Are you unable to play No Man’s Sky due to the ‘unable to initialize Vulcan’ error? It’s not exactly a rare error that players face, but not common either. For starters, your graphics card must support Vulcan API to be able to play the game. So, if your rig features an older graphics card, it is possible that your system isn’t compatible with NMS at all. However, the official Steam page of the game has listed ‘GTX 480’ as the minimum requirement to run the game. This would obviously misguide a lot of peeps – GTX 480 doesn’t support Vulcan. But the other minimum requirement for graphics card is AMD Radeon 7870, which supports Vulcan. Hello Games replaced OpenGL support with Vulcan back in 2019, which was expected to improve in-game performance, especially for AMD cards. Unfortunately, not all NVIDIA cards support Vulcan – only the newer ones do (think beyond GTX 750)!
How to fix the ‘unable to initialize Vulcan’ error in No Man’s Sky?
A lot of users face the annoying ‘unable to initialize Vulcan’ error in No Man’s Sky. But the error may not always point to an Vulcan incompatibility. It is possible that your GPU supports Vulcan, but your graphics drivers are outdated. But firstly, you should make sure that your graphics card supports Vulcan API. Most AMD cards come with Vulcan support. But older NVIDIA and integrated cards don’t support Vulcan.
If you are sure that your graphics card has support for Vulcan but you’re still facing the error in No Man’s Sky, try re-installing the graphics drivers on your system. But first, check if there are any pending OS updates to your system. It is always better to complete OS updates first and then complete updates to graphics drivers. To update your graphics drivers, you can either choose to download the official automatic driver installer for your card or download drivers manually. Manual downloads are tedious, and we recommend downloading the dedicated software instead.
Also Read: No Man’s Sky error 0xc00007b: How to fix it?
Using an AMD card? Head here and click on the Download Now button – the installer will automatically download the compatible Radeon software version. For a GTX card, you’ll need to download Geforce Experience or manually download drivers. Updating the graphics drivers should most definitely solve the isssue you are facing in No Man’s Sky.
If updating graphics drivers doesn’t work, make sure No Man’s Sky is updated to the latest version on your PC. However, we are sure that updating your graphics drivers is all you need to do. On the off chance that it fails, try reinstalling the game or contact Hello Games Support for further help.
