So I was watching a show when they threw in a reference to Nebula M78.
For those that don't know, Ultraman comes from the Nebula M78.
I was for some reason struck by the irrational thought that it would be great if the first person to reach Nebula M78 received an Ultraman ship decal.
Stroking my neckbeard a bit more, I went into Elite: Dangerous to check the location of M78. I'm sure any of you who've looked at the map understand how futile it is to just "look" for something like that, even if it is a giant nebula.
So I searched it, I typed in M78. And M78 exists in Elite: Dangerous. There are currently 3 bright blue stars in the area and nothing else.
Isn't that curious? There are no other popular Messier Nebulae in Elite that I have thought to look for yet. M78 is indeed 1600 light years from the current playable area in Elite, and there is nothing else in that area of space except for those 3 stars.
I've tried a couple dozen different nebulae, famous stars and regions of space over 1000 light years away from the current playable area. Nothing else has been found by the game search.
As far as I can tell, these are the only celestial bodies that have been put in the game outside of the "immediate" area we play in.
So what does this mean?
It's common for devs to have test-bed areas where they can experiment and play around building, destroying, and tweaking objects in real time. If this is what those 3 stars are for, and if you were to suddenly pop in on them to say hello, you wouldn't find any developers there currently since FD works using in-house builds of the engine they haven't released yet, but there is no reason to go through the effort of pulling these test-bed systems out of the builds they release to us since they are impossible to reach and almost impossible to find given the scale of Elite's map.
So there it is Mr. Braben. I know where you live.
To everyone else, you now know where to start digging. All of you guys who are much more astute than I at software development, graphics design and comic book lore get to work and pry out all of the dirty little secrets that Nebula M78 contains. If David is hiding a giant pink Ultraman in a sundress behind a neutron star out there, the world must know!
For those that don't know, Ultraman comes from the Nebula M78.
I was for some reason struck by the irrational thought that it would be great if the first person to reach Nebula M78 received an Ultraman ship decal.
Stroking my neckbeard a bit more, I went into Elite: Dangerous to check the location of M78. I'm sure any of you who've looked at the map understand how futile it is to just "look" for something like that, even if it is a giant nebula.
So I searched it, I typed in M78. And M78 exists in Elite: Dangerous. There are currently 3 bright blue stars in the area and nothing else.
Isn't that curious? There are no other popular Messier Nebulae in Elite that I have thought to look for yet. M78 is indeed 1600 light years from the current playable area in Elite, and there is nothing else in that area of space except for those 3 stars.
I've tried a couple dozen different nebulae, famous stars and regions of space over 1000 light years away from the current playable area. Nothing else has been found by the game search.
As far as I can tell, these are the only celestial bodies that have been put in the game outside of the "immediate" area we play in.
So what does this mean?
It's common for devs to have test-bed areas where they can experiment and play around building, destroying, and tweaking objects in real time. If this is what those 3 stars are for, and if you were to suddenly pop in on them to say hello, you wouldn't find any developers there currently since FD works using in-house builds of the engine they haven't released yet, but there is no reason to go through the effort of pulling these test-bed systems out of the builds they release to us since they are impossible to reach and almost impossible to find given the scale of Elite's map.
So there it is Mr. Braben. I know where you live.
To everyone else, you now know where to start digging. All of you guys who are much more astute than I at software development, graphics design and comic book lore get to work and pry out all of the dirty little secrets that Nebula M78 contains. If David is hiding a giant pink Ultraman in a sundress behind a neutron star out there, the world must know!
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