Not sure why you'd consider these replies... odd... as they're factual observations based on the game that exists today. The frame rate does drop dramatically on these lifeless rocks, and note how FDev keep futzing with this aspect lowering detail trying to improve performance. The stations were for the longest time terrible FPS hogs, and although FDev finally improved them the FPS still drops quite a lot for what appears to be very basic elements with little complexity. So there's a great deal of evidence to suggest the Cobra engine cannot handle much beyond what is in the game today.
What is odd is declaring the Cobra is fully capable of much greater things without having an ounce of proof. (And sorry but any CGI videos showing "what if's" don't count). Let's see the Cobra engine actually doing something like the OP asked about. There's nothing to show it can do anything like this right now.
One last point is to remember just how many graphical items have been removed from the game since early beta. Remember the cool freezing windshield effects for one? This and many other elements were removed or reduced due to performance reasons - the Cobra engine couldn't handle these elements. There's been many posts highlighting the downgrades that have occurred since the game first released as well. The game wasn't downgraded to make a better experience for players. That too would be odd.
Ok, but that is 'factually' not my experience, and that is my point, which seems to indicate the problem lies elsewhere.
You say lower detail compared to before? yet most of what people refer to from back then is simply a texture change inside ships and such, which is not really going to affect performance, but it is simply a design, not the whole "reduce details to increase performance" as many seem to indicate? unless you have hard proof at best it is speculation, unless you have solid proof, at best you are speculating.
The whole "the graphics changed and I don't like it" they must be nerfing them to increase performance, while yes it 'can' be true, it would make absolutely no development sense, it seems simply they moved away from the rustic design, it could be, if you look because of the lighting engine change they saw that the way the rustic looked with the new lighting engine looked bad? again, we do not know.
So yeah, its observations, but they are in no way 'factual' at best they are speculative. And add to that that you apparently aren't reading my post. I'm saying "they can make it able to handle." I never said it could handle right now, so yeah, what "proof" do I need to make to said statement?
But yes, stations have had bad performance, but its improved significantly, and I'm not saying it is perfect, I'm saying its their in home engine, they can make any and all optimisations and changes that they feel are needed. But saying "stations are bad performance so engine sucks" yet at the same time you have an engine that generates a massive amount of terrain, which I can tell you, is a significantly tough task to ask a GPU, maybe just maybe the reason for stations when they had bad performance, had another reason? you know, something unintended they worked on fixing? It is almost as if it is more complicated then any 'player' observation could simply make?
As for the 'freezing window' It is fully still there so I'm not sure what you are talking about.
But I would love to hear about "all the others features removed" because last I checked, its "design change choices" that you don't like and not feature removal, again, average player really knows very little about mechanics, and has no understanding of how stuff behind the scene's work, and while sure anyone online can claim to be anyone, you can look up more or less all i've said on development sites read about how stuff works, and maybe get an idea how complicated it is?
So yeah, again, I'm not saying Elite is perfect, I'm saying, the cobra engine can be changed to support more or less anything since they know the game fully it is their in house engine, please actually read what I write, and don't make assumptions on what I said, because that just makes you plain and simply wrong, when you for example, say that I said "It is capable" vs what I actually said "They can make it capable" big difference.
