I like this idea. Sadly i gave up on expecting..... anything... yeah. Thaw me out if its possible one day.
Do you want ED 2 or an Expansion?
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I like this idea. Sadly i gave up on expecting..... anything... yeah. Thaw me out if its possible one day.
I have a different opinion on this. I'm not arguing this is the way you feel, but it's subjective. I think Space Engine looks better in many (but not all) cases than Elite, and with some work you actually can fly a proper spaceship around in SE. My biggest complaint about SE, when comparing it to ED, is that there is no "game" to SE. There is no risk and no reward, except for some amazing views. In fairness to SE, it doesn't claim to be a game, but to your point of immersion, I never feel like I'm "lost in space" like Elite used to make me feel in the early days of exploration, back when exploring was challenging (pre-fleet carriers and pre-Guardian FSD booster). This is something Elite nailed, and there's no other game like it in that regard, especially not NMS which is Willy Wonka fantasy space.
Ironically the closest game to replicate the "lost in space" feel of Elite for me has been the other SE - Space Engineers. Sure, it has silly small planets, and space isn't proper big, but without "fast travel" it can take literal days to get from one planet to the next, and when you land on these planets and explore them on foot / rover, they "feel" big enough. I've spent weeks in SE exploring a single planet on foot / rover, and highly enjoyed the experience. Space Engineers sit somewhere between Elite and NMS when it comes to "realistic" space, probably closer to NMS (though SE does a wonderful job with microgravity and vacuum in space, along with ship interiors).
All this to say that Space Engine is not as bad as you make it sound, but I do agree that nothing replaces Elite outright. I've been able to mostly replace Elite gameplay-wise (I'm talking about my own personal favorite gameplay loops), but it's taken multiple space games to do it (SE, SE, X4, FS), and even then there are crucial aspects missing.
Uhh. In theory. In practice, looking at what folks who did program for UE5 said, that would be clunky, require many hacks, and would most likely increase Elite's minimum requirements significantly.
More importantly though, let's move back to the basics: what would the benefits of using UE5 be for Frontier? Mostly that they could recruit people familiar with Unreal Engine, whereas they can't do that with Cobra, for obvious reasons. Well, wrapping would nullify that advantage. So, could you name any areas where using a UE5 wrapper would give enough advantages to outweigh the disadvantages, and be worth the royalty payments to Epic as well?
Thanks, I'm familiar enough with WINE. For starters, it's not "the Linux OS", but POSIX calls instead, and if you'd say that's splitting hairs, I'm sure the folks running it on macOS and the BSDs would disagree. Then there's that it has been in development for thirty years, by many contributors, and for much of that time, it was far from perfect. (Ask me ten years ago whether programs through Wine will run faster than native Windows, and I would have had a good laugh.) Well, even today it's not perfect, but it has come a long way, especially after Valve made Proton. There have also been other large corporate sponsors, though not to this level of results.
Anyway, I digress, this is now quite off-topic.
Also, I'd say that the majority of Elite's biggest problems come from game design errors, not engine problems. An expansion couldn't fix those, but a sequel could: however, as it has already been touched on here, making a sequel would have many more issues of its own, which would make it a rather bad idea.
The thing is, the current galaxy generation does have its known issues, so a sequel that keeps old BGS / exploration data would have to keep the old generation as it is too. So Frontier would either have to decide not to fix any errors with the Stellar Forge, or to fix them and thereby throw out all the old data, exploration and BGS both.
With a sequel they could at least justify that. Doing it on ED though? There would most likely be riots of a magnitude the game has never seen.
I'd say the only considerable challenge in exploration used to be a challenging navigation through the most sparse areas, but once Engineering 1.0 gave a nearly +50% boost over the 35-40 ly that was possible before, that went out the window. Once they get a jump range of around 50 ly, folks can go through almost anywhere on a mostly straight line, far less manual navigation is required.
Ever since that time, what further jump range increases have accomplished was mostly to make exploring sparse areas possible to more ships, not just to the Big Three (Anaconda, AspX, DBX), so that was for many a welcome increase in variety. Since the FSD booster gives a flat increase, that helped a lot for lower range ships, while it didn't matter much when an Asp Explorer went from 56 ly to 66 ly: that range is just for convenience, either faster travel, or needing to synthesize fewer (and lesser) FSD boosts.
I love how people keep raising Unreal and Unity. Unity was just in it's own dumpster fire recently. Still yet to see anyone make a space sim with Unreal. Only engine capable of delivering an Elite experience is the Cobra engine so far by all available evidence. We know for sure that a Franken CryEngine can't do it. 
The reason could be a new game, costing $100, has sucked all the interest and purchasing power out of the room.Better question. Why doesn't another company build a similar game with all the same features using a 'better' engine? Must be easy right? There are so many of them. What's the draw here? The pancake/cheese wedge ships that everyone says looks bad?
A completely rewritten version of Elite might be feasible in a decade...
I don't want ED 2 and I don't want an ED 1 expansion.
The game is already good in its current state and graphics aren't a problem.
It was better before Odyssey, but it is still good.
Anyway, it is just a skybox, some bodies and stations and everything is in the dark so you won't notice a huge difference with better graphics.
What I want is fixed bugs from the issue tracker, but I think it is just a dream.
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I agree with most what you're saying. In fact, the only thing I disagree with is that the flaws are all in the game and that the Cobra Engine is fine as-is. But even that is spitballing, because obviously I don't have access to any of the code or APIs or anything else. There have been reports (Glass Door or whatever it's called) from supposed Frontier employees that the Cobra Engine is a nightmare to work with and a general mess, but you could argue that's hearsay or just a disgruntled employee.
Anyway, I was purely theory crafting and definitely not suggesting that wrapping UE in the Cobra API is a good idea. I'm just saying it could technically be done if for some reason it needed to be done.
Speaking of UE, didn't Frontier choose that over its own Cobra Engine for a recent game they made, or am I imagining things? Again, just curious, not making any suggestions beyond my original post to this thread.
What game is that?
The Photoshop codebase stretches back to OS 7 in 1990, I would be very surprised to find out it was the best code ever. Adobe have refined it over the years in the exact same way I'm suggesting that Frontier are doing, and should keep doing. Making the idea of Elite Dangerous "2" irrelevant - like Frontier is going to throw all the original code away and start afresh.
Getting paid is just an amorphous way to put it. The benefit of dooming Frontier & Elite can have benefits that are removed from direct payment, a competitive edge might be just as beneficial, for example.
Do you have hands on experience with Cobra?
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What I find weird about the whole topic is my understanding of what Frontier has released for ED over the years. Solid Groundwork and Foundations to build on.
I thought that was the fundamental purpose of Odyssey. To create a stronger foundation that could be built from. That might have been my own distorted interpretation... possibly nobody from Frontier actually said this.
I remember just before Odyssey released I was very excited about it. I thought ED heading into a new golden era. Yes the release sucked. But eventually Odyssey was implemented and made functional. And my imagined video game golden era never happened.
I thought that was the fundamental purpose of Odyssey. To create a stronger foundation that could be built from. That might have been my own distorted interpretation... possibly nobody from Frontier actually said this.
I remember just before Odyssey released I was very excited about it. I thought ED heading into a new golden era. Yes the release sucked. But eventually Odyssey was implemented and made functional. And my imagined video game golden era never happened.
Agreed - Odyssey did unfortunately fail to live up to the hype. What perhaps describes it best was the 'Armstrong Moment' we were supposed to get when being the first to set foot upon a world. It turned out that the Armstrong Moment was a notification message on the HUD, and... that was it, really.
I think the Armstrong moment was meant to infer the feeling of taking the first step on a planet/moon that no-one else has but it was taken by some and then repeated to literally mean the climb down the ladder/steps/stairs/whatever. I wonder if Armstrong himself would have considered the walk down the ladder the epitome of that moment?
Yeah, should have been a ticker tape shower with fireworks firing off everywhere. You know, the things that can happen when one sets foot on a barren, never before set foot on, planet. I mean, the complaint is prevalent, but what it should have been (other than walking down steps/exiting the ship) remains a mystery for some reason.
That's cool, and I didn't say that. What I said on this topic was: "Also, I'd say that the majority of Elite's biggest problems come from game design errors, not engine problems." For example, a new engine wouldn't fix any of the major issues of CQC, exploration, PowerPlay, and so on.
In a general sense, Glassdoor isn't a reliable source. There isn't much stopping people from doing fake "reviews" there. For example, according to Glassdoor reports, Star Citizen was supposed to implode any time for many years now. Also, if somebody wants to write a fake review, a game having a custom engine is an obvious point of attack.
F1 Manager, I think? It makes sense too, as it sounds like the kind of game that UE5 would be good for. I just read today that CD Projekt Red is abandoning their own engine in favour of UE5 for their next game, which should also be exactly the kind that UE5 was designed for. But ED, a multiplayer game with 1:1 scale solar systems? That's a niche outside that engine's original scope, so to speak.
I also read today that Epic Games is laying off eight hundred employees, roughly a fifth of their workforce. Not that that's going to cause them to go under, but that's not good news. This and the recent Unity, ahem, controversy, serve as good reminders that there are also risks with using licensed game engines.
In an interview with The Times (I think) Neil Armstrong described the first footfall (and footprint) as being 'that' moment...
... but what does he know compared to the ED players?
I'll say this, there have been times that the idea that I was the first to step on a planet has been conveyed as well as a video game with the scale of Elite could, and it really didn't have anything to do with the hud message. Not always, but then some planets do evoke that response more than some others.
I normally choose to land, on atmo bodies, where the star is low in the sky, just to add a little dramatic effect, long shadows and the atmo colour goes a long way in setting the 'mood'.
I don't know what you would ideally have expected when having been promised an Armstrong Moment, but I haven't mentioned anything about this.
What I did expect was a short, skippable cutscene (10-15 seconds perhaps) generated in-engine of the CMDR descending upon the planet via stairs or elevator, depending on what the particular ship is outfitted with, with a selection of mild fanfares that can be played. Such a thing wouldn't have required much work from competent developers and would have been a suitable Armstrong Moment for me, at least.
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