Although No Man’s Sky, an RPG space simulator and survival game, experienced a challenging launch in 2016, the developers managed to surpass their initial commitments and provide a greatly enjoyable experience. To this day, it continues to draw in fresh players on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms. Remarkably, in October 2022, the game became accessible on the Nintendo Switch, a portable console renowned for its constrained hardware capabilities.
The Nintendo Switch utilizes an NVIDIA processor featuring Maxwell graphics architecture. Despite its hardware limitations, this portable device has achieved significant popularity. It entered the market ahead of contemporary Windows-based systems such as Steam, Ayaneo, or ASUS, which have begun to redefine the handheld gaming industry with their robust integrated graphics. These graphics now have the capability to facilitate advanced upscaling methods, sometimes incorporating a touch of ray tracing. Nevertheless, the majority of gamers on the Switch prioritize achieving higher frame rates rather than focusing on improved image quality, considering the device’s compact screen size.
The Switch’s hardware constraints render it unsuitable for high-fidelity gaming, let alone supporting ray tracing or upscaling technology. There may be doubts about whether the ultimate resolution of 1200×720 can truly benefit from upscaling technologies. These technologies can only enhance quality to a certain degree and cannot create pixels that were missing in the original image. As a result, games running at lower resolutions will inevitably appear less impressive compared to those designed for 1080p, 1440p, or 4K resolutions.
This problem is evident in certain Switch games that currently employ AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 technology, which, unlike FSR 2.0, employs a basic upscaling method without temporal data. Nevertheless, the developers of No Man’s Sky have taken the courageous step of incorporating a personalized version of AMD FSR 2 into their game. Although the precise details of these adaptations are undisclosed, it’s possible they include tailored upscaling configurations to handle low resolutions or optimizations geared toward low-power graphics.
FSR2 has landed on the Switch with the latest NMS update. Huge PQ uplift and definitely better than native. Just take a look at those jaggies. 😮This is honestly a no-brainer and more games need to do this. FPS up by as much as 25%
Credit: https://t.co/VcDnj6feNF@blooomingtails https://t.co/JsP6YXBA1v pic.twitter.com/g9Rp178vwM— Usman Pirzada (@usmanpirzada) September 9, 2023
As depicted in a video by BloomingTails, the enhanced edition of No Man’s Sky showcases a significantly cleaner visual presentation, marked by diminished aliasing and an overall more appealing display. The screenshots presented vividly illustrate that 3D objects now exhibit sharper clarity, and enhancements are also apparent in the background lighting, which shows reduced shimmering.
Before the update, No Man’s Sky struggled with stability problems, often leading to crashes when exploring densely populated planets full of plant life and wildlife. While there’s a chance that some optimizations were implemented to tackle the low average frame rate, which hovered around 15 FPS in these situations, the updated version featuring FSR 2.0 not only boasts improved visuals but also delivers better performance, with frame rates averaging around 19-20 FPS. Unfortunately, the game still encounters occasional crashes, underscoring the necessity for further developer attention.