Their newsletter #96 touches on two things of interest I thought would be nice to share. They have their first expansion coming up, Horizons, which introduces planetary landings. Neat stuff!
1) Orbital mechanics. We sort of had them beat there since we have a transition between space and planetary flight, hehe
They're introducing two new modes of flight, a stable orbital layer for fast flight unaffected by gravity and a slower planetary flight mode affected by gravity, so two transition points. We technically only have one in Destination between space and gravity-affected planetary mode. You might be able to enter a stable orbit at just the right height, but it would probably take some experimenting and wouldn't be very user friendly as-is considering you're in a spaceship that should probably be able to figure that out.
Probably we should aim to improve that so you could scan or just automatically get a highlighted layer you can enter and stay stable in without further manual adjustments. That would also help open up the potential for orbital structures and leaving your ship in orbit while descending in some other vehicle ... maybe you'd be better off landing at a space port, if one exists, but if not you need to get down to construct one somehow
2) Planetary roaming. They have a very short raw video linked in the newsletter (and some other trailer stuff you can find pretty easily). Looks awesome! I wonder if Elite will end up catching up to Star Citizen before the second one ever makes it to launch.
Not much to take from that yet other than just looking at the awesome. But wanted to share anyway. Be inspired and help do stuff!
Pinging @SuperSnark @PrivateAlpha and @SimonC4
1) Orbital mechanics. We sort of had them beat there since we have a transition between space and planetary flight, hehe
They're introducing two new modes of flight, a stable orbital layer for fast flight unaffected by gravity and a slower planetary flight mode affected by gravity, so two transition points. We technically only have one in Destination between space and gravity-affected planetary mode. You might be able to enter a stable orbit at just the right height, but it would probably take some experimenting and wouldn't be very user friendly as-is considering you're in a spaceship that should probably be able to figure that out.
Probably we should aim to improve that so you could scan or just automatically get a highlighted layer you can enter and stay stable in without further manual adjustments. That would also help open up the potential for orbital structures and leaving your ship in orbit while descending in some other vehicle ... maybe you'd be better off landing at a space port, if one exists, but if not you need to get down to construct one somehow
2) Planetary roaming. They have a very short raw video linked in the newsletter (and some other trailer stuff you can find pretty easily). Looks awesome! I wonder if Elite will end up catching up to Star Citizen before the second one ever makes it to launch.
Not much to take from that yet other than just looking at the awesome. But wanted to share anyway. Be inspired and help do stuff!
Pinging @SuperSnark @PrivateAlpha and @SimonC4
