Please note that from
May 1st 2022 the Galactic Mapping Project will enter Maintenance Mode. Thus no new entries submitted after that date will be added to the community maps.
We feel as though this project has come to the end of its relevance in Elite Dangerous. The project is over 7 years old at the time of this post, and unless there's some radically new content and unique POIs added to Elite Dangerous by the developers, there remains little incentive to continue the project as it was originally intended. We feel the GMP (like the Distant Worlds expeditions which were retired last month), are products of their time and have had their day.
Of course this may change depending on where Elite Dangerous goes during the Odyssey season, and beyond, and whether the galaxy (which at this point is now old and well traveled) gets an overhaul and an injection of new phenomena, explorable environments, or even new entire regions (unlikely but we live in hope). If that ever happens, and if it reawakens the teams passion once more, then a decision to bring the project out of maintenance mode may be revisited.
In the mean time we will honour the promise made to the DSSA initiative two years ago, and that is to continue to add new DSSA deployments that submit their info to the thread, as well as upgrade DSSA POI submissions that qualify for Historical POI status as and when the 2-year anniversary of their deployments is reached. And as always we'll continue to fix links, grammar issues, and add screenshots to existing GMP POI entries if and when people bring them to the teams attention.
For those wishing to share their screenshots and discoveries (on the understanding that they will no longer be added to the community maps), you are of course still welcome to post them to this thread (which will remain open indefinitely as it hosts a lot of archived historical information, not just GMP stuff!), alternatively there is always the
Explorers Photography thread, and
The Great Big Odyssey Screenshots thread to post them to.
At the end of this year we hope to produce a .pdf booklet with a selection of the best POI entries, maps, and regional descriptions that have been submitted and collated by the GMP going back 7 years to the earliest days of Elite Dangerous. This would be a downloadble memento for those interested, with the possibility it'll become available in printed form too at some point.
Finally, I want to share a message posted to the GMP team recently when this decision was reached. From Corbin Moran, one of the original members of the GMP team and co-creator of the high-definition galaxy map that the GMP, EDSM, and pretty much all third party mapping apps use to this day;
"For me personally it has been an awesome experience to be part of a player driven project that has been enriching the play experience of so many others. I am really, really proud of what we have achieved regarding both the quality of the project, the maps, the writing, the interface, etc - but also the quantity of the staggering number of entries processed and numbers of players engaged with the GMP in various ways. The GMP together with EDSM became a galactic GPS - and for many players it served as a focal point for shared storytelling and community expeditions." - Corbin Moran, April 4th 2022.
We echo those sentiments wholeheartedly.
On behalf of the GMP team, past and present, we want to thank everyone who has supported and contributed to the project since it began back on February 19th 2015. Its been a wonderful project to be a part of and see it grow into what it became.
-Erimus Kamzel (Founder), Corbin Moran (High-def map creator), Anthor (EDSM), Andrew Gaspurr (data entry), Heavy Johnson (data entry), Kazahnn Drahnn (data entry), Jon Burnage (data entry), Baxder (data entry), Orvidius (EDastro).
o7.
