Oh I don't think that's the same thing at all, those things are just temporary data attached to the account name so nothing we do in the ship will affect them, actual, to use a SC term, "physicalised objects" (yes it's a horrible term), like other players and even yourself moving around are probably a little harder to implement.
Certainly - I was referring here to the
lore implications of being able to walk around a ship under ridiculous G-forces as if nothing was happening: it's fine, our passengers do it all the time, there's obviously some magic handwave tech which makes it all possible and we'll all feel better if we don't ask questions about what it is.
In terms of the mathematics involved, though, walking around the interior of a moving ship is no more complex than walking around the concourse on a Coriolis (or even sitting in multicrew together on a ship) - VR players can already move their viewpoint around the cockpit freely, which is the same calculations needed to move any physical object around the cockpit or other interior ship area. (Also the same calculations required to have our free-cam maintain a position and orientation relative to the
outside of the ship during flight)
(Challenges in terms of "what would you do inside?" and "is this going to require a lot of new and re-done artwork?" are probably rather more significant than a bit of routine vector maths)
One thing or statement that was previously mentioned about the 'new' feature in one of the livestreams was basically this..."A feature never before seen (or attempted?) in Elite before".
That's from a while ago (unless they said it again, which they may have) - it was said before Update 13.
In terms of things never seen in either Elite Dangerous
or any of the other games in the series, then solely in Update 13 it might refer to:
- the update being released with a cutscene intro
- the application of an anti-Guardian field to an entire system
- the ending of a CG through the destruction of the station offering the CG
- the placement of a planet-side POI a substantial fraction of the size of the planet in display size
- the implementation of moving objects detectable from outside their current system
- the implementation of moving objects able to pass between systems without hyperspace
Or, it might have referred more broadly to the "Aftermath" story starting in Update 13, which has had further things - the Thargoid war per-system layer with its growing list of new features being the most obvious - never before seen in Elite Dangerous.
They never did say exactly which of those things they meant.
Really, it's not a very useful way to narrow things down: almost by definition any release that's not pure bug fixing will include something not previously done in Elite Dangerous and probably therefore not in the previous games either. (Now, if they
did specifically say they were bringing back a feature from one of the previous games, that would be a lot of information, because there aren't many of those left)
