How do games like Minecraft and No Man’s Sky have seemingly “infinite” world expansion, yet their files are not only tangible but quite small?

Question

I was playing Minecraft the other day and went very, very far from my spawn point and eventually returned home. When I retraced my way back, I couldn’t wrap my head around how the game not only generates the environment but remembers the placement of everything as I return to the same places I had already been. With that in mind, wouldn’t the game be required to remember… an absurd amount of information as the user explores their world? How are the file sizes of these worlds not crazily big?

In: 12

Answer 1

Imagine a maths formula. So something like x = (45+27/2)/17^34y

If Y is always the same, then X is always the same. That’s basically how No Man’s Sky works. It has a formula. It says “Okay, so we’re on planet 3829374 at the coordinates 34, 115. What should this land look like?”.