It takes billions of years to see all of No Man's Sky
The universe is a pretty big place, and No Man's Sky's development team wants to replicate its span as best as it can. It's ambitions were grand enough for Hello Games' Sean Murray to say that the universe in No Man's Sky is "infinite" when it was revealed for PS4 at E3 in June. Of course, the game isn't really "infinite," and Hello Games is fully aware of that, and ultimately wants the game to "surprise" players. The developer addressed that late last week with IGN, discussing its previous use of a 32-bit number to automatically generate the planets in the game.
"With that 32-bit number it would take you four or five thousand years to see every planet if you spent only a second on each one," it said. See? Not infinite. However, the developer noted that it is now using a 64-bit number to procedurally produce No Man's Sky's universe, which means it will take roughly five billion years to see each planet in the game. The still-not-infinite-but-rather-huge universe of No Man's Sky will arrive on PC after it launches on PS4, though it's unknown just when that will be.
[Image: Hello Games]
