The Universe is endlessly expansive; as a species, we’re not entirely sure what – or how much of it – is out there, and this is something which Hello Games are hoping to recreate in their procedurally generated space exploration game, No Man’s Sky.
But all algorithms have a limit, and since Hello Games use a 64-bit number to generate their planets, that means their limit is 2 to the power of 64 or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets, that’s over 18 quintillion, something which I can’t quite process.
That’s still not infinite, but it would take five billion years to spend just one second on each planet, making it impossible to explore them all before the sun burns out in 4.6 billion years.
No Man’s Sky is coming to PS4 and PC at some point in the future. It’s going to be huge, and I can’t wait. Just stay away from this one if you’re a completionist.
bunimomike
I’ll back an extra big lunch to make sure I can do the whole journey in one go.
ron_mcphatty
Ah, but if all 10 million PS4 owners plus another 10 million PC players get the game and explore at an über efficient rate of 1 planet per second we could get the job done in 250 million years! Piece of piss.
Steelhead
I admire your optimism. Exploration would be the easy part. Trying to organise 20 million gamers to work together and not grief each other, now that’s a challenge.
pdannysan13
Power to the people :D It would just feel so awesome if the devs one day would come out and say : “People have charted 35% of the game world.’ And if this happens after 7 years from the release date, I would feel so proud of the gaming community.
Steelhead
That would be an amazing achievement, and with the amount of gamers who can’t wait to get stuck in it just may happen.
JR.
Who cares if the sun burns out. We all know the earth is the centre of the solar system. Right?
camdaz
That’s a fair few planets, you would definitely get your money’s worth out of the game trying to visit as many as possible.
ANTZ101
Genuinely excited for No Man’s Sky. Though it’ll be my luck that’ll I get lost and keep visiting the same 5 planets!
Side note: As a computer science student, I’m glad you counted zero!
Starman
Gold trophy – Visit all planets.
MrYd
Could be worse. Could get a bronze trophy for doing all that.
TSBonyman
Let’s see whose great(x18 trillion/25)-grandchild is the first to score that one!
MrYd
Is my maths going wrong in my old age? I make it 584.something billion years.
That’s about 42 times the current age of the universe.
Someone work it out and agree with me, please?
MrYd
A quick Googling finds a similar problem where someone also got the wrong answer, giving 58 billion years, before realising their error.
And the bit that really shows how big it is… If we assume the common 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars in each, we’re up to 10,000 quintillion stars. Each with some number of planets (possibly zero – zero’s a number!). Call it 5 each. Sounds a good average.
That makes this game only about a 2711th of the size of the real universe. 0.04% of it. I guess that’s the DLC taken care of then.
bunimomike
“We’ll release the other 99.96% of the universe in a Day One patch.” :-)
ron_mcphatty
Well done on the heavy maths mate, that 0.04% stat is amazing!! Off topic, WTF is the difference between a normal billion and an American billion?
MrYd
It’s not a “normal” and “American” billion, really. The “normal” one (1000 million) that everyone sensible uses these days was what the Americans used. The big one (a million million, which is 1000 times bigger) was at least reasonably common in the UK (officially settled on the smaller version about 40 years ago).
But it’s pretty much universally accepted that a billion is 1000 million now. Things that get the Giga prefix are a billion-whatevers. The old, or big, or just “wrong” billion would be a trillion in real, sensible numbers. (The tera prefix)
A trillion on the stupid scale would actually be a quintillion in real numbers. Or an exa-something. The numbers go all wrong with that old fashioned system.
So the only thing anyone needs to know these days is a billion is 1000 million. Then it goes up by a factor of 1000 each time with for a trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, and, erm, a sextillion, I guess? Then a septillion? Nobody would ever really use that, would they? That’d be 10^24, which is getting silly. Although it’s not that huge a number. About the number of atoms in 20g of carbon.
The scientist in me loves these big numbers. And the really tiny ones too. I’ve got a soft spot for the Angstrom, which isn’t even a very scientific unit.
double-o-dave
I think TSA should change your log-in authentication questions from simple sums like…
9+?=11
to
10,000 x 8^23 / 16% = ??
You’d be logging in and out all day for fun! ;)
MrYd
Does 10,000 x 8^23 / 16% even make sense? I would assume you mean 8^23 divided by 16% of 8^23 (and then obviously multiplied by 10,000). But I don’t think anyone would ever write it like that. Mainly because anything divided by 16% of itself is always going to be 6.25. Making your answer 62500.
Also, why would anyone use a power of 8? Powers of 10, yes. Handy for big numbers. Power of 2, sure, if computers are involved. But a power of 8? I would just go for 2^69 instead. (And no, there’s no effort involved in working that one out. 8 is 2^3, so 2^3^23 just involves multiplying those powers to get 69)
You’ll have to try a lot harder than that to get me logging in and out all day.
double-o-dave
I stand corrected. I think TSA should change your username to Commander Data.
TSBonyman
That’s a megaload of planets to explore while still leaving a megaload of planets unexplored, what i’m really interested in seeing though is their procedural tech and how varied the environments, creatures and enemies will be as you encounter each planet.
MrYd
Technically, it’s a lot more than a “megaload” of planets. “Mega” being the prefix for a million.
I think the number works out as an “exaload of planets”.
To be honest, I’m beginning to think they shouldn’t have stuck with a 64 bit number. Should have gone to 128. Giving 3.4×10^38 planets. Significantly more than the real universe in that case.
No! Don’t even think about 256 bits! You’ll be up to a stupidly huge number. About 1000th of the number of atoms in the universe.
sabbat7001
“I’m just off the the shops on Zirgax X456. Be back in about 23 million years, do you want anything while I’m out?”
double-o-dave
Yes, a bigger Abacus!
Andrew
I’m really looking forward to this. I just hope its not an all hype and no deliver game. Don’t want to be disappointed with this one.