No Man's Sky Settings, Controls & Troubleshooting Guide

Part of the Tips & Tricks series:

• Tips & Tricks Guide Hub: Start here.
• Best Quality-of-Life Settings: The options worth changing first.

Quick Answer

• Third person (3rd person) exists for on-foot, ship, and exocraft, toggled from the quick menu or a bound key.
• PC has field-of-view sliders in the visual settings, with separate values for on foot and in ship.
• Keyboard, mouse, and controller bindings can all be remapped in the controls menu.
• Flight sticks and HOTAS setups work on PC, though they usually need manual axis mapping.
• Most crashes after a patch come from outdated mods; remove them before doing anything else.
• "Version mismatch" means someone in the session is on an older build, and everyone needs to update.

Overview

Most No Man's Sky problems fall into two buckets: settings people cannot find, and errors that appear right after an update. Both are usually a two-minute fix once you know where to look. Each topic below has its own header, so jump straight to whatever is broken.

Third-Person Camera

Third person works in all three main contexts: on foot, piloting a ship, and driving an exocraft. Each is remembered separately, so switching your on-foot camera does not change your ship camera.

Two ways to switch:

• Quick menu: open the radial quick menu and look for the camera toggle. This works on every platform.
• Bound key or button: the camera toggle appears in the controls list, so you can assign it to a spare key and flip views instantly.

On foot, the camera sits behind and slightly above your character, which makes base building and terrain editing easier to judge. In-ship third person is the better view for landing on cluttered planets, since you can see what is behind and beside you. It does make precise dogfighting harder, because your reticle sits further from the screen centre, so flip back to cockpit view for space combat. For screenshots, photo mode gives you far more control over framing.

Field of View (FOV)

On PC, FOV lives in the visual or display section of the settings menu. There are separate sliders for on-foot FOV and in-ship FOV, which matters because the values that feel right for walking around are usually too wide inside a cockpit.

How to approach it:

• Raise the on-foot slider first if you get motion sickness. A wider view reduces the tunnel effect that causes discomfort.
• Adjust the ship slider more conservatively. Pushing it too far shrinks the cockpit instruments and makes distant targets harder to read.
• Test in atmosphere, not in space. Empty space hides how a high FOV distorts terrain at the screen edges.
• Higher FOV renders more of the world, so a large increase costs a few frames on weaker hardware.

Console versions expose fewer visual options, and the exact slider list varies by platform and generation; our platforms and versions guide covers what differs between builds. VR is different again, because the headset dictates FOV and the comfort settings you want live in the VR-specific menu. See the VR guide for that.

Keyboard, Mouse, and Controller

Every input method is remappable. The controls menu is split by device, and on PC you can rebind keyboard and mouse separately from a connected controller. Console players can remap controller bindings too, with fewer options than PC.

Things worth knowing before you start rebinding:

• Hold versus tap matters. Several actions are layered onto the same input, distinguished by how long you press it. Interacting, picking up, and some vehicle and inventory actions behave differently on a quick tap than on a held press. If an action seems to do nothing, try holding it.
• Some binds are shared. Assigning a key that is already used elsewhere can create conflicts that only show up in a specific context, like inside a ship or while in an inventory screen. The menu usually flags duplicates, but not always.
• Controller and keyboard work together. Plugging in a controller mid-session generally works, and on-screen prompts switch to match the last device you used.
• Write your changes down. A large update can occasionally shift bindings, and restoring a written list beats reconstructing it from memory.

If you are rebinding to reduce friction, the quality-of-life settings guide covers the other options worth changing at the same time.

Flight Sticks and HOTAS

Flight sticks and HOTAS setups are supported on PC. Getting one working is rarely plug-and-play.

What to expect:

• The game usually detects the device, but axis assignments often come through wrong or inverted on first connection.
• Throttle axes cause the most trouble. A throttle that reads as centred at rest makes your ship drift or fight your inputs.
• Multi-device rigs confuse the input layer. Unplug wheels, pedals, and spare controllers while you configure, and with a separate stick and throttle, disable one temporarily so axes bind to the right hardware.

Community-made profiles are the shortcut here. Most popular sticks have shared configuration files or third-party mapping profiles circulating in the community, which saves you mapping every axis by hand. Tools that translate stick input into controller input tend to be more reliable than fighting the native bindings.

Performance and Crashing

Work through this list in order. Most crashes are solved by the first two steps.

1. Remove mods. Mods built for an older build break after a patch, often silently, and the game crashes on launch or when loading a save. Clear the mod folder entirely, confirm stability, then reinstall updated versions. Our PC mods guide explains the folder structure.
2. Verify game files. Steam, GOG, and Xbox all have an integrity check. A partially downloaded patch produces crashes and black screens that look like hardware faults. If the failure is specifically a save that will not load, work through the save backup and recovery guide instead.
3. Update GPU drivers. The game patches frequently and driver-side fixes often follow. A year-old driver is asking for trouble.
4. Clear the shader cache. Stale shaders cause stutter, visual corruption, and hangs on load. Clearing forces a rebuild: one slow first session, smoother play afterwards.
5. Lower settings. Drop shadow quality, reflections, and volumetric effects first. They cost the most and change the look the least. The performance and FPS guide ranks every setting by cost and covers Steam Deck configuration.
6. Check for a version mismatch. If the failure only happens in multiplayer, the build number is the first suspect.

Black Screen on Launch

A black screen with audio playing means the game is running but rendering to the wrong place.

• Alt-Tab out and back in to force the window to redraw.
• Switch from exclusive fullscreen to borderless windowed.
• With multiple monitors, set the game to your primary display.
• Delete or rename the settings file so the game regenerates default resolution values. Third-party overlays are another frequent cause; disable them and retest.

Version Mismatch

This error means the players trying to connect are on different game builds. It shows up in the days after a patch, when one person has auto-updated and another has not, or when platforms receive the update at different times.

The fix is to get every client onto the same build:

• Have everyone check for updates and fully restart the game, not just the launcher.
• Confirm the patch actually finished. A queued or paused download leaves you on the old build, and on console the update can sit in the queue looking installed.
• If one platform has not received the patch yet, cross-platform play between those builds will not work until it does. Waiting is the only option.

"Unable to Download Base"

This appears when the game cannot pull base data from the servers, usually in a multiplayer session, when visiting someone else's base, or when loading a save that has bases stored server-side. The base data exists; your client just cannot retrieve it right now.

Steps to try:

• Restart the game and reload the save. A stale session token is a common cause.
• Confirm you are signed in to the platform's online service and your connection is stable.
• Check whether the servers are having problems. Community channels report outages quickly.
• Move away from the base area, save, then return, which forces a fresh request.
• If it only affects a joined session, have the host reload instead.

Base data also fails to appear temporarily after a large update while servers catch up on load. If everything else checks out, waiting a few hours often resolves it.

Quick Problem Table

Settings That Affect Play

Difficulty and survival options are covered in the game modes and difficulty settings guide. If you are new, the beginner's guide hub is the place to start.

FAQ

Does No Man's Sky have third person?

Yes, for on-foot movement, ship piloting, and exocraft driving. Toggle it from the quick menu, or bind the camera toggle to a key or button in the controls menu. Each context remembers its own setting.

How do I change FOV?

On PC, open the settings menu and find the visual or display section. There are separate FOV sliders for on foot and in ship. Raise the on-foot value if you get motion sickness, and keep the ship value moderate so cockpit instruments stay readable. Console builds expose fewer visual options.

Why does it keep crashing?

Mods are the usual culprit, especially right after a patch. Remove them completely and test before anything else. If crashes persist, verify game files, update GPU drivers, and clear the shader cache. Crashes that only occur in multiplayer point to a build mismatch rather than your hardware.

Can I use a flight stick?

Yes, HOTAS and flight sticks work on PC. Expect to map axes manually, since detection often gets the throttle wrong. Unplug other controllers while configuring, and look for a community profile for your hardware first.

What is a version mismatch?

Two or more players are running different builds and cannot connect. Everyone needs to install the latest update and fully restart. If one platform has not received the patch yet, sessions between those builds have to wait.

Key Takeaways

• Third person and FOV are both there, just buried: camera toggle lives in the quick menu and controls list, FOV sliders live in the visual settings with separate on-foot and in-ship values.
• Rebinding is fully supported on keyboard, mouse, and controller, but watch for actions that behave differently on hold versus tap.
• HOTAS works on PC and rewards patience; community profiles save hours of manual axis mapping.
• When something breaks after an update, suspect mods first, file integrity second, and drivers third.
• Multiplayer errors like version mismatch and base download failures are almost always about build numbers or server connectivity, not your machine.