We reported earlier that the crowd-funded latest entry in the Elite franchise had entered it’s premium beta phase, opening the doors to many more players keen to explore the game’s vast universe.
Along with the release, a new video demonstrating the attention to detail lavished in Elite: Dangerous’ craft and structures, has also been released. It’s a tour of the exquisitely detailed Orbis starport and shows the internal and external structures plus the traffic it services. It’s an impressive demonstration of the game’s ambitions and another reminder of why this game is so hotly anticipated by Oculus Rift users. The scale alone of the scenes on offer are tantalising to say the least, especially with the prospect of Oculus’ imminent release of the 1080p DK2 in July.
Key new features in this release:
- Three new star systems are available to explore and trade within, Aulin, LHS 3006 and Styx.
- Giant Orbis class starports have been added, which are complex 8km diameter structures, larger and more luxurious than Coriolis star ports.
- A new space ship type, the Hauler, is the first flyable Zorgon Peterson ship to be added. It’s an entry-level trading ship, to follow on from the Sidewinder. It has four times the cargo capacity of the Eagle, the entry-level combat ship,
- Additional language support has been added, with German as the first such language to be added to English.
- A high resolution screen capture facility has been added (capturing at four times the current screen resolution)
- Improved functionality in the installer, giving incremental updates going forwards.
- Improved performance.
And, in case you missed it, you can check out our community Q&A with the founder of Frontier Developments and one of the two developers of the original Elite, David Braben here.
Interested in signing up to the Elite: Dangerous world? You can grab early Premium Beta access here or pre-order the standard beta edition here.
