Will Elite Dangerous have Atmospheric Landings, Space Legs or Procedural Cities by 2019?

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Cosmo

Cosmo
At Frontier Expo 2017 the highly anticipated features called Atmospheric Landings, Space Legs and full-scale Procedural Cities weren't announced for Elite Dangerous: Beyond.

The core-improvements that ED Beyond will bring sound awesome, but there wasn't really anything jaw-dropping. Personally I really like the Squadron (guilds), but we have to wait almost a year (Q4 2018).

Zac Antonaci seems to imply that Frontier hasn't even begun working on space legs "Spacelegs (as the community are dubbing them) is something that David B and the development team are very excited by and it’s certainly high on the list of features they would like to make. However, as we’ve mentioned before, “Spacelegs” is something further down the line." Yet in 2016 Braben said "Yes. We have ongoing work on planets, including atmospheres, planetary life, walking about and lots of other very exciting things for the future."

David Braben's core vision for what Elite really is has always been about you're a person in a real futuristic setting, not just a ship.

An other upcoming space sim (which doesn't need to be named) showed live in-engine demonstrations of all these highly anticipated features. The thing is, we want to experience landing on atmospheric planets, space legs and full-scale procedural cities in Elite Dangerous too! We want to be fully immersed in the Elite universe.

On paper Frontier Developments is a bigger game developer. They recently got a major investment from Tencent, 17.7 million pounds ($23.2 million). However, they spread their resources across multiple franchises: Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution and another unannounced game (maybe Planet Safari).

This begs the question how long does Frontier want the Elite fans to wait for these features?

Can we expect to have either 1. Atmospheric Landings 2. Space Legs 3. Procedural Cities in any form in-game by 2019? I'm afraid that Frontier is putting Elite Dangerous on the back-burner and that it'll be just a dream.

Back in 1993 Frontier: Elite II had seamless atmospheric landings and full-scale procedural cities. So please Frontier: make our dreams come true in Elite Dangerous.

[video=youtube;LqhP_e855C4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqhP_e855C4[/video]

Update: here's a procedural city made with Unreal Engine 4:

[video=youtube;b5AIpncO_9I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5AIpncO_9I[/video]

Added a related comment:

Cosmo said:
They don't need to add everything of those other games. If you read my previous comments, I would gladly have a basic version of space legs. Such as just walk around in a few sections of a ship, some tools like a laser gun, maybe exploration equipment.

First person shooter games like Counterstrike are pretty simplistic, yet played by millions of people many years after release. Somehow those games were able to not only sell millions of copies, but also retain an active player base with millions of people worldwide.

Frontier's major challenge is not selling copies of ED, but to retain and bring back most of the players who stopped playing (many stopped after a few hours or days).
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Cosmo said:
I hope ED can survive and realize its full potential amidst the upcoming competition. Make Braben's original vision for Elite come true. We're more than just a ship.
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Chris Simon

Chris Simon
Short - No.

Long - If you think that cities, legs and atmospheres are some miracle features that will "save Elite" (from whatever you think it needs saving) you're mistaken. These things are yet another eye-candy. We don't need more eye-candy at the moment, nor in near future. Beyond is FAR more important for Elite than legs and cities.
 
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SAB380

SAB380
Let’s say END of 2019 -
Simple atmospheric planets - yes
Complex atmospheric planets - no
Space legs - no
Procedural generated cities - never (if you mean complex GTA like cities)
We already see how they make their cities with the planet side complexes. They will have new atmosphere appropriate ones (eh floating gas giant cities, raised platform water world cities, etc) but not more than that.
 

Blackneto

Blackneto
atmospheric - Probably

space legs - O Zod I hope not. What are you going to do with them? fix breakfast every 24 hrs of gameplay?
 

M00ka

M00ka
Q: Will there be atmospheric landings, space legs or procedural cities by 2019.
A: Yes, no, maybe, who knows. Depends on whether FD hold back and release each new module as complete as they can make it or dribble it out one incomplete 'improvement' at a time.

Q (my own): What will happen when these additions are introduced.
A: The forums will again be full of those upset - to put it mildly - at what FD have released because it wasn't as they envisaged it and thoroughly indignant that FD didn't personally contact them to get their explicit approval at each stage of the upgrade.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Jenner
I'd really love to have space legs and atmo planets asap, but none of us has any idea when this may happen.

I do not think that Elite is being put on the 'back burner' as you say. These additions are quite involved and require a great deal of planning and development time. I don't know if we'll ever see them, although I hope we do. I've no doubt that Frontier want to see Elite Dangerous improve and become even more awesome, but there are tons of considerations prior to legs and atmo planets being introduced.

In the meantime I intent to enjoy Elite Dangerous for what it is today.... and never stop dreaming, of course. :)
 

The Thumbinator

T
Elite is their Franchise!! Own it or Else!!

All the other games that Frontier make are just "blahhh & mehhh" I mean they're aren't making any big bucks off of them anyways. Elite: Dangerous is their Franchise game and it could become a Triple A title if they would set out a schedule of updates including what content will be when/where. I'm faithful to Elite and if they continue to show interest in the game then I'll continue to wait, but if a game offers the same thing AND delievers it then what would keep me here playing (and waiting) on Elite? Sure, I get it... it takes both time and money to develop all of these features that we have dreamed about since launch, but if they would pay more attention to other games and understand that just keeping us (The Community) and our opinions involved then they can become bigger and bigger over time. Elite has a HUGE Community Fan Base right now and they will continue to keep us as long as they push out the content WE want. It's a tip of the' ole hat as we're getting Horizons: Beyond (actually... Elite: Dangerous - Horizons: Beyond = long name, huh?) right around the corner, but what is gonna come after than will decide their fate in all honesty. Because with all these new AAA titles coming out around Christmas including the newer Space games that also have their updates. It's a dog eat dog business, but I'll ride this roller coaster all the way to the end as I haven't bought my ' Anaconda yet.. Haha.. that's a joke. Elite is my life!! I just hope Frontier doesn't mess things up and try to mock other games "sell out" material.

Elite Forever.
Forever Elite.
 

Arindor

Arindor
Chris Simon said:
Short - No.

Long - If you think that cities, legs and atmospheres are some miracle features that will "save Elite" (from whatever you think it needs saving) you're mistaken. These things are yet another eye-candy. We don't need more eye-candy at the moment, nor in near future. Beyond is FAR more important for Elite than legs and cities.
Click to expand...

I disagree. For me ED is about immersion, and stuff like that will provide it. As it stands, ED feels pretty stagnant. :)
 

Franc Kaos

Franc Kaos
Fdev are going to surprise us with basic atmospheric landings summer of 2018. I will buy. Gas giants early 2019. If this doesn't happen I will eat my non existent hat!
 

Dan Dare

Dan Dare
What has made the biggest difference to my experience of ED has been the move to VR.
This change in technology has had a far greater impact on my immersion than any of the ingame developments such as horizons, wings, holo me etc. If this holds true going forward into 2018 then maybe we should be asking what are the big tech Devs we can expect? 40k VR seems likely? New bigger graphics cards and faster processors will allow procedural generation to do so much more. Look back at where Elite started just over 30 years ago (wire frame models) or even 3 years ago (not much more than one ship type, one station type and a few different star types).
ED DBOBEness was always about making the most of the available technology. Space legs, atmospheric landings, giant cities are going to require massive computing power. The tech demos of all of these things are already out there, we just need the majority of our PCs to catch up. Keep the faith Cmdrs o7
 
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