperimental’ into the box and clicking ‘Check Code.’ Then you should see “experimental – Experimental” listed as your opt into choice. After a short update, you’ll be good to go.
However, it is of course worth noting that you opt into this beta version at your own risk. There is always the chance it could corrupt a save file or result in unexpected bugs, so you’d be best advised to back up your save file.
I just tried out the new Experimental branch on my Rift S and could notice a slight performance difference. It wasn’t dramatic, but around my main base on my home planet the stuttering is less than it was before and framerate feels much smoother. Exiting and entering planet atmospheres feels smoother as well and flying is very noticeably improved in terms of performance.
Hopefully next Hello Games considers issuing a PS4 Pro-focused patch to improve the blurry PSVR visuals. In the meantime, read our reviews of the game for the PSVR version and PC VR version.
