Elite: Dangerous is looking sexy

A pre-alpha trailer made in-engine:


And yes, that's about how actual gameplay looks. Here's some proof, along with evidence of a Newtonian flight model:


Sorry, Star Citizen, but you're going to have quite a bit to measure up to.
(Though, I'm still waiting for them to officially announce ED for Linux.)

I just want to touch it.....

I know what you mean. I too feel like polishing off the old joystick after watching these. (Hoho.)

Where did this ... Elite:dangerous come from? I've heard of star citizen..This game is pretty new to me.

I have no idea. I heard a vague mention of a game called Elite from 1984 that I've never heard of.

As I said above.....just a touch......it looks so awesome....

Elite (1984) was the first PC space sim, and is the space sim that inspired ALL subsequent space sims. It's focused on trading, exploring, combat, etc. If you've played Evochron Mercenary, that game is the most similar. Some notable features were the entirely procedural starmap, the dynamic economy, and the open ended gameplay. In 1984, no less! Elite was followed by 2 sequels that were of varying quality in the early 90s. (Everybody agreed they were great space sims, but they had some inconsistencies that made them less amazing than the first.)

In the early 2000s, the devs tried to start making a new Elite game, based on the first one, but they couldn't get it funded, cuz publishers. Then Kickstarter became a thing, and we got success stories like the Double Fine Adventure and, of course, Planetary Annihilation. The Elite guys wanted to do the same for their game, but they had to wait for Kickstarter to be available in the UK, where their company is based. By the time that happened, Star Citizen's KS campaign was in full swing, so Elite came off as a "me too" project. Since gamers had already dumped money into Star Citizen, Godus, and several other high profile games at the time, ED got less recognition. They did pass their KS goals, however, and with some investor funding on the side, they started working on their game.

Now, 1 year later, they've started the alpha, which gives us the basic combat system to play around with. Beta comes soon, with an expected release in March 2014. (This may be delayed.) When released, it will be released to backers only, as a sort of Gamma release for a time. This will allow them to ensure that the game is fully tested and balanced before they do a true release to retail. (No word on when final release will come, but I'd expect maybe in 2015 perhaps?)

The game itself has a lot of nifty features they want to put in (some of which are already in, like Occulus Rift and TrackIR support), many of which are explained in their dev diary videos on Youtube. More details can be found on the wiki:
http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Elite:_Dangerous_FAQ

Hopefully that sums things up.

Elite: Dangerous' kickstarter was somewhere around the same time as Star Citizen's, wasn't it?

That is correct. It started about halfway through Star Citizen's campaign. However it's unlikely it was started because of SC. David Braben had been planning on it for some time, apparently.

Was looking around their website. Looks great, but 200 pounds is a bit rich for my blood for an alpha. May get in on the beta, however.

Says the Uber employee.
But really, it seems like their alpha and beta will more or less go the same route as PA, with more of a focus on testing. (Albeit with closer-to-final graphics.) Again, I tend to prefer to play my games once they're complete, so I won't mind waiting until their final release. (Though I would be happy to contribute to them earlier, provided they confirm that Linux version.)

Hey, I fully support it! It's clearly working for them. Just for me, while I'm excited about it, I already put a few hundred into Star Citizen, and putting even more into another I just heard about? Little beyond my risk tolerance, but you better believe I'll be following it closely.

Oh, I was just poking fun at the irony, since a lot of people said the same thing about the PA alpha/beta access on Steam. Of course, both companies have perfectly good reasons for the pricing, but it won't stop me from saying "How do you like them apples?"
With love, of course.

I'd actually quite like a big space sandbox, that isn't quite as daunting and drawn out as EVE (recently stopped, mostly because waiting for training times was a bore and the Corp I was in was slowly imploding). But I can't even begin to think I could ever have the spare cash to pay for these big projects on KS

My gosh, they're really going nuts with the detail in this game. Here's an article on stealth and heat management:
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7374

And some hands on from RPS. Particularly noteworthy is the paragraph on heat in relation to combat and combat prediction:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/12/13/hands-on-with-elite-dangerous/
The paragraph in question starts with "And that’s not even the final set-up."

Here's a cool video of the latest multiplayer alpha in action, featuring the Newtonian flight model and tactical use of the heat management systems:

Looks amazing, they are delivering the goods.. so much more hyped for this than Star Citizen, feels like SC is more concentrated on selling stuff rather than making an actual game so far. We shall see..

There are a few space sims that I'm really excited for. There's this, Star Citizen of course, EVE: Valkyrie, and Limit Theory (if you haven't seen it yet http://ltheory.com/). Of course, I was also looking forward to X-Rebirth... at least all of these games should be better than that, lol.

My problem with Star Citizen is that while the developers are showing off all kinds of pretty graphics and detailed ship models, I know nothing about the actual gameplay, other than vague descriptions of how "immersive" and "cinematic" it will be. There are mentions of trading, landing on planets, ship battles, etc, but the details remain fairly nondescript. For such an ambitious project, with such a huge scope as they claim, it seems to me that the depth of gameplay in the end result will be only skin-deep.

Part of the problem is that since they are using the CryEngine, they will always have limitations to their goals. For example, spacial areas will essentially consist of large "aquariums," that ships fly around in like fish, connected to other areas by jump points. Landing on planets or boarding ships will consist of a brief cinematic during what is essentially a level-loading screen. This just makes the game feel a lot more disconnected, like a series of minigames. Perhaps there will be more gameplay depth involved, but the information the developers have been giving us so far has been more focused on cinematic elements, so I have my doubts.

It reminds me of Freelancer, which was also vague on the details during development. The final result was watered down and didn't quite deliver what was expected. (Though many people still enjoyed it, so there is that.)

Meanwhile, Elite: Dangerous has been making some pretty bold claims of its own, but they actually go into a lot of depth on the gameplay specifics, especially in their FAQ. When they first started discussing combat details a year ago, they described in detail the sensor/heat system. Now that the alpha is out, that system is in place, exactly as they described. They've also mentioned economy details, FTL travel, factions, event management, how they're going about their procedural work, etc, and everything they describe is very feasible from an implementation perspective. (And it certainly helps that we've seen some of the stuff described working in games like Evochron, and even the original Elite.) And, of course, they have their own engine, custom-made for this type of game, which means they don't have to build around engine implementations as much. All this certainly doesn't mean the game will deliver, but since there's more of a plan in place, the chances are a lot better, and the alpha is a big confirmation of this.

Of course, this is only the impression I get. But really does remind me of Chris Taylor and his games. Whenever he was developing a game, we'd hear vague descriptions of gameplay, and plenty of hyperbole about "eye-popping visuals." But in the end, we did get stuff like SupCom, so perhaps there's hope for Chris Roberts' endeavors. (Then again, there was Supcom 2. And Space Siege . . .)

As for the other space sims, I know a little about Eve Valkyrie, other than the Occulus Rift connection. Limit Theory seems like it has a lot of potential, and I like that the developer provides a good amount of detail on gameplay development. I'm not as much a fan of the X-series style of gameplay, where the player controls more than one ship, as well as space structures, etc, but again, I'll have to see how LT does it. No Man's Sky is another that looks like it has potential, but so little information is available on that one that I can't really say I'm all that interested. Yet.

In any case, I'm glad that there seems to be a renewed interest in making modern space-sims. Thus far, E looks the most compelling, but I'll certainly be happy if all of them turn out to be amazing games. Even Star Citizen. ;-)

Yeah, that's the vibe I get from Star Citizen too. I'm glad it seems to have kickstarted (dohoh) the revival of that genre, but y'know, tell us solid features and implementations of gameplay.
EVE Valkyrie isn't really a space sim as much as it is just a dogfighting game designed for OR. Given it's CCP, it'll somehow end up tying into the rest of their games in the way Dust 514 did.
All I know about No Man's Sky is that they're English and thus suffered from the ridiculous flooding that part of the country's been having

feisty as well.