Hi,

While I do believe NEXT would be the overall better gameplay experience, I'm debating trying to install 2 installations as I really do plan on restarting my character in NEXT.

Does anyone know if one can run 2+ different installations of NMS?

I think you can in theory but note that I have not tried this myself.

Since the saved games seemed to be stored on a per user login basis:
C:\Users\your login\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS\DefaultUser

It maybe possible to create another user on your PC and run one version from one user and another version from another.

So for example, user login bravoman could run one version with saves games:
C:\Users\bravoman\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS\DefaultUser

And user login bravoman2 could run the other with saved games:
C:\Users\bravoman2\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS\DefaultUser

There are many caveats such as forcing both versions to be installed (if the installers are fussy), perhaps one via Galaxy and the old version via classic installer. And ensuring that you always keep a backup of your saves just in case you run wrong version with the wrong user and get the save files updated.

Other options include using a VM like VirtualBox but 3D acceleration may not be good enough (after enabling it) or dual booting. However both of those options seem like a lot of effort for just one game.

I hope that other people have some better suggestions (-;

On another thread user ThorChild noted the following suggestion which can be found here (which maybe better if you intend to stick to one version for a while instead of switching between versions often):
https://www.gog.com/forum/no_mans_sky/multiple_installs_different_saves/post3

Thanks! Gonna give it a try now.