In the FD comedic livestream involving Channel 5 news in October 2020, they joked that “Ethel Moonshot” had some news about Raxxla.
One potential rearrangement of that name could be ‘TEHOM’ - this is a Hebrew word meaning "the deep" or "abyss". It's used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the primeval ocean, the chaotic waters before creation, the primordial chaos, or the ‘glistening one’, or a dragon or sea beast.
Ethel Moonshot might have been utilised in that communication FD was intended to draw attention to this general location, the remaining context of Moonshot likewise might have been a motif for a cosmic journey?
That's an interesting one. The context of the codex's 'unremarkable moon' as a potential location makes their use of that name pretty significant.
The name Ethel means 'noble' - so perhaps they are hinting at a relationship to a noble status.
The Noble gases are: Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, Radon and Oganesson (synthetic).
There is also the 'Ethyl group' or ethanol in chemistry which occurs naturally - through decomposition and germination.
Moonshot also has a few meanings or associations:
1. To achieve or aspire to some kind of lofty goal -ie. the Apollo moonshot.
2. A baseball term for hitting a home run at a great height.
3. Jules Verne's scifi novel From the Earth to the Moon where the characters are literally 'shot to the moon' on their adventure.
So a possible extrapolation of FDevs hint could be to look for moons with compositions containing the noble gases. Maybe the 'lofty' aspect of the name could be to choose higher ranked noble gases, or perhaps a moon with the furthest orbit from its parent body.
The latter would make more sense in the context of the rumoured "8th moon of an unknown gas giant".
The LS is 'attached' to the skybox in the same way the skybox stars are generated (not the same way, but functionally the same for this purpose).
Therefore, just as you can technically fly from any start to any other star in 'real space' via supercruise, there's nothing there because skybox generation and system loading is linked (like so much of the game) to the hyperspace jump sequence - meaning the skybox won't change, the star you're heading towards will always be a tiny dot in that same direction even if you 'arrive' at the waypoint marker in real space.
Fundamentally each system is an instance distinct from everything else in the game, and it requires you to enter hyperspace (or pass through some other load sequence like dying or being arrested) to load in the destination system.
Interestingly the Landscape Signal is unique in that it can be heard in all instances directionally in real-space - even the Thargoid motherships required alternative-mode scanning to detect them.
We should question why (or if) a decision was made within Fdev to exclude the LS from DSS scanning when it was implemented. Is there a reason it can only be 'heard' in real-space (not in supercruise)?
Interestingly once you enter the influence of a planet (i.e. within the bounds of the Horizons-era planetary instances) you can't hear the LS any more at all. I'm not sure if that was a deliberate decision linked to lore, or a result of an oversight, or a technical hurdle that wasn't thought important to overcome. We should also question this decision since it might lend more clues.
To get back to your question:
The LS is tantalisingly close to several stars since they're so close together in the centre of the galaxy, and it's very easy to fly the (approx.) half-light-year to where the LS seems to originate from, it'll always appear to be ahead of you, even if you travel many lightyears in that direction. Similarly if you approach from any other star, the same thing will happen.
Similarly the skybox won't update either - the stars are so close together that theoretically travelling in supercruise in the centre of the galaxy would vaguely resemble a slow TNG-era warp travel - the stars would visibly move over time since they're close.
They don't. The LS doesn't move. It's always 'out of reach' in conventional space - always in the same relative place though.
In this way it functions exactly like any other star system in the game, only instead of a 'star' in the skybox, it's a sound originating from a specific location in the skybox.
From this we can be sure of the following:
1) We're not supposed to reach it in real space. It's within the theoretical limit of objects within system generation - meaning if the devs wanted it far distant from a star, but reachable in supercruise, they could have placed it .6ly from the stars in the Stuemeae JM-W C1-5825 system. There are much more distant stellar objects within a system.
2) It's placed in a location that could be a star system. There's no 'star' there on the galmap, but the skybox is so cluttered there that I was unable to definitively say whether or not there's a skybox object there (I don't think there is tbh). It could also be a dark system (literally dark, like too dim to see, like a black-hole, etc.). Erasing the location from Galmap would mean our FSD can't jump there - this would be totally in keeping with the mysterious nature of shadowy groups/individuals controlling Raxxla in some way - and lore hints can be interpreted to suggest that Universal Cartographics is linked to the 'Raxxla conspiracy'.
3) It was deliberately placed outside of a reachable system (or possibly the system it's located within was remove from galmap to prevent early discovery as players proved much more willing to travel to the centre of the galaxy pretty much as soon as it was possible to do so*).
* I can't find the reference right now but I think I recall Brookes commenting something to that effect, being surprised at how far and fast players started reaching distant places in the galaxy?
Assuming the above is accurate, and I see no reason why it's not at this time, then the following is what we should be considering:
1) IF the Landscape Signal's origin point itself is reachable, then there must be some unique way to do it. By unique I literally mean "A way not elsewhere represented in the game" that's been hidden for a decade - and that puts us back literally at square one, hunting for something that may or may not exist anywhere in the galaxy, with no clues whatsoever.
2) If the Landscape Signal's origin point is inaccessible, then the signal itself must be the 'thing' we're supposed to focus on - at least for now.
As many of you know I personally think it's the second option. I think the signal itself is the goal. Correctly interpreting that signal, divining its meaning, possibly revealing what it actually is will reveal more about 'the next step'. The beauty of the signal being 'Raxxla' is that it presents an unfolding mystery path that so many people wanted, and leaves plenty of room for Fdev to develop it in future. It's literally the perfect breadcrumb for this game.
The moonshots were the NASA Apollo programne, now Artemis...
Artemis is the setting for MB's Elite Legacy novel and in Greek myth was one aspect of Hecate, the triple goddess, symbol a triple crossroad as seen in the logo!
If it's supposed to be a Raxxla hint though it doesn't help. We've considered the triple goddess before in this marathon thread...
Where's the darn xroads?
I suspect they only show if you get the instancing RNG goddess to smile on you!
1) IF the Landscape Signal's origin point itself is reachable, then there must be some unique way to do it. By unique I literally mean "A way not elsewhere represented in the game" that's been hidden for a decade - and that puts us back literally at square one, hunting for something that may or may not exist anywhere in the galaxy, with no clues whatsoever.
I just had a thought that it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume it might be somewhat similar to first thargoid interdictions? Maybe there's some "special commodity" lootable somewhere (sold at TDW station?) that would affect hyperjump in systems near the signal. Thargoids were introduced just 2 years after game launch, so mechanic for interference of hyperjump could be there from the release).
I do have some sound design skills and understanding and I spent couple of hours with LS audio a week ago, one of the thing i did is combining multiple repetitions of the LS on top of each other (very precisely, sample-to-sample) so they would boost each other, making LS more strong then other ambient.
My conclusion was that there is nothing there except those "landscapes" and some strange dots. There are definitely no "raxxla dragons" that you see there, although your post was very interesting to read
idk, maybe I recorded too far from it (almost from the bubble). Is there much of a difference in when you are closer to LS?
I just had a thought that it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume it might be somewhat similar to first thargoid interdictions? Maybe there's some "special commodity" lootable somewhere (sold at TDW station?) that would affect hyperjump in systems near the signal. Thargoids were introduced just 2 years after game launch, so mechanic for interference of hyperjump could be there from the release).
This has been tried many, many times by many, many people, with every conceivable commodity jumping through that area, but feel free to give it a go, maybe there's a trigger that everyone else missed, stranger things have happened.
However - the fact that the LS is (by every conceivable aspect of the game over the last decade) unreachable except by imagined mechanisms should be enough to demonstrate that it's (presently) not supposed to be reachable.
I do have some sound design skills and understanding and I spent couple of hours with LS audio a week ago, one of the thing i did is combining multiple repetitions of the LS on top of each other (very precisely, sample-to-sample) so they would boost each other, making LS more strong then other ambient.
My conclusion was that there is nothing there except those "landscapes" and some strange dots. There are definitely no "raxxla dragons" that you see there, although your post was very interesting to read
idk, maybe I recorded too far from it (almost from the bubble). Is there much of a difference in when you are closer to LS?
I also have some sound design skills and I'm sure there's more there, checkmate random internet person. I've also spoken to a few people outside of the Elite community over the past year that don't have a horse in the race and everyone says the audio is too garbled whether they think there's more there or not. The only way to settle it is to get a better recording, but that's impossible given the way the audio in the game works - is designed to work.
So the conclusion is that, for better or worse, the presence of this anomalous signal is the intended message, any content is there to highlight that it's not 'natural' noise.
The obvious gameplay path here would be that the 'garbled' signal is intended to draw people to the source, exactly as was done by the massive amount of work the IRH community did to locate it. Presumably the next step is to find something there, or get close enough to get a clean recording.
It certainly feels like that's the correct solution. Obviously that hasn't happened. There may be some obscure next step that you can find. I hope so!
This has been tried many, many times by many, many people, with every conceivable commodity jumping through that area, but feel free to give it a go, maybe there's a trigger that everyone else missed, stranger things have happened.
I also have some sound design skills and I'm sure there's more there, checkmate random internet person. I've also spoken to a few people outside of the Elite community over the past year that don't have a horse in the race and everyone says the audio is too garbled whether they think there's more there or not. The only way to settle it is to get a better recording, but that's impossible given the way the audio in the game works - is designed to work.
I didn't mean to discredit your efforts, just sharing my perspective. Is there really long and clean recording of LS close to it by any chance? I think I saw links to google drive while reading the thread but can't find them now...
They years ago leaked basically the full list of in game items through the API. It's possible but unlikely that such an item exists after all the times they've accidentally exposed items we're not supposed to know about yet. There's a few items like Anomaly particles that nobody has every actually managed to find and we only know about from API or journal data.
That's just another version of "There might be something, somewhere, that no-one's found yet, that has something to do with this..." element that's the imagined answer to anything. As with all of them. Might be but probably ins't.
Is there really long and clean recording of LS close to it by any chance? I think I saw links to google drive while reading the thread but can't find them now...
I have a lot of recordings, many of them lasting an hour or more - but fundamentally they're all basically the same because this isn't a natural phenomena, all the recordings are essentially of two pre-recorded audio tracks playing over the top of each other (the LS and the galactic background noise). By that I mean they don't have components of 'random static' or anything, when you hear 'static', it's the same recording, if you see what I mean. Therefore (barring other interference like ships or being too near a star) any recording is virtually the same as any other from anywhere else.
A recording lasting an hour will have about 24 repetitions of the galactic background sound, and about 35 repetitions of the Landscape Signal. That's plenty to see how the two tracks interact and overlap etc.
I personally haven't been able to figure out if distance from the LS makes a difference (to the strength of the LS recording). I think it does a little bit, but the difference isn't that large. I have made recordings from many different locations around the LS source and I haven't found that direction makes any difference. I believe there's a slight random 'dimming' of both audio tracks that causes a sort of random variation, so recording several repetitions is the best way to get a good recording. You also need to ensure you're outside the influence of the star(s) of the system you're in - if you're too close you'll get interference from the star. I typically fly out of the system until the speed bump kicks in when you get to interstellar space (that boundary varies by system).
I would strongly recommend that anyone investigating the LS make your own recordings and go through the process of locating it yourself - this will eliminate any errors and inconsistencies introduced by other's methods and recordings, and it doesn't take long with all the methods detailed by others, and with modern jump times.
However, if you can't or don't want to here's some of mine: Gdrive folder link.
The landscape signal seems to come from a boxel corner. Since the boxels were scanned with nothing found it's likely that the position is simply an optimisation that for the vast majority of the galaxy is close enough to A* without requiring extra calculations.
So, it's simulating the radio source from Sag A*. That sounds liike FD "it's good enough" thinking from the outset- they never expected anyone to get to Sag A*...
I suspect it is. The position is pretty close and the signal isn't hugely directional so from any distance further than a few hundred ly it really is close enough to Sag A* that it makes no difference. Games are often forced to make optimisations and this one makes some sense. Functionally for the vast majority of the galaxy it might as well be Sag A* and honestly they placed a lot of stuff strangely.
The Dryman permit lock is for some reason not in the Dryman sector. Right direction someone messed up the distance from the centre.
I suspect it is. The position is pretty close and the signal isn't hugely directional so from any distance further than a few hundred ly it really is close enough to Sag A* that it makes no difference. Games are often forced to make optimisations and this one makes some sense. Functionally for the vast majority of the galaxy it might as well be Sag A* and honestly they placed a lot of stuff strangely.
The Dryman permit lock is for some reason not in the Dryman sector. Right direction someone messed up the distance from the centre.
In fact, I'm lowkey proud to have been cited on a Canonn article thanks to it - as I shared with them a graph from a 2003 paper on Sag A* with a suspiciously familiar shape:
I see TheDarkWheel as a cultists. They found Raxxla but then sth happens. Maby they are unable to open alone the portal through Cthulu can arrive? Maby they need more people to activate something that is Milky-Way sized?
I have a lot of recordings, many of them lasting an hour or more - but fundamentally they're all basically the same because this isn't a natural phenomena, all the recordings are essentially of two pre-recorded audio tracks playing over the top of each other (the LS and the galactic background noise). By that I mean they don't have components of 'random static' or anything, when you hear 'static', it's the same recording, if you see what I mean. Therefore (barring other interference like ships or being too near a star) any recording is virtually the same as any other from anywhere else.
With this being said, has anyone attempted to make a recording of the sound with a broken canopy? I understand this mutes sounds and makes things harder to hear, but with the funkiness of this mystery, it almost demands the trial of some strange (read as suicidal and stupid) methods to see if there is any way to improve the recording.
