No Man’s Sky [NMS] launched on PC… and needless to say, it’s been a bit of a shit show for a lot of people. Crashes, Stuttering, FPS issues, you name it… there’s a problem.

I got the game on launch, and when I first played, I noticed severe stuttering at first, which was very strange. So I spent a good amount of time configuring different things to try and get the game to run smoother. Although my FPS seemed to be fine, the stuttering was annoying.

After all of the changes, the game is smooth as silk now. 90–100FPS, with very minor stuttering at the start of the game for the first 5 minutes or so.

Now, each machine is different. I’m not going to give false hope to people and provide a click bait title, indicating these fixes are for everyone, because they are not. A lot of settings here are Nvidia related, so if you’re running an Nvidia card, then read on. If you’re on AMD, then there are a couple of things you can do that I did… but unfortunately I can’t provide the AMD alternative to a few of the changes.

So without further adieu, let’s start…

My Specs

The minimum specs for the game are a tad misleading. You need a GPU that supports OpenGL 4.5. And a CPU that supports SSE3 ( Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions)

My Specs are the following:

i7 4790k 4GHz

Nvidia GTX 970 Strix

16GB RAM

256GB SSD

2x 1TB HDD

Note that none of my hardware is overclocked. The GPU is OC by default when buying it (Strix versions usually are).

Driver

I’m running the 369.00 beta driver.

https://developer.nvidia.com/opengl-driver

This driver adds support for OpenGL 2016 ARB extensions. Since OpenGL issues seem to be the most common issues with the game, installing this driver (note, it’s a “CLEAN INSTALLATION” while installing) helps a lot of people.

Also note that this may not help everyone. A lot of people reported that it did help, but some people said it made it worse.

You can always roll back drivers if things are worse for you.

Installation of the Game

Since SSD’s have little space, most people tend to install games on their HDD’s, leaving room for their OS and files on the SSD.

As the game is relatively small, I tried it on both my HDD and SSD.

The difference was astonishing.

If you have an SSD, I highly recommend installing the game on your SSD. The load times are so much quicker, and the stuttering at the start of the game goes away a lot quicker too.

Configuring Options

The options menu in the game is horrible.

First of all, what I’ve noticed…

Anti Aliasing just doesn’t work. SMAA or FXAA, there’s no difference. If you have a very large monitor, then it might be worth configuring AA in your Nvidia profile settings

Mouse sensitivity doesn’t work. I’ve whacked it all the way to maximum, and nothing changed.

The game looks like it’s upscaled from 1600x900. It doesn’t seem to run natively on my monitors resolution (fix for this is later).

Now, the options are pretty limited, but if your specs are similar to mine, then take a look at my settings:

Ignore the resolution, I’m playing on a 1080p monitor, I’ll explain why I’m running in on this resolution later on.

I’ve found the above options most optimal for play. Turning down shadows and reflections doesn’t affect the overall look that much, but found that it significantly improved my frame rate.

Also note the “Max FPS”

Setting this to “MAX” puts the FPS limit at 160.

There is an issue with the game where the values in the options don’t represent the actual game.

For example, select 60, will drop you to 45, selecting 90, with drop you to 65… It’s better off just selecting MAX.

Borderless Windowed Mode also helped wonders. Unfortunately this limits me to 60hz, as my second monitor is a 60hz monitor, while my primary is a 144hz monitor. But since the frame rate isn’t capping at 120/144, then sacrificing the extra 30FPS doesn’t make much of a difference… especially that in fullscreen mode, it causes some problems with frame drops.

Once they have fixed it, I’ll be switching back to fullscreen mode, as playing at 60hz is very noticeable over playing on 144hz for a long time.

Although, if you have all monitors at 144hz, or just a single 144hz monitor, then playing in borderless windowed mode will still keep you at 144hz.

The Config File

Like most games, this game also has config files.

The files are located at

<Steam Location>\Steamapps\Common\No Man’s Sky\Binaries\SETTINGS

There are 3 files here, you need to focus on just one file:

TKGRAPHICSSETTINGS.MXML

Open this file with Notepad++ (if you don’t have this, I highly suggest downloading it here)

There is one setting here you should change which you can’t in game:

Disable GSync

Change “GSync” from “True” to “False”

Changing this option alone has improved frame rates significantly.

You can also change some other values there, like your maxFPS, your FOV and others.

Note that, by increasing your FOV too high, there will be clipping, and potential FPS drops. Wider FOV = more detail to render, keep that in mind.

Making the game look better (and play better)

Now, this one sounds weird… but I shit you not, this worked for me.

DSR (Dynamic Super Resolution) is an Nvidia property available on some higher end cards (Supported Cards Here)

It allows you to render a game at a higher resolution, and then scale down to your standard resolution.

So if I wanted, I can make a game render in 4k, scale it down to 1080p, and the details in the game would look much clearer, at the cost of increased usage of my GPU.

Since my GPU is a 970, I don’t want to render in 4k. Simply because it’s not a 4K card. If you have a 980ti or above, then you can… but keep in mind that rendering at 4k is extremely intensive.

Ok, so how does this apply to the game?

Well, before the game was released, Nvidia showed off some 4K screenshots. It looked great… until I launched the game in 1080p, and it looked scaled up… no where near the detail I was expecting.

This leads me to believe that the resolution values are also incorrect (like FPS). Where it thinks you’re on a lower resolution than you actually are.

Now I can’t prove this, but from what I’ve noticed, it’s the case.

I enabled DSR to double my resolution settings. Rendering at this resolution has dramatically increased the detail in the game, and made it look so much better.

Surprisingly, against everything that science tells me… it has actually improved my frame rate too. How? I have absolutely no idea… it should be the opposite. But it’s not.

Anyway, if you have a capable card, then here’s how to enable DSR:

Right click on your desktop and open Nvidia Control Panel… then go to Manage 3d Settings

Under Global Settings, find the DSR option, and select 2x. (Or higher if you have a better GPU than I do)

Click OK and save. This will make your monitor flicker off and back on. As it just introduced a new resolution option for your monitor.

Now we need to apply this in the game

Go back to the config file above, and type in the new resolution manually:

Depending on your resolution, these numbers can be different. If you are running 1080p, and did 2.00x in DSR, then this is the resolution. If you are running a different resolution, or enabled higher DSR, then you need to calculate the resolution.

Finally, confirm that the changes have taken place, and DSR is active.

Open GeForce Experience (I’m running the beta version)

Hover over No Man’s Sky and click on “Details”

Confirm that DSR is active by checking “Current Configuration”

And that’s it!

DSR is active, and you can also check the options in game to see the resolution being active.

Not only did this change significantly make the game look better, but it did improve my frame rate. As I said, I don’t know how, but looking online, it seems that others also experienced the same thing.

Conclusion

This won’t help everyone. I know that… but I also know that I’m playing the game without any issues. Whether or not this is down to my settings, or I’m just lucky, I don’t know. But these are the changes I made to improve the game.

I’m not forgiving Hello Games for their botched PC port until they fix it. I know I’m not affected by the issues, but ignoring them just supports the idea that bad PC ports is acceptable — which it isn’t.

After playing for a few hours at the start, I checked online, and saw so many people having problems. If I had read that before playing the game, I would have refunded it and bought it again once they fixed the issues. But the timer already ticked over.

So I would suggest — for those people who have got problems and have played less than 2 hours… refund the game and wait for it to be fixed.

For others like myself, who have over 2 hours of gameplay, then I hope these changes help you out.