Intel today released the latest version of its Arc GPU Graphics drivers for its A-series discrete GPUs and Arc Graphics iGPUs powering its Core Ultra processors. Version 101.5593 Beta comes with optimization for "The First Descendant" and "Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail," which includes support for ray tracing in the former. The company did not fix any issues with this release, but identified a few new ones to fix in future releases. These include application crashes with "No Man's Sky" and "Enshrouded," intermittent flickering and display corruption in the game menu of "Doom Eternal," and Topaz Video AI throwing up errors when exporting videos after using some models for video enhancements. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Intel Arc GPU Graphics Drivers 101.5593 Beta

Hello! Over the years, we've seen many players on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, PC and Game Pass venture into No Man's Sky's universe and lose themselves in all there is to do, in some cases for hundreds of hours. Last year was a busy one for the small team at Hello Games, with lots of No Man's Sky updates and the announce of Light No Fire. We have big plans for 2024, and we're starting the year off with a very different kind of update. We're calling it OMEGA, and for the first time No Man's Sky will be available to play for free! Expeditions in No Man's Sky have become one of the most popular ways to play the game. They bring all players together to the same planet for an interstellar, shared experience. This weekend (Thursday 15th to Monday 19th February) we are allowing everyone, whether you own the game or not, to join the Omega Expedition.

This represents a moment for new players to try No Man's Sky, and existing players to welcome them into the community. There are no microtransactions, no free to play mechanics, just a huge universe to explore for free with your friends. The Omega update also brings a complete overhaul of expeditions, new on-planet missions, a new pirate dreadnought to own, and much more. Until now expeditions have been their own game mode, but we wanted to fully integrate them into our main game. Now, our new expedition system allows Travellers to join expeditions with bespoke provisions, bring along their favourite starships or custom Multi-Tools and return to their main save with loot and exciting rewards. We have revisited the "Atlas Path", allowing players to commune with the Atlas and honor it with a new Atlas staff, jetpack and helmet.

Hello Everyone! Only last week, we launched No Man's Sky on a whole new platform, bringing the galaxy to Mac owners everywhere! 2023 has already been an extremely busy year for our small team. Fractal brought full native support for PSVR2, alongside a spread of accessibility and quality of life features, while the accompanying Utopia expedition experimented with a unique twist on gameplay, and united players under the umbrella of a universal habitation project.

Most recently, the Interceptor update introduced a new ship to collect, a host of gameplay features, and began to peel back the first layers of a mystery centred around worlds corrupted by vivid purple crystals, abandoned "harmonic" encampments, and secrets whispered by disembodied robot heads…

Singularity Expedition
Today, we continue that story as we begin community expedition ten: Singularity.

INTERCEPTOR: INTRODUCING UPDATE 4.2 - Venture to forsaken Sentinel worlds in update 4.2, INTERCEPTOR! Explore corrupted planets, fight a legion of challenging new robotic guardians, hijack their technology, steal their ships, harvest their resources, destroy their freighters, and much, much more! It's been lovely to watch our players enjoying what Fractal (our first No Man's Sky update of 2023) had to offer and it's been thrilling to watch you all cruising around in your shiny new Utopia Speeders and filling up your Wonders Catalogues with your latest discoveries.

Barely six weeks later and we are delighted to launch another major update for No Man's Sky, and it's one of our largest in recent memory. We're calling Interceptor, with a brand new class of incredibly varied Starship, a bunch of new gameplay features, new world variants and a ton of new content! The ever-present tyrants of universe enforcement, the Sentinels, have become prey to a corruption that is spreading through their factions. Only the bravest Travellers will dare venture to forsaken Sentinel worlds to investigate. Those that do, however, will find abandoned encampments to explore, intriguing crystals to harvest and, for the most persistent, the blueprints for a hitherto undiscovered Sentinel Interceptor starship which come in a huge variety of models.

Apple today previewed macOS Ventura, the latest version of the world's most advanced desktop operating system, which takes the Mac experience to a whole new level. Stage Manager gives Mac users an all-new way to stay focused on the task in front of them while seamlessly switching between apps and windows. Continuity Camera uses iPhone as the webcam on Mac to do things that were never possible before, and with Handoff coming to FaceTime, users can start a FaceTime call on their iPhone or iPad and fluidly pass it over to their Mac. Mail and Messages come with great new features that make the apps better than ever, while Safari — the world's fastest browser on Mac — ushers in a passwordless future with passkeys. And with the power and popularity of Apple silicon, and new developer tools in Metal 3, gaming on Mac has never been better.

"macOS Ventura includes powerful features and new innovations that help make the Mac experience even better. New tools like Stage Manager make focusing on tasks and moving between apps and windows easier and faster than ever, and Continuity Camera brings new videoconferencing features to any Mac, including Desk View, Studio Light, and more," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "With helpful new features in Messages, state-of-the-art search technologies in Mail, and an updated design for Spotlight, Ventura has so much to offer and enriches many of the ways customers use their Macs."

NVIDIA has recently released their latest GeForce 512.15 Game Ready drivers adding optimizations for Ghostwire: Tokyo, and Shadow Warrior 3 in addition to bringing DLAA to three new titles and supporting 11 new G-SYNC Compatible Displays. This Game Ready Driver adds day-0 support for Ghostwire: Tokyo featuring ray-traced reflections and NVIDIA DLSS support for up to a 2x performance boost. The drivers also see the introduction of NVIDIA DLAA support for Chorus, Jurassic World Evolution 2, and No Man's Sky which can improve image quality at native resolution.

The list of G-SYNC Compatible Displays has been extended with the addition of 11 new models from Acer, ASUS, AOC, I-O DATA,MSI, Phillips, and ViewSonic. NVIDIA has also added GeForce Experience's Optimal Settings support to six new games including Elden Ring, Expeditions: Rome, Mortal Online 2, Shadow Warrior 3, Sifu, and Total War: Warhammer III. The complete changelog and driver download link can be found below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 512.15 WHQL

NVIDIA today released the GeForce 466.63 WHQL software. These drivers introduce support for the recently announced GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, which we reviewed here. The drivers also introduce optimization for "No Man's Sky" DLSS update, NVIDIA Reflex support for "Escape from Tarkov," "Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2," and day-zero optimization for "Chivalry 2." A couple of issues are also fixed. A bug that caused the system to hand when connected to a 4K UHD TV and launching a VR game, has been fixed. 4K @ 120 Hz not being available to machines running GeForce GTX 16-series and 10-series graphics cards, has been fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 466.63 WHQL

NVIDIA DLSS adoption continues at rapid pace, with a further 9 titles adding the game-changing, performance-accelerating, AI and Tensor Core-powered GeForce RTX technology. This follows the addition of DLSS to 5 games last month, and the launch of Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition a fortnight ago. This month, DLSS comes to No Man's Sky, AMID EVIL, Aron's Adventure, Everspace 2, Redout: Space Assault, Scavengers, and Wrench. And for the first time, DLSS comes to Virtual Reality headsets in No Man's Sky, Into The Radius, and Wrench.

By enabling NVIDIA DLSS in each, frame rates are greatly accelerated, giving you smoother gameplay and the headroom to enable higher-quality effects and rendering resolutions, and raytracing in AMID EVIL, Redout: Space Assault, and Wrench. For gamers, only GeForce RTX GPUs feature the Tensor Cores that power DLSS, and with DLSS now available in 50 titles and counting, GeForce RTX offers the fastest frame rates in leading triple-A games and indie darlings.

Do you remember No Man's Sky? Yes, that procedurally-generated game that mostly flopped at release, promising an endless universe for you to explore. Well, the game may have launched way back in 2016, but it's become one of the most well-supported releases in the history of videogames - at least, for a release that doesn't count on a subscription-like service to generate revenue. Hello games has now announced that they will be launching a next gen version of No man's Sky for both the PS5 and Xbox Series X - and gamers who already own a PS4 or Xbox One version of the game are eligible for a free upgrade.

The new, next gen version bumps the visuals to 4K resolution running at 60 FPS; severely diminishes loading times; features cross-play support; and there's also support for 32-player multiplayer, the first time this has been implemented in the console version of the game. There will also be a measure of graphical improvement beyond the increase in resolution, such as improved shadows and volumetrics. Improvements to spatial audio have also been baked in, due to the next gen console's support for more advanced soundscapes. PC users, of course, are already entitled to the update (it's one of the positives of having machines that can always slot in alongside the current generation of consoles). Whatever your opinion on the games' release state, the amount of content and support that has been delivered after the games' release should place Hello Games at the top of your developer short list.

I like to write articles on No Man's Sky because barely have I ever seen a game this well supported. In fact, I'd even risk saying this game sees better support - and more support - than many other games that even have the "games as a service" philosophy. The only other game I can think of that has had comparable improvements and overhauls throughout its lifecycle is Warframe, but that's a completely different beast. In No Man's Sky, I think we can see exactly how studios that make games as a work of love go on about supporting them.

While the games' release may have been a flop compared to the expectations set upon it (in no small part because of their own creators), I think it really is commendable that hello games didn't just pocket the immense profits they made with the games' release and are, instead, still working it up to its entire potential. It just really goes to show how good tool planning and the adequate mindset can bring about improvements over time.

I've written my fair share of articles on No Man's Sky, since the game's concept is one of the more interesting in recent years (for me; editor liberties, can we call it?). The game may have excelled more in concept than in execution, but a series of updates have brought the game close to what was promised. Now, developer Hello games has brought about an update that brings a more subtle change: the game's API has been updated from OpenGL to Vulkan. The "behind the curtains" update has brought about improved performance across the spectrum of graphics cards that support that API renderer (in particular AMD users, as the patch notes themselves spell out), and, expectedly, an easier coding time for the developers. Improved HDR support was also coded into the game. The full patch notes follow, as well as Hello Games' words on this change.

Hello Games has released the definitive update to No Man's Sky: the one that shores up many of the game's weaknesses and delivers what we were promised nearly two years ago. The game has had a steady stream of incremental, evolutionary updates to its core systems, in the meantime. But none have been as comprehensive and game changing - immediately or for the way they prepare the future - as the 1.5 update, codenamed NEXT, that dropped today.

Among the additions - and trust me, these are grand in both number and scope - the NEXT update introduces a full multiplayer experience, near-unlimited base building, command of freighter armadas, a graphical overhaul, multiple quality of life improvements, revised systems and HUD, increased variance, even more procedurally-generated bits and pieces, third-person view support... it's a real expansion that's being distributed for free, and which stands to offer more than some game sequels ever managed to do. Look after the break for a rundown of the changes - then boot up the game, grab a cup of coffee, prepare your screenshot utilities, and enjoy the ride.

No Man's Sky was one of the most promising games in recent times, with its exquisite concept and graphics technology, which looked to allow for a seamless, truly universal, space-exploration experience. However, No Man's Sky was its own worst enemy, as promised features never made it to the retail version of the game, and its universe, while absolutely expansive, didn't offer much more to do than the joy of being what was sometimes called a "screenshot simulator". These concepts will always be divisive, but one thing stands: No Man's Sky didn't quite fulfill its potential, and that left most players disappointed.

Queue multiple updates (the Foundation, Pathfinder and Atlas Rises updates), which have always brought the game a number of steps closer to the original vision that was presented to audiences, and now, the announced NEXT update, coming to all platforms (including the new Xbox One release, with specific 4K and HDR improvements for the Xbox One X) this summer. This update will introduce a true multiplayer implementation to No Man's Sky, which should bring interactivity levels in the game up. A number of other improvements are being kept under wraps. If Sean Murray's words are anything to go by (and he has been making an effort of not getting too excited about what he has to share), this might be the update - the game - to enroll users again through the long, and hopefully lazy, days of summer. Snippets of Sean Murray's post on Xbox follow, after the break.