Summary
No Man’s Skyis massive. Arguably, in a sense, the biggest game in existence. Few other games can claim they let you explore every planet in the galaxy, even if many of those planets lack the diversity of a real-life planet.
How many planets actually do exist in No Man’s Sky though? The galaxy is a pretty big place and we’d be hard-pressed to ever be able to explore all of it, let alone know the boundaries of its existence. Turns out, No Man’s Sky is trying to emulate that part of space travel too.
The Exact Number Of Possible Planets
Let’s jump right into the beautifully large number of planets because it is frankly absurd.18,446,744,073,709,551,616.That’s 18 quintillion, a word that doesn’t really get much use because nothing normally even reaches that high a number.
You, as a single person, will never explore the entirety of No Man’s Sky. It already takes long enough to circumvent a single planet, let alone over 18 quintillion of them. In fact,it’s very likely the entire player base would never explore all of it.Couple this with what happens when you reach the centre of the galaxy, and you’ve got a practically endless amount of planets.
How Long Would It Take To Visit Every Planet?
Now this is a fun question because it starts to bring into question how bad we, as humans, are when it comes to very large numbers. 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, that’s a pretty big number. But how big? Let the table below give you a better impression.
For the sake of this table, we will assume you are visiting one planet every single second.
Seconds to explore every planet
18,446,744,073,709,551,616
Minutes to explore every planet
307,445,734,561,825,860
Hours to explore every planet
5,124,095,576,030,431
Days to explore every planet
213,503,982,334,601
Years to explore every planet
584,942,417,355
So, for a single person, it would takealmost 600 million years to explore every single planet if they were visiting one every second. Impossible in many regards. So let’s extend that instead to the entire player base of No Man’s Sky.
Supposedly, No Man’s Sky has sold over 10 million units. Let’s assume for the calculation that every single copy sold is a unique player. That gives us58,494 years for every single player to collectively explore every single planet, at one planet every single second.
Enjoy the experience, because unless you plan on living a very long life, you’re not witnessing the full extent of No Man’s Sky’s literal universe.
How Does No Man’s Sky Have So Many Planets?
The question then bares answering — in such a small filesize, from such a small development team, how is No Man’s Sky that big?
The number 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 is not random, but the limit of 64-bit computing.
It’s surprisingly simple, really. It’s a mix of theoretically easy but practically complex maths anda whole bunch of procedural generation. No Man’s Sky doesn’t actually have 18 quintillion planets, but rather the space for them. These planets don’t exist until you visit them and they’re cobbled together from a bunch of rules and procedural assets to form something unique every time.
The filesize stays small because theplanets are just a series of rules being called when they’re visited, and the assets are just a small number of pieces stitched together in endless different ways.
Theoretically, every planet and moon could be visited eventually and get a defined look, but the game size would functionally remain the same. Pretty impressive stuff.
