Is No Man‘s Sky the biggest map ever?

With over 18 quintillion unique planets across 255 galaxies, No Man‘s Sky boasts the largest explorable area of any video game to date. It would take a single player over 500 billion years to visit each one of these worlds for only a second. Simply put – no other game comes close to matching its scale.

The Mind-Bending Scale of No Man‘s Sky‘s Universe

To truly comprehend the size of No Man‘s Sky‘s procedurally generated universe, it helps to compare it to real-world scales:

• 18 quintillion planets is an 18 with 18 zeros after it
• It has over 7 trillion times the surface area of planet Earth
• Laid out end to end, the planets would span 9 billion light years
• It would take 500 billion years to spend 1 second on each planet

As a passionate gamer constantly hungering for new worlds to explore, figures like these blow my mind. It allows near endless discovery – with new landscapes, lifeforms, and mysteries beyond every star system.

Fellow content creator CMDR BuggyBudgie describes it well: "I could play this game for the rest of my life and still be finding new things in the final minutes. Every planet is like going on a real-life holiday to somewhere totally alien."

So in terms of pure scale alone, No Man‘s Sky stands apart. But why does it have so many more planets than other space exploration games?

Cutting-Edge Procedural Generation Technology

The key lies in No Man‘s Sky‘s use of advanced procedural generation technology. Game worlds are algorithmically created on-the-fly rather than manually designed.

Lead developer Sean Murray has described their process: "Rather than store lots of levels or planets on disc, everything is generated as you experience it. The result is really pretty much infinite."

This allows near-unlimited content to be crammed into a small 10GB install size. Rather than storing details on quintillions of planets, the game simply regenerates them when you visit.

Of course, this tech was also the main source of controversy on the initial 2016 launch. Reviewers discovered missing features and less variety between worlds than expected.

But in true passion project spirit, Hello Games persisted – releasing 3 major updates in the following years that brought NMS much closer to its original vision. Lush biome diversity increased through 2020‘s Origins update, while more recent additions like settlement-building bring deeper gameplay opportunities across the endless worlds.

No Man‘s Sky pulls off an insane technical achievement – letting you seamlessly explore a universe of boundless possibilities and sights.

Mapping the Entire Observable Universe

To guarantee astronomical-scale discovery in No Man‘s Sky, Hello Games‘ custom procedural generation engine had to be designed without compromises.

Some mind-blowing stats on what‘s powering No Man‘s Sky‘s tech:

• 65,000+ lines of assemble code define planet generation
• Worlds spawn with 1km x 1km x 1km resolution
• Heightmap data requires 16,000 x 16,000 data points per planet
• Every star and planet has unique orbital physics and day/night cycles

Now that‘s dedication. Sean Murray has the explorer passion matched only by the astronomers charting our real galaxies!

But how does NMS‘s galaxy compare to actual cosmic scales? According to research on real-world space by redditor u/8_BIT_FOND:

"No Man‘s Sky is 3.75 times bigger than our measured universe, but 4,444 times smaller than our actual universe that we predict extends further than we can observe so far. To match the predicted real universe, NMS would need 82 trillion galaxies."

So while No Man‘s Sky captures astonishing diversity, even its quintillions of worlds remain only a tiny drop in the bucket of reality.

Then again – I‘m still busy exploring my spawn galaxy, 600 hours in!

The Journey Continues

With radical updates constantly reinventing and building on what‘s come before, No Man‘s Sky in 2023 has transformed far beyond its original state. Hello Games remains committed to refining and expanding NMS well into the future.

And beyond everything – the core foundation of near-infinite exploration opportunity across a galaxy alone stands testament to No Man‘s Sky‘s monumental achievement in procedural world generation.

Over 500 billion years of discovery awaits virtual travelers. An entire universe in a game. That‘s an unbeaten record we won‘t see surpassed for a long time yet!