The thing about procedural generation is the more components you have available for the procedural generation algorithm to deploy, the better the results will be. Elite has been rather slow in propagating new assets to be proceduraly deployed, which has made it look a bit silly that 5 years after the digital big bang, its pretty much the same stuff. However, I remain optimistic that there will be a big update bringing space legs with a ton of gameplay associated with it deliberately designed to "keep the players happily busy" for a few years to allow the developers time to transfer the environmental effects and flora and fauna from the other games into Elite.
IMHO procedural generation is going to be key to realising the huge scopes that both "that other space game" and Elite are aiming for, but I think at this moment, if the development team of "That other game" plugged their assets into a procedural galaxy of Elite's scale, they would be in a better position than Elite as it stands plus space legs would be in. Being honest with you, I think its best to let them have an arms race, the more the developers try to outdo each other, the better the games they make for us the players.