Every time i play I think WOW

Totally agree, and even despite a few recent graphical changes that seem to have had an adverse effect on some players' machines (mine included), this game is still an amazing achievement and I can't get enough of the game, it's all I play. I've just repped a post to yours that was in a similar vein, you can have some rep too, refreshing to read. :)
 
The wow factor is massive on this game, but it doesn't last that long. I find it lasts more while exploring as your looking at everything more instead of just hauling or pew pewing
 
It always seems fresh to me. I know that some think all the stations are the same and so are the planets and so on, but it doesn't seem that way to me. I've been in since premium beta and not bored yet - and not even into the PP either.
 
I'm still impressed by the planetary textures and shadowing. That and the station exteriors. :)

Most of the time while docking I get (literal) tunnel vision and am only really concentrating on the cow catcher and, if I'm smuggling, the positions of the authority ships. It's only when I have reason to play back some video that I stop and remember just how spectacular those stations are, especially if the lighting is suitably dramatic.

And the hyperspace exit next to a star still makes me smile.

The wow factor is massive on this game, but it doesn't last that long. I find it lasts more while exploring as your looking at everything more instead of just hauling or pew pewing

Agreed. When you're grinding or pew-pewing that's understandably all you tend to see. Sometimes you have to stop and look around. I often approach stations by skimming their planets and on many occasions have dropped from SC just to admire a particularly pleasing landmass or city lights, or to watch a fortuitously timed sunrise. Dreaming about seamless planetary landings, of course. :)

It really is a beautiful looking game.
 
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Watching planets loom towards you out of the gloom of space, is still an impressive experience even though I've been playing since beta. The sense of vast gigantic scale this game imparts at times still stuns. Flying down in close to planets until you hit the drop out zone is pretty darn amazing. The level of detail on the planet surfaces is simply stunning, even boring old ice planets look bloody cool up close. It just boggles my mind that FD have not made a feature out of this, as the planets are the game's most amazing assets.

Space itself is also amazing to look at. The way the view of the galactic core changes as you head further out or in, up or down. Fantastic looking nebula that slowly fill the sky as you approach, hoping from system to system.

And yet if all you do is play the core game, you will most likely never see or notice any of this, as most of your time will be spent just travelling from station to station.
 
Watching planets loom towards you out of the gloom of space, is still an impressive experience even though I've been playing since beta. The sense of vast gigantic scale this game imparts at times still stuns. Flying down in close to planets until you hit the drop out zone is pretty darn amazing. The level of detail on the planet surfaces is simply stunning, even boring old ice planets look bloody cool up close.
Absolutely. Also, IMO one of the best things FD did was giving us the ability to turn off the orbit lines in supercruise. While those lines are there it definitely feels as though you're flying through an planetarium or digital orrery, and the planets are often reduced to glorified place-markers for the bits of yellow line that you're heading to. But with those lines turned off the illusion is so much stronger. Distances feel more significant, planetary movements somehow more graceful. Even the sometimes apparently sluggish accelerations and decelerations of supercruise travel seem more fluid and contextual. It's hard to explain why, it just is. Despite the various game-changing improvements to everything from UIs to AIs that we've seen since alpha, this remains to me one of the most significant.

I urge anyone who hasn't already tried turning off orbit lines to give it a go; at first it's very odd because you also lose the zone warnings around stars and planets which makes it very easy to get too close and crash out of FSD. It also makes it slightly tougher to approach a station from the planet side because you can't immediately see its orbital path; you have to fly slightly wider and variable approaches to judge the relative positions of the planet and station.

But you quickly learn to compensate and again it all adds to the illusion; rather than just "aim slightly away from the line", fuel scooping becomes a nervous game of balancing fuel flow against heat and a judgement call of "just how much of that corona do I want filling the screen?", while planets become real worlds floating in space and not just disruptive masses to be avoided. It's wonderful.

Now if only they could do something about the illusion-shattering "freeze, wobble and drop" of supercruise exit, which only ever serves to remind me that I'm moving from one instance to another. But given all the networking stuff going on under the hood, I suspect there's no real solution to this.

It just boggles my mind that FD have not made a feature out of this, as the planets are the game's most amazing assets.

IIRC there was talk back in the Kickstarter days of using the procedural galaxy (or a re-seeded variant to avoid game information leakage) as an educational tool, accessible outside of the game using a "go anywhere" interface similar to Space Engine. But I'm guessing the loss of offline mode pretty much killed that idea. Which is a shame, because the whole Stellar Forge really is impressive. Often I still have to remind myself that every star I'm seeing on screen is "real".
 
Wait for the announced CV1 and buy it. You will not believe how cool it looks (and feels) in VR.WOW is just not sufficient then... ;)
 
R+ for you OP.....I'm still astounded every time I play the game and I've been playing since around Jan 1. Elite really is quite an achievement
 
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No matter how often you see them, there's something beautiful about the big stations.

While I think we definitively need more station types and variations, I also feel that you have to acknowledge the huge amounts of work that has gone down in making the more massive stations... all the concepting, details, texturing, modelling... just planning the structure of the station in a way that makes sense... and makes it compatible with first-person gameplay further down the road...

And they're beautiful, too. Massive, graceful beasts.
I really hope that we will get to see the orbital cities from FE2 return one day...
 
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After a month or three you realise everything looks the same everywhere. Just different shades.

After nearly 7 months, I still get the WOW factor… (why am I still falling into these arguments, note to myself: don't hang out around forums when having a good time)
 
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