10 Greatest Programming Milestones In Gaming History

8. No Man's Sky

Most developers harness the power of new consoles to push graphics to the next level - improving resolution, anti-aliasing techniques, draw distances, physics and animation to create a more believable world. The insanely ambitious indie studio Hello Games are doing something a bit different with Sony's and Microsoft's new hardware by using their power to seamlessly procedurally generate planets so big that they would take days or even weeks to fully explore. Of course, procedural generation is nothing new (even Worms had it back in 1995), but it has never been done with such a mind-boggling scale. From the incredible draw distance when the player enters a planet's atmosphere to the tiny, unique rocks formations at their feet when they land - No Man's Sky's level of detail is simply astonishing. It isn't even out yet, but regardless of how the actual game turns out the technology on display here is very impressive. A small indie team has created a galaxy so big it could probably fit Rockstar's San Andreas inside it thousands of times. Oh and if that wasn't enough, it also has dinosaurs.