will make its long-awaited arrival on Nintendo Switch on October 7th. The Switch version was previously , so that marks a delay of at least a couple of weeks.
The sandbox survival title landed on PC and PlayStation 4 in 2016 and Xbox One two years later, so its Switch debut has been a long time coming. From the jump, Switch players will have access to all of the and Hello Games has brought to No Man’s Sky since its rocky launch. The game’s in a than it was at the outset.
Some players might have reservations about how well No Man’s Sky will run on the Switch’s aging hardware. Hello Games tried to placate concerns with a video that shows the game running fairly well on the console, though it remains to be seen what Switch performance will actually be like.
There will be physical and digital editions of No Man’s Sky available for Switch on October 7th. On the same day, fans will be able to purchase a physical version for the first time. No Man’s Sky is also slated to later this year.
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Here’s our first deep look at Starfield, the expansive sci-fi RPG coming from Fallout studio Bethesda.
Bethesda producer Todd Howard introduced the gameplay video at the end of the big Xbox and Bethesda games showcase today. It quickly gave off No Man’s Sky vibes, with a person in a space suit exploring an alien planet and mining the environment for minerals with a laser gun. Combat came swiftly, though — the explorer encountered a colony of space pirates and the firefights began.
Howard then showed off bits of the narrative and character customization features, including skill trees and crafting. Players will be able to build outposts on foreign planets and staff them with workers, and they’ll be able to build, staff and customize space ships. Ship customization seems to be a robust feature of Starfield, and interstellar ship battles are definitely a thing.
Bethesda
There will be more than 1,000 planets available to explore in Starfield. Following a delay earlier this year, Starfield is due to hit Xbox consoles and PC in early 2023. It’s one of the most anticipated games in Xbox’s roster, so the delay was a significant blow to the publisher. Starfield now has to be better than ever.
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Returning to a game you haven’t played in years is always a strange feeling. It’s like seeing a childhood friend from your hometown after years apart. You can still see the child you spent so much time with in their eyes, but also the age and growth that you missed out on due to your separation. They still laugh the same and still have an intense love for movies, but now they walk a little differently and have an ostrich tattoo on their ankle that you feel too awkward to ask about.
Playing No Man’s Sky in 2021 feels like seeing that childhood friend again. I jumped into this quintillion planet galaxy at launch and thoroughly enjoyed it, zits and all. However, I bounced off from it after a while and only returned for a moment when the base-building patch arrived. For years it was out of my mind as I focused on other games, projects, and general life stuff. With the new Prisms update being released, it felt like the perfect excuse to don my exosuit and travel out into the stars once again.
With a considerable list of updates and patches since I last played, this game has evolved exponentially, moving beyond what was originally promised.
Returning home
I am no stranger to games that are constantly updated throughout their lives. I have been playing World of Warcraft pretty consistently since launch as well as the Destiny series and League of Legends. I was there for all of the major updates, patches, buffs, and nerfs that these games had. In real time, this experience was gradual and many times went unnoticed. However, jumping back into a game after years of polishing and updates, you get to see how far it has really come and how much it is still the same.
I decided to start fresh with the new Prisms update, mainly to see the game more in its totality and because I do not want to know what I thought a good base looked like in 2018. Frankly, I was blown away by what I experienced in the “tutorial” section of the game. My starter planet was highly toxic, with exploding plants, but I’m not referring to that. The game does considerably more heavy lifting to ease players into the galaxy, with more guided content, actual quests, and even new (new to me, remember) characters and storylines. Walking through the Anomaly Station for the first time is truly amazing. An actual player hub in a game that did not have multiplayer when I first played. I was literally that fool running around the station waving at other players.
And yet, it is still the game I remember. I still traveled the stars, mined resources, melee boosted around, and scoured planets for knowledge stones. The core of the game did not change with all of the new updates. The game’s language was unchanged, and I am still fluent in it. This meant I knew to hoard oxygen and di-hydrogen so I could try out the new content without any worry of being stranded or just flat out dying.
With all this new content, I can’t help but ask, did No Man’s Sky finally fulfill its promises? It is no secret that this game had a plethora of promises regarding what it was before the game was released. Unfortunately, most of those expectations were not met, and many people felt as if the game was just a shadow of its promised self and worse because of it.
Prisms gives us an answer to that question. A Reddit user compiled all of the content the game originally promised and compared it to what was available at launch versus the current (from a year ago) state of the game. Surprisingly, the game now has fulfilled the majority of the promises to an extent. The game has also added additional content that wasn’t initially promised to players. Base building, social hubs, and even driving other types of vehicles were never outlined, but here they are, content that is now integral to the current state of the game.
No Man’s Sky is now more than just what was promised by Sony’s infamous marketing campaign; it has grown to be something all of its own and not just what we expected it to be.
Think back to your childhood when you and your friend would spend sleepless nights together talking about becoming rock stars and firefighters and of all the fantastical road trips you will take once you both learned to drive. Flash forward years later, with you being a journalist, them being an IT technician, and only one of you having a driver’s license. You can still play music and finally take that trip together. Maybe it’s finally time to let go of that list of failed promises of No Man’s Sky and just let the game keep growing at its own pace.
AI startup Merlin Labs today deactivated stealth mode to announce a $25 million funding round and a partnership with Dynamic Aviation to put a fleet of 55 King Air planes in the sky without humans aboard.
Merlin Labs CEO and founder Matthew George told Neural:
What we’re building is software that creates a think-for-itself-pilot … fully-autonomous flight take-off to touchdown.
The big idea: See a need, fill a need. Merlin Labs is taking autonomous software technology and building an artificially intelligent pilot. Autonomous fixed-wing flight might sound familiar, but there’s a huge difference between designing a remote or hybrid-controlled drone from the ground up and building a system that can fly nearly any fixed wing aircraft.
How it works: Merlin Labs has offices in Boston, Los Angeles, Denver, and New Zealand. But the belle of the ball is its testing facility in the Mojave desert.
Credit: Merlin LabsMerlin Labs tests its aircraft at the Mojave Air and Space port.
There, the company’s researchers use data generated from human pilots to build flight simulations to test their AI systems on.
From there, the team outfitted various aircraft, ranging from smaller craft all the way up to the big King Air planes pictured in the above images, with the necessary hardware to run its autonomous pilot system.
What’s next: George told Neural the company was working with government and civilian partners to develop and implement the technology: “We believe this starts with cargo.”
He also said this technology could have applications in numerous other fields including military transport, agriculture, and firefighting.
Quick take: We don’t usually cover funding, but this is definitely newsworthy. Merlin Labs is announcing a lot more than financing.
From what we understand, the company plans to become the first fully-certified – as in, certified by the necessary government entities as being in complete adherence with aviation regulations – autonomous flight system for large fixed-wing aircraft.
And its starting in partnership with Dynamic Aviation, the owner of the world’s largest King Air fleet.
If Merlin Labs can eventually roll out an artificially intelligent pilot that companies such as Amazon and UPS or agencies such as the US Air Force and the California department of forestry and firefighting can implement to their existing fleets, this could be an absolute game-changer.
In the meantime, Merlin Labs is already operating its first King Air autonomously and has 55 more on the way for what will become the world’s first fleet of fully-autonomous fixed-wing aircraft.
No Man’s Sky players are getting quite the surprise today, as developer Hello Games has announced a big crossover with another famous space game: Mass Effect. The Normandy SR1, which first appeared in the original Mass Effect, has made its way to No Man’s Sky for a special crossover promotion. Even better is the fact that No Man’s Sky players can add the Normandy to their fleet of frigates, but only for a limited time.
The Normandy SR1 is actually a prize waiting for players who complete No Man’s Sky‘s Beachhead expedition, which launched last week. This has definitely been a community effort and Hello Games expressed as much in a blog post today, thanking those who undertook the task of solving the expedition before talking about the crossover.
“We are thrilled and flattered that BioWare and EA let us pay tribute in this way,” Hello Games said. “As huge fans of the series, it’s a lovely moment for sci-fi fans. Like everyone else we’ve been rediscovering the amazing universe of Mass Effect through the release of the Legendary Edition. I still have chills every time I see this incredibly iconic ship warping in, and was delighted to see so many people have the same reaction.”
If you want to add the Normandy SR1 to your fleet of frigates, you still have plenty of time to do that, but the opportunity isn’t going to last forever. No Man’s Sky players have until May 31st to complete the Beachhead expedition, at which they’ll be awarded the Normandy. Once you have it, the Normandy is yours to keep forever, so while the expedition to unlock it is a limited time affair, the Normandy will be a permanent addition to your frigate collection.
You can see the Normandy SR1 in No Man’s Sky in the trailer embedded above. It’s certainly impressive, so gamers who count themselves as fans of both No Man’s Sky and Mass Effect should partake in the expedition before the end date to claim it.
On the heels of the Expeditions update for No Man’s Sky – which launched a couple of weeks ago – Hello Games has released a new update for The Last Campfire. As Hello Games worked to build on the content in No Man’s Sky, a small team within the studio started working on The Last Campfire as something of a passion project and released it in September of last year. It seems Hello Games is going to continue the trend of releasing big content updates for free, as The Last Campfire received just that today.
According to Hello Games boss Sean Murray on Twitter, this new update is shipping with a number of new features. It brings the game to version 1.6, and chief among the additions are a bunch of new puzzles. Murray says that the update adds 20% more puzzles to the game, so if you were looking for more of The Last Campfire, you’re certainly getting it here.
The Last Campfire Update 1.6
???? 20% more puzzles ???? Replay puzzles ???? Read the Wanderer’s Diary ???? Performance improvements ???? Improved controller support ???? New Mac support ???? Higher framerate ???? Quality of life improvements
The update will also give you the chance to replay puzzles you’ve already completed and read the Wanderer’s Diary. Murray also cites various performance improvements, improved controller support, and quality of life improvements, but he doesn’t go into detail about any of those. There’s also added support for Mac included in the update, along with improved framerates.
Essentially, it seems this update improves the game on pretty much all fronts, so if you played The Last Campfire when it released last year, now might be a good time to return to it. This update is following pretty closely behind the new Expeditions update for No Man’s Sky, which shipped out at the tail end of May and added quite a bit to the game.
So, it’s nice to see The Last Campfire getting the No Man’s Sky treatment, but there’s no telling if we’ll see more updates like this in the future. We’ll let you know if Hello Games issues another free update later on down the road, but in the meantime, be sure to check out this update for The Last Campfire as it’s live on Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Apple Arcade now.
No Man’s Sky received a new update today that changes the game in several big ways. The first hint at what’s new comes in the title of the update: Expeditions. Expeditions in No Man’s Sky will serve as a new game mode that players can embark on together, starting from a fixed point and completing milestones on the way to finishing the expedition as a whole. There are also some big changes to resource collecting and usage that intend to cut down on the grind in the game, which is exciting news for No Man’s Sky newcomers and veterans alike.
Hello Games says that expeditions will be split up into phases, which are themselves split up into milestones. Each milestone in a phase centers around some component of No Man’s Sky – for instance, in the example image Hello Games shared today, some of the milestones listed include lifting off from the starting planet and discovering 20 different creatures. Each milestone you complete will give you a reward, while each phase you complete will grant a unique reward. Of course, you also get something for completing an entire expedition, but those rewards are being kept secret for now.
Aside from introducing expeditions, this update also changes how we’ll complete missions. While mission objectives used to be identified by waypoints on your visor, now you’ll need to sweep the environment to home in on the objective. The idea, it seems, is to make the process of finding mission objectives more exploratory in nature, rather than just directing players from waypoint to waypoint.
We’re also getting visual enhancements to Explorer-class starships, rendezvous points that will appear along expedition routes, and sentinel combat enhancements. Hello Games has also changed the way we collect resources, reducing and rebalancing recipe costs and increasing resource deposit yields to cut back on the grind. Anyone who has made it more than few hours into No Man’s Sky can attest that the game gets pretty grindy at points, so this change is definitely a big one. We’re also getting cross-play discoveries and bases, so any discovery you make or base you upload will be seen by players on all platforms.
We’ve detailed many of the high points of today’s update, but to learn about everything included in the Expeditions update, check out Hello Games’ full patch notes. The update is live today on all platforms – PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PC, Oculus, and PlayStation VR – so be sure to download it and take it for a spin.
Adobe is preparing to add an AI-powered sky replacement tool to Photoshop that makes it easier to swap out the sky in any picture with just a few clicks. The company previewed the tool on YouTube ahead of its Adobe Max conference, scheduled for October 20th–22nd.
The tool uses machine learning to automatically identify the foreground and background of a picture, saving people from creating complicated masks to separate the two. You can load in a number of dramatic preset skies, and the algorithms will automatically tweak the warmth and temperature of the foreground to match the new sky. If you add in a warm, golden sunset, for example, it’ll update the coloring of the rest of your picture to match.
Adobe isn’t the first company to offer this sort of tool. AI-powered picture editor Luminar has offered one-click sky replacement since last year, for example. But it is the latest example of Adobe enhancing its premier picture editor with the help of machine learning.
The Verge’s art crew had mixed feelings about the tool. They thought the color-matching looked well-done but were cautious about evaluating the feature from a simple demo video. Like any company demoing a new product, Adobe is only going to pick the most flattering examples. They did also note, though, that Adobe’s automatic cutout tools generally work pretty well and would definitely make this sort of edit a lot easier.
A sky replacement feature could be particularly useful for Instagram influencers, always looking to create the perfect travel shot. Last year, one influencer was criticized after it was spotted that she was using fake clouds in her photos. She later said that she had always been open about editing her images but perhaps needed more variety. “Maybe I just need to change the sky I pick — but I kinda like the one I use!” she added. Photoshop could help.
Adobe didn’t say when this new feature would be added to Photoshop, but you can expect to hear more details at the company’s upcoming Max conference.
Astronomers have used a combination of low-frequency telescopes, supercomputers, and algorithms to create a vast sky map of 25,000 supermassive black holes.
The map shows thousands of twinkling dots that look like stars, but are actually enormous black holes, each of which is located in a different, distant galaxy.
The researchers pinpointed the celestial objects by analyzing radio emissions emitted by matter that was ejected when it got close to the black holes.
Credit: LOFAR/LOL SurveyEach white dot in the map is a supermassive black hole in its own galaxy.
These emissions were detected by LOFAR (Low Frequency Array), an enormous radio telescope network spread across 52 stations in nine European countries.
LOFAR operates at the lowest frequencies that can be observed from Earth. However, its location produced a major problem for the study.
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LOFAR’s observations are distorted by the ionosphere, a shell of free electrons that surrounds the Earth and acted like a cloudy lens over the telescope.
“It’s similar to when you try to see the world while immersed in a swimming pool,” explained study co-author Reinout van Weeren of the Leiden Observatory. “When you look up, the waves on the water of the pool deflect the light rays and distort the view.”
The researchers overcame this challenge by using supercomputers and new algorithms to correct the effect of the ionosphere every four seconds.
This allowed them to convert the radio signals into images of black holes.
The new map currently covers 4% of the Northern sky, but the astronomers plan to continue their work until they’ve charted the entire area.
Ultimately, they hope to uncover new insights into the structure of the universe.
