No Man’s Sky preview: 10 hours in and it’s fiercely good fun

No Man’s Sky needs no introduction: it’s one of the 2016’s most-hyped games, thanks to a scale and ambition which is possibly unmatched in the history of videogames. For this space-age epic boasts a game-world that consists of more than 18 quintillion planets. Yes, you read that right.

It also boasts a back-story that epitomises the very best of British indie development – tiny team conceives something which is stunningly original, inducing Sony to put its considerable resources behind – and an eye-popping art-style that references 1960s and 70s pulp-sci-fi book covers.

But beyond its undoubted technological achievements, what is it like as a game, and is it any good? We’re 10 hours of fun in…

No Man’s Sky review: Never-ending play?

Annoyingly, right now we can’t answer exactly how good No Man’s Sky is with any degree of definitiveness. This game is the latest victim of a disease which has taken hold of the games industry this year: having not been allowed a single second of play time during its development period, we finally received review code at roughly 2pm on Monday August 8 – the day before No Man’s Sky hit the shops in the UK.

Having foregone sleep for your edification, though, we can at least present our first impressions. A full review will follow when we’ve had the time to assess every aspect of the game (and especially the robustness of its servers, a topic which has generated some early unease). Well, almost every – we’ll never see every planet, because nobody will, not even the game’s developers.

First impressions, at least, are good – very, very good. One aspect of No Man’s Sky which remained completely unseen, no matter how many gorgeous-looking “sizzle” videos Sony used it to make, was a fairly major one: its gameplay.

Happily, it turns out that it actually does have gameplay beyond mere exploration, which is very enjoyable and massively addictive.

No Man’s Sky review: What sort of game is it?

No Man’s Sky puts all its players in an identical starting position: on a planet on the fringes of the galaxy, which nobody apart from you has ever visited.

You have a spaceship, but it has obviously crashed and is non-functional, so your first task is to get it going again. You do that by mining elemental resources (carbon, plutonium, iron and the like), which are acquired by blasting rock outcrops and vegetation with your multi-tool, a laser which also doubles as gun.

Hand-holding is kept to a minimum, although you have a bit of guidance from a mysterious red orb with connection to the Atlas, an alien race which, so the game hints, was instrumental in bringing civilisation to the galaxy. You also find jettisoned pods containing resources and useful items that can be used for crafting.

At first, it’s all about resource-gathering, exploration and crafting, and those remain the pillars of No Man’s Sky’s gameplay throughout: but there’s an awful lot more to it than that.

You soon discover that you can scan plants and animals (as long as you have the scanner element of your multi-tool running), for which you’re rewarded with in-game currency. As you are for uploading planets you’ve discovered and even waypoints on those planets to the server (everyone who plays No Man’s Sky will be traversing a single instance of the same game).

In practice, because everyone starts at a unique point, and because of the insane number of planets involved (according to developer Hello Games, if you visited every planet for a second, it would take you 565 billion years to get to all of them), every planet you chance upon is previously unknown.

No Man’s Sky review: Early stages

In the game’s early stages, one aspect swiftly generates mild annoyance: the inventory system.

Your multi-tool and your spaceship have defined numbers of inventory slots, and you can move items between the two easily, but until you discover which elements are the most useful in which situations (zinc and platinum, for example, are handy for fuelling your life-support and anti-radiation systems, while plutonium is required for ship-related crafting), you soon fill those slots and have to decide what to drop and what to keep.

The situation is alleviated when you begin to acquire better multi-tools and spaceships, and you soon crave the relief of finding traders who will convert your unwanted junk into hard cash. So what initially feels like a pain turns out to be a subtle way of introducing you to the full depth of a game. At every turn, No Man’s Sky exhibits clever touches.

No Man’s Sky review: What’s it like to play?

Once you fix your spaceship’s engine, the fun really starts. It’s pretty easy to fly: there’s one control for take-off, and then you can accelerate and brake with buttons using the basic impulse drive; landing is automatic and involves a single button-press.

To exit a planet and head into space, just point your spaceship’s nose straight upwards and hit the gas. You can also trigger a pulse-jump, which sees you travelling super-fast, with Star Trek warp drive-style visuals to match (which can be triggered in space or within planets’ atmospheres).

In the initial stages of the game, you’re given a few highlighted destinations, the first of which is a space-station. There you meet your first alien (in our case, a member of the Vek species – your experience will be different), with whom you can trade, and you start picking up transmissions from places worth investigating, as well as blueprints for new technology – perhaps the most important of which is a hyper drive.

Now your ship is at least able to explore the local solar system, you can get down to the serious business of seeing what planets have to offer, and there’s plenty to do.

Even without small hints about areas you might want to check – which the game gives you frequently – cruising about above the surface of planets bears fruit, as you discover structures which, depending on their nature, yield different things. There are planetary outposts of various types – manufacturing facilities, for example, give you handy blueprints for crafting things like spaceship parts. To get those, you often have to solve simple logic-puzzles.

No Man’s Sky review: Defining your own story

There are ancient ruins which begin to add a bit of narrative thrust: apart from teaching you words from the languages of the local alien race, they give you visions of the Atlas, which fuel your vague, nagging drive to head towards the centre of the galaxy to find out more about the mysterious alien race.

Most buildings you locate give you multi-tool technology (far more than can be equipped at any time), and aliens you meet are great for giving you improved multi-tools – as long as you give them some raw materials by way of a gift.

The next big milestone is discovering how to make and building a hyper-drive for your spaceship. This allows you to make big sub-space leaps, along a defined path (although you can also target random planets), as you start your journey towards the centre of the galaxy. Now, truly, the galaxy is yours to explore – particularly when you work out how to craft the hyper-drive fuel from scratch, which involves turning raw materials into different objects and then, cleverly, combining those.

You’ll see echoes from fine games of the past in No Man’s Sky. Think of Mass Effect in the resource-gathering, multi-user dungeons in the text-based interaction with aliens and ancient ruins being the most obvious.

There’s a Zen-like quality to its gameplay (enhanced by great ambient music), and for anyone who enjoys exploration, it’s the stuff of dreams. It’s also an almighty universe which, in the manner of the best games, sucks time into its maw. Look at your watch after a pleasant period of bumbling around and you’ll find you’ve been playing for hours.

No Man’s Sky review: Unanswered questions

But many questions remain, which we’ll answer in the fullness of time.

For example, we haven’t yet encountered any human players: what will happen when we do?

We know that as you proceed towards the centre of the galaxy, you must upgrade your ship, and are more likely to encounter hostility (your ship and multi-tool have weapons, which rarely have to be used in your initial forays).

Whether any sort of overt storyline, rather than one which is airily hinted at, will emerge also remains to be seen.

And the effect of hordes of players logging onto servers is also unknown. Although, at first, your only real contact with the game’s online side involves uploading your discoveries – be they planets, flora or fauna.

First Impressions

After our limited initial amount of time with the game, we are well and truly hooked. Even just a couple of hours with No Man’s Sky it becomes obvious that it is a major triumph – as long as you don’t see constant, full-on action as a gaming pre-requisite.

It’s indisputably original, and really makes you feel like a space-pioneer, exploring vast expanses of space which, while often inhospitable are never less than thoroughly inviting. It’s a game you can lose yourself in, and certainly achieves its aim of generating a state of constant wonderment.

Quite why Sony and Hello Games didn’t have the confidence to show No Man’s Sky to anyone before launch is inexplicable. Watch this space and, when we’ve explored it more fully over a number of weeks, we’ll be able to tell you just how good it is and whether it’s a true contender for game of the year.

ICYMI: Robot tattoo artist and healing coral reefs

Today on In Case You Missed It: Scientists were able to program soft materials to shift their shape on digital command, which is only a precursor to our biggest tech news of this episode: That an industrial robot normally used to put together cars was repurposed to delicately give tattoos to human beings. Considering the robotic arm is large and heavy enough to lift car doors easily, we’d like to invite you all to give this tattoo artist a try first, please.

A team from Mote Marine Laboratory found that when you break coral down into microfragments it will regrow at 25 to 40 times the normal rate, which may help revitalize reefs in decayed areas. Considering only jellyfish are thriving in this era of global climate change, we’ll take the coral news as a win.

And finally some Zurich engineers crafted a bed that can rock people to sleep. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Starbucks starts selling Lyft gift cards next week

Lyft is teaming up with Starbucks to offer special $20 Lyft gift cards at participating stores across the nation. Starting next week, when you head into the coffee shop for a quick caffeine fix, you’ll also be able to pick up the gift cards for friends and family. With each gift card you purchase for someone else, you’ll get a kickback of a $5 Starbucks gift card as well.

The promotion is more than a little symbiotic, with Lyft passengers being offered the opportunity to rack up Starbucks Rewards Stars for choosing Lyft rides. In a first for the brand’s partnership, Lyft passengers who sign up for Lyft and link Starbucks accounts will receive 125 Stars to start with. That’s enough to redeem for a free cup of coffee. Beyond that, anyone who links their Starbucks Rewards and Lyft accounts together will get 5 Stars to add to their total each time they take a Lyft ride on Monday through Friday between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. It’ll take a while to rack up points for a free cup of coffee, but hey…it’s something.

If nothing else, the promotion should make it a lot easier for curious potential Lyft customers to get in rides, especially if there are tangible gift cards to purchase, and if you’re already using Lyft to get from point A to point B in the mornings making Starbucks runs anyway, this could be a very good thing for consumers who dabble with both companies.

Source: Lyft

NASA built an HDR camera to film rocket tests

We enjoy the hell out of static rockets tests, but NASA doesn’t do them for the lulz — they’re the crucial last step before a new booster launches. To get better data, the space agency developed a new HDR camera that showed what’s going on when the gigantic Space Launch System (SLS) rocket booster fires. Called the “High Dynamic Range Stereo X” (HiDyRS-X), it captured fine detail in the plume, which was “several orders of magnitude” brighter than what researchers had tested before.

HDR images are formed by combining multiple exposures, which are often taken one at a time or using multiple cameras. However, the NASA team, made up of young engineers from NASA’s Early Career Initiative (ECI), elected to use a single camera without image sequencing. By fitting it with custom chips and pixels, it can capture multiple images with varying exposures all at the same time. That allows it to compensate for the extremely bright plume, while remaining small enough to easily install on a rocket test stand.

After trying out the camera with smaller rocket motors, the team captured a full-scale test of NASA’s enormous SLS booster in Utah. Built by Orbital ATK, the rocket is the most powerful in the world, and the test was the last one scheduled before launch. The team had a tense moment during filming when they had to quickly override a malfunctioning automatic timer, and the end of the test was cut off when the powerful vibrations disconnected the power source.

The final result (above) was worth it, though, as the camera captured details never seen before in such a large test. “I was able to clearly see the exhaust plume, nozzle and the nozzle fabric go through its gimbaling patterns, which is an expected condition, but usually unobservable in slow motion or normal playback rates,” said NASA structural dynamist Howard Conyers. NASA will now build a second prototype with more advanced HDR and better manufacturing, thanks to the lessons it learned.

Via: PopSci

Source: NASA

Apple Says ‘You’re Only as Good as the Last Thing You Did’ Amid Sales Slowdown

After recording its first quarterly sales decline since 2003 this year, the doom and gloom sentiment surrounding Apple has reemerged. Some critics believe that Apple is doing too many things at once, or wrongly placing its focus on areas like Apple Watch bands rather than its core product lineup.

MacRumors Buyer’s Guide for Macs
The most vocal critics often point towards the state of Apple’s current Mac lineup, which is beginning to stagnate. It has been 447 days since the last MacBook Pro release, while the MacBook Air has not been updated beyond a RAM bump in 518 days. Mac mini: 662 days. Mac Pro: 963 days.

Apple’s stock also remains down over 13 percent from its 52-week high, and investors perhaps have at least some reason for concern. Rumors suggest, for example, that the next iPhone will be an incremental improvement over the iPhone 6s, with more significant changes not coming until 2017.

In a new Fast Company interview alongside CEO Tim Cook, Apple services chief Eddy Cue acknowledged that technology companies are “only as good as the last thing” they did.

“Look,” says Cue, who somehow manages to look both like a man who just woke up and a compact ball of perpetual energy, “one thing you know if you’ve been in technology a while, you’re only as good as the last thing you did. No one wants an original iPod. No one wants an iPhone 3GS.”

Cook admitted that Apple can “sometimes fall short,” but indirectly added that the “Apple is doomed” narrative has existed during his entire 18-year span at the company.

“Is Apple making more mistakes than we used to? I don’t have a tracker on that.” […] “We have never said that we’re perfect,” he continues. “We’ve said that we seek that. But we sometimes fall short.” […]

“What tends to happen with Apple, not just today but in the 18 years I’ve been here,” says Cook, “is that invariably some people compare what we’re doing now to a vision or a product that somebody says they will create in the future.”

Fortunately for Cook, he said he doesn’t “read all the coverage on Apple that there is,” and instead focuses on pushing the company into a future that is bigger and broader. “I want Apple to be here, you know, forever,” he said.

As Cue says, grinning at the ambition: “We want to be there from when you wake up till when you decide to go to sleep.” Cook himself is only slightly less brash. “Our strategy is to help you in every part of your life that we can,” he says, “whether you’re sitting in the living room, on your desktop, on your phone, or in your car.”

Earlier this year, Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart said Apple is on track to spend a record $10 billion on research and development this year, up nearly 30 percent from 2015, and significantly more than the little over $3 billion per year it was spending on R&D just four years ago.

Cybart said the increased spending undoubtedly points towards development of the widely rumored Apple Car, suggesting that the company will pivot into the automobile industry. But if Cook’s recent teaser about “great innovation in the pipeline” is any indication, Apple could have other plans in store too.

Apple Maps and Public Beta Testing

One other interesting anecdote in the wide-ranging interview: Apple Maps is the reason why iOS public beta testing exists.

Apple now does public beta testing of its most significant software projects, something that Jobs never liked to do. In 2014, the company asked users to test run its Yosemite upgrade to OS X. Last year, it introduced beta testing of iOS, which is the company’s most important operating system. “The reason you as a customer are going to be able to test iOS,” Cue says, “is because of Maps.”

Full-length interview: Playing The Long Game Inside Tim Cook’s Apple

Tags: Tim Cook, Eddy Cue, fastcompany.com
Discuss this article in our forums

Next-Generation MacBook Pro’s Touch ID Feature Likely Built Into the Power Button

Back in May, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that the next-generation MacBook Pro will include an OLED “touch bar” above the keyboard and Touch ID support, with a subsequent part leak of the machine’s chassis supporting the idea of this touch bar replacing the current row of function keys.

Leaked MacBook Pro top case showing space for touch bar in place of function keys
Kuo did not address exactly how Touch ID would be integrated into the new MacBook Pro, but a new report from 9to5Mac claims the technology will be built into the device’s power button. The MacBook Pro’s power button currently resides in the row of function keys, so it is a logical place to incorporate a fingerprint sensing power button as part of the new touch bar.

A source who has provided reliable information in the past has informed us that the new MacBook Pro models, expected to be launched in the fall, will feature a Touch ID power button as well as the previously-reported OLED touch-sensitive function keys.

If placed in the power button, the fingerprint sensor would allow users to wake the MacBook Pro and authenticate its security in one touch, similar to waking up an iPhone by pressing the Home button while simultaneously activating Touch ID.

Beyond the Touch ID power button, the OLED touch panel is rumored to be contextual, displaying different controls and user prompts depending on which apps and programs are open on the MacBook Pro. Designer Martin Hajek created a few renders with the OLED panel earlier in the summer, but didn’t include what the Touch ID button might look like.

With the announcement of macOS Sierra at WWDC this year, Apple introduced another way for users to gain access to their Macs while still keeping the device secure, called Auto Unlock. The feature works with an Apple Watch to automatically unlock a password-protected Mac when an authenticated and unlocked Apple Watch is nearby, so it would still only be available to those Mac users who also have an Apple Watch.

In addition to Touch ID and the OLED panel, the new MacBook Pro is expected to be slightly thinner than the current generation thanks to new metal injection mold-made hinges, have thinner speakers aligned on the side of the keyboard, and introduce support for USB-C. According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the new MacBook Pro will be “the most significant upgrade ever undertaken by Apple.”

The state of the current Mac lineup is causing turmoil for users interested in upgrading their machines on the eve of the big refresh this fall, but with no word yet from Apple, even the launch period is somewhat muddled. The new MacBooks could be revealed in September, alongside the iPhone 7 and new Apple Watch models (now believed to be split into two editions), but the company could also opt to hold refreshes for the Mac until a separate event later in the fall, perhaps in October.

Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Tag: 9to5mac.com
Buyer’s Guide: Retina MacBook Pro (Don’t Buy)
Discuss this article in our forums

Hyundai Expands CarPlay to Azera and Veloster Models

Hyundai USA has expanded CarPlay and Android Auto to the 2016 Azera, Veloster, Sonata Hybrid, and Sonata Plug-In Hybrid, in addition to the 2015 Azera, via a free software update available now on the MyHyundai website. The automaker has now completed the rollout of smartphone integration across its 2017 model year lineup.

Hyundai customers can install the CarPlay update themselves by watching the do-it-yourself video below, or a Hyundai dealership can perform the update for an installation fee. The process can take between 1 and 4 hours to download and upload the CarPlay update, depending on your network speed, according to the company.

Azera and Veloster are first-time CarPlay vehicles, joining Hyundai’s growing lineup of vehicles that support Apple’s car-based software, including the 2015 Genesis Sedan, 2015 Sonata, 2016 Elantra GT, 2016 Genesis Sedan, 2016 Sonata, 2016 Tucson, 2017 Elantra, 2017 IONIQ, 2017 Santa Fe, and 2017 Santa Fe Sport.

Apple periodically updates a list of available CarPlay vehicles on its website, but it has yet to add newly-supported BMW 2 Series models.

Related Roundup: CarPlay
Tag: Hyundai
Discuss this article in our forums