‘Elite Dangerous’ to See Overhaul in ‘Beyond’ Update, Open Beta Begins January 25th

News Bits

By
Scott Hayden
-
24

Frontier Developments today announced an open beta test for the upcoming update to the third season of Elite Dangerous (2014), the open-universe space simulator for VR and non-VR players. Called ‘Beyond – Chapter One‘, the update will officially arrive sometime in Q1 2018 following the open beta which starts January 25th.

The ‘Beyond’ update will follow the Thargoids assault on humanity’s starports, the space-faring alien baddies first introduced back in September with the Horizons update. Beyond – Chapter One is said to introduce gameplay enhancements including team-based ‘Wing Missions’ and a better in-game Trading Data system for smoother transactions. The developers are also promising a “more realistic and beautiful” galaxy, changes to the engineering mechanics, an overhaul of mission rewards, and an altered crime and punishment system.

A new Alliance warship called ‘the Chieftain’ will also be added to the roster of available ships.

The update will be available for free to Elite Dangerous players on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in Q1 2018. For VR players, Elite Dangerous can be purchased both through Oculus Home (Rift) and Steam (Vive and Rift).

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. See here for more information.


Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Suitch

    If you own Elite Dangerous on Steam then you can get a free Oculus key through their website.

  • kool

    If it had vr support for PlayStation id jump in!

  • burzum

    Nice VR experience while being in the cockpit, the star map sucked the last time I’ve tried it. Yea, the game is pretty in VR but sadly the game mechanics are shallow and a very boring rinse and repeat thing. Also 2/3 of the time you spend in loading screens (witch space travel or whatever they call it) and in “super cruise” doing NOTHING else than watching a numbers counting down the distance for minutes. A nice VR experience a shitty game except you have a love for space trucking. I highly recommend you to try it for 3-4h somewhere before wasting money on it.

  • burzum

    Why gets my comment, that is criticism about the game, continuously removed? Read it here https://pastebin.com/rukzFi5A

    • Raphael

      I think SC will be amazing if it gets VR back. Alpha 3 has some impressive elements. ED has a long way to go in development and I agree it does feel like the loading screen over and over when you jump. Much of the game is jumping,. It lacks the cinematic presentation of SC. ED Development does feel slow but I guess it doesn’t have the budget of SC.

      • burzum

        The Kickstarter compaign of ED created, at least for me, a totally different perception of the game than what it is now. :( The combat is good and if you like dull space trucking, well, this part is nice as well then. But everything else feels shallow and extremely repetitive.

        I don’t think you need a huge budget like SC to create interesting game play nor do you really need the cinematics. There are awesome early access titles on Steam like QuiVR, Subnautica or Sairento that do better than FDEV development and communication wise.

        Also where are is the FPS part? Where is are the planetary landings besides dull rocks with the ever repeating same looking ground stations? It took them more than two years to get wracks into the game that looked close to what they had in the Kickstarter compaign and I don’t think every ship got a proper damaged model yet.

        Multicrew? I don’t care. Also the only thing you can do well with it is combat, it just gives you bonus modifiers. Everything else they did was a matter of changing numbers (from a high level view) and re-using existing mechanics for “new” things. For example the asteroid bases have the exactly same layout as a space station, they’re just using another 3d model for the interior. Must have been a huuuuuge coding task that took them month?

        Exploration: Jump to system, press button, done. You “discovered” it. Same with planets, start super cruise, prepare for a few dull minutes, get a coffee, come back, press button and you “scanned” a planet. For some reason some people enjoy this kind of “exploration”, I consider it dumbed down to the very bottom. They should check Eve onlines prope mechanic or how that Kerbal Space mod allows you to really scan a planets surface that requires the player to actively do something vs dull “press button done”.

        First they wanted to deliver an update per seasons, they failed hard on that. Then a season became an undefined amount of time. Now I think they changed their mind on the release cycle again. But I don’t follow the game anymore that close. It’s more fun to watch the drama around the game than playing it. :)

        • benz145

          Fair points. How does the KSP planet scanning work? Sounds interesting.

          • burzum

            It’s Scansat https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/72679-13x-scansat-v182-real-scanning-real-science-at-warp-speed-november-22-2017/ Watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY7eBuReSYU you actually need to get a satellite into an orbit and start mapping. I’m not saying that ED should do it realistic but just not as plain stupid as “press button, done”. It would be nice if you would have to fly above the areas you want to scan and scanned km² generate value. Fly lower and get deeper resources scanned, get more valuable map data. Also scanning for hidden / abandoned bases and wrecks would be nice. Also it should keep the player somehow engaged and not let him passive sitting in front of the screen. There is some very simple near surface scanning in the game but it gets also boring pretty quickly because it doesn’t give you any path to success or associate a real skill with it. It’s just “fly around until you find it”. Nothing that associates the task with something you need to learn or be skilled in.

      • Glaubenskrieger

        I don’t think SC will make it. 3.0 is horrible from what I’ve seen. 15-20 fps is not going to cut it on a 2D flat screen game much less VR. I’d get my refund if I were you. I got mine this fall so I’m free of croberts’ train wreck.

    • Rita

      Go-o-gle is paying 97$ pe-r- hour,with wee-k-ly payouts.You can also ava-i-l this.O-n tuesday I got a brand new Land Rover Range Rover from having earned $11752 this l-a-st four weeks..wi-t-h-out any doubt it’s the most-c-o-mfortable job I have ever done .. It sou-n-ds unbelievab-l-e but you wont forgive yourself if you don’t check it!wx18q:➨➨➨ http://GoogleCashGlobalWorkFromHome/online/easytasks… ♥♥j♥♥♥l♥p♥i♥♥♥h♥♥v♥♥t♥a♥♥♥s♥i♥♥♥q♥♥♥u♥y♥r♥♥♥h♥♥y♥♥♥c♥♥t♥♥♥p♥♥m♥♥j♥♥♥u♥♥e♥♥♥y♥i:::::!dw262f:lweiya

    • Michael

      You thought Star Citizen was the worst performance you’ve seen on PC? Imagine VR, not even 10 GTX Titans will save you from that trainwreck.

      • burzum

        And why would I care? I’m a software developer, I know what early access and alpha means and I know that early optimization is a bad idea. I don’t even play SC yet because I’m aware of these things.

        It’s silly to compare SC with ED as long as SC has not been released. Unlike FDEV they didn’t throw a prototype of a game on the market (in fact it was 1:1 the last beta!) almost 4 years ago. To me ED is as much early access based on it’s poor state as SC they just thrown make it look like it’s a finished and shaped product, which smells pretty bad like false advertisement. The horrible slow progress of FDEV on the tiny iterations and very simple game mechanics is also incredibly underwhelming compared to SCs depth of the systems and the speed of development. It took CIG just ~2 years and only two people to get their procedural tech for planets done. Meanwhile FDEV: Lifeless boring rocks that look half as good, no planetary landings, no gas giants with atmosphere you can harvest. Oh wait, all of this was in the Kickstarter…

        As I wrote before, I’ve baked both but I’ve got really disappointed by FDEVs empty promises, cancellation of offline mode, bad communication and slow development speed. I wouldn’t complain if they would honestly say it’s still early access and communicate more often and much more open with their customers like CIG and many tiny indi devs do.

  • Grey Lock

    I’m a huge Elite Dangerous fan and I’m very much looking forward to the beta! It is also one of the best VR games in my Rift-Stream / Lenovo-Windows MR library.

    That said, it’s not for everyone just like Project Cars and Skyrim isn’t for everyone. But if you like flying spaceships why not try it next steam sale – it’s usually under $10 for the base game ;-)

    Grey of TheGamersShow.com

    • Angelina

      Go-o-gle is paying 97$ per hour,wi-t-h weekly pa-y-outs.You can al-s-o avail this.On tuesday I got a brand new Land Rover Range Ro-v-er from having earned $11752 this last four weeks..with-o-u-t any doubt it’s the mo-s-t-comfortable job I have ever done .. It s-o-unds unbelievable but you wont forgive y-o-urself if you don’t check it!uw332p:➸➸➸ http://GoogleDailyConsumerLightCareerPartTimeJobs/get/hourly… ♥♥♥w♥♥♥a♥♥w♥♥♥s♥x♥f♥♥t♥m♥u♥♥♥w♥♥♥h♥♥q♥♥w♥♥♥d♥♥♥t♥r♥♥♥o♥♥n♥♥w♥x♥♥m♥m♥♥k♥♥q♥♥♥e:::::!te13n:lweiya

      • Ragbone

        WAA WAA WEE WAA!!!

    • Ragbone

      Where’s the best tutorial to help me learn to play the game from scratch? Might just have a look on youtube, but there are so many videos.

      Going to play it on Rift with the flight controllers :D

      • Rlee

        You can play in solo mode. The best way to learn is just start playing with stuff.

        • Ragbone

          At least I know the self destruct button works now.

      • Tman

        You could just play the tutorial missions. Worked well for me. They’re also useful for trying out different controllers or control schemes since it gives you onscreen prompts for what buttons to push for the actions it teaches you to perform.

    • burzum

      Hmm Skyrim has a living, non repeating world and factions that clearly have a different and unique appearance. ED: Same shit 400 billion times. Not even the slowly developing story (no offline mode!) is really connected to the game. All ED does well is dull space trucking, if somebody enjoys that kind of “game” to relax, great, play it. :)