Horizons Has the galaxy changed?

Kyr One

Kyr One
Has the Elite Dangerous galaxy changed since its inception?

Primarily, as astronomical discoveries are made, have any stars or star systems been changed to reflect actual observations about real stars? Not only might planets be added or removed, not only might the characteristics of a particular star be altered, but even the characteristics of all stars or planets of a certain class could change as astrophysicists learn more about them.

And indeed, actual scientific discoveries need not be the only reason celestial bodies get changed. A dev might be feeling blue after breaking up with his girlfriend, and just decide to color a bunch of blue moons that day.

This is really a question for a developer, but if commanders have actually witnessed changes, that information is also welcome.

(If there is a forum or FB or reddit page, or another way to get answers from developers directly, please advise.)
 
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PhoenicianSon

PhoenicianSon
They have updated the game and released each update in line with any NASA public releases indicating the discovery of new planets and or bodies within a system. If my recollection serves me correctly, when I first started playing this game in 2015, the SOL system bodies ended with the arguable planet size mass beyond Pluto. Now there are several bodies further from the star included in the SOL system to track the new discoveries made by in real life.

You can probably still find these historical releases in the News section of the forums. Otherwise, I am sure that you will find them on a Google search with the correct combination of key words for the search. However, in conclusion, the answer is yes, Frontier has been updating Elite to remain in line with new discoveries within our solar system, which total I believe 150,000 of the 4+ billion systems in Elite. Any data within any discovered system or in any undiscovered system is procedurally generated.
 

Kyr One

Kyr One
I wonder if there's a list or catalog, either FD created or 3rd party, of every star system in the ED galaxy that has been manually configured to match known stars / systems in the Milky Way.
 

Dsign

Dsign
kyr one said:
I wonder if there's a list or catalog, either FD created or 3rd party, of every star system in the ED galaxy that has been manually configured to match known stars / systems in the Milky Way.
Click to expand...

I've seen a number once... Many were hand crafted. Can't tell how how many exactly though.

EDIT : You can be sure that every discovery made irl will be updated into the game aswell. Frontier loves their science accuracy :p
 
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Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Dsign said:
EDIT : You can be sure that every discovery made irl will be updated into the game aswell. Frontier loves their science accuracy :p
Click to expand...

Not really. Discoveries can only be integrated if they do not require changes of mass. If something like Trappist-1 happens where the game already has all the required mass in the correct place, a system can be fudged to agree with discoveries. Just adding new stars or significantly changing the mass of existing systems, however, would to my understanding break automatic generation and basically rewrite the entire galaxy.

The game took a lot of data from existing catalogues, mostly through SIMBAD, and what we have now is the rough structure of what we will be stuck with unless Frontier find a way to introduce larger changes in their Stellar Forge.
 

Amargosa

A
PhoenicianSon said:
They have updated the game and released each update in line with any NASA public releases indicating the discovery of new planets and or bodies within a system. If my recollection serves me correctly, when I first started playing this game in 2015, the SOL system bodies ended with the arguable planet size mass beyond Pluto. Now there are several bodies further from the star included in the SOL system to track the new discoveries made by in real life.
Click to expand...

I don't remember Persephone to have ever been discovered in real. Also, Ceres and many of the 4 Gas Giant's moons are missing. And why are there so many Gas Giants with rings? They used to be a rare sight. Jupiter doesn't have visible ones.
 

PhoenicianSon

PhoenicianSon
Amargosa said:
I don't remember Persephone to have ever been discovered in real. Also, Ceres and many of the 4 Gas Giant's moons are missing. And why are there so many Gas Giants with rings? They used to be a rare sight. Jupiter doesn't have visible ones.
Click to expand...

They update it, but it doesn't mean that its 100% on point. There is currently another post about how one of the planets in SOL is not accurately represented same. Thus, yes, there may be updates along with the NASA discoveries, but they are not all 100% perfectly represented in game. I apologize if my response was construed to mean that the game has perfectly represented our real solar system.
 

Lucius-Darcia

Lucius-Darcia
Trappist-1 was added ;)

t1-sys.jpg
 
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ohgren

O
kyr one said:
Has the Elite Dangerous galaxy changed since its inception?

Primarily, as astronomical discoveries are made, have any stars or star systems been changed to reflect actual observations about real stars? Not only might planets be added or removed, not only might the characteristics of a particular star be altered, but even the characteristics of all stars or planets of a certain class could change as astrophysicists learn more about them.

And indeed, actual scientific discoveries need not be the only reason celestial bodies get changed. A dev might be feeling blue after breaking up with his girlfriend, and just decide to color a bunch of blue moons that day.

This is really a question for a developer, but if commanders have actually witnessed changes, that information is also welcome.

(If there is a forum or FB or reddit page, or another way to get answers from developers directly, please advise.)
Click to expand...


Obsidian Ant addressed this back in February. Here is some info he got from FD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP4eEQtxShY
 
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