how does procedural generation work in no man's sky

for anyone who knows how these things work.... if no man's sky is procedurally generated (PG), then how would we be able to visit planets that were first discovered by other players? do they mean PG within each specific game, or PG within the whole game universe? if it's within the whole universe, then technically the whole in-game universe would be fully "generated" at some point (given enough time since there will be 18 x 10^18 planets)?

@jak3099: when you discover a planet, it creates that planet within the code through a set of equations. Since the universe is shared, if you go to that same spot, the game is redoing that same equation, regardless of who is going there or not. The code disappears as you leave, but recreates itself when the player makes some form of contact. There are multiple videos on the subject.

@mastermetal777: ahh that makes sense now. that's pretty cool.

I'm assuming this game would have to be always online. Does anyone know if it would work without an internet connection or if you will have to pay for Playstation online?

@jak3099: Good question. So it's a shared procedural generation that cannot be overturned by another player. This makes the feature seem somewhat less important.

@so_hai: how? Its not like everything is randomly generated according to the players. It's just a world that builds itself around the players as they explore.

This is the Avatar of video games...

If I'm not mistaken, Shawn Murry said that the data would be stored on the PS4 HDD.

@MarcRecon: here's a video explaining the tech. From Sean Murray himself

https://youtu.be/h-kifCYToAU

Yes that's right, but things will only generate once and cannot be re-generated.

@so_hai: that's the part i didn't get at first. i watched the youtube videos. it's pretty cool. i guess the input is just the planet's coordinates in space?

I think I heard that too in a video last year.