It seems that someone finally got tired of a DECADE of waiting & false rumours about Elite 4 that David Braben still claims to be working on, and is writing his own (sadly Windows-based) clone of Frontier called Infinity: The Quest for Earth:
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/infinity_media.php

It's still 6-12 months away from the first proper public version, and will probably take another year after that before everything gets fully implemented, but he's already made fantastic progress in only 1.5 years:

A graphics engine which procedurally generates planets (at the required Level Of Detail) on-the-fly. Think of it as a real-time Vista program! So you can fly from the depths of space down to a landing site on the surface, without any glitches from changing models or loading from disk:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8426566575107987989
(This is an old video, it looks even better now, especially the water.)

The generated planets look awesomely believable already, and he's still got more stuff to add (like proper volumetric clouds, trees, wild-life, buildings, etc).
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_306.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_307.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_308.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_309.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_303.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_304.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_302.jpg

http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/gdnet_4.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planets_bet_7.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_118.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_100.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_113.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/shawn_station_28.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_56.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_62.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_tex_new_30.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/atmosphere_16.jpg
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/Media/Screenshots/planet_full_46.jpg

All in real-time without needing a killer machine!

None of that is available yet, but he HAS released several Combat Prototypes to test-out networked combat in space:
http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/infinity_combat_proto.php
(So you can NOT land on planets, they are just part of the "sky box")

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It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

Goodness me, that looks terrific.

James
x

@ChrisH

OK, I just saw the "Shawn Station" shot, and made a happy little mess in my trousers. Wow!

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@ChrisH

Wow!

Kinda reminds me of what The World Foundry were doing with Earth 2160...

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After a decade away from the scene, I am back!

@amipal

In my opinion there has not been anything that comes close to Frontier when it comes to Space simulation yet (I can´t find a better word for that kind of games). But Frontier is getting old, one could only imagine how such a game would be if it were made for the computer hardware that is around today.

Last edited by Niolator on 19-Jan-2007 at 01:33 AM.

@ChrisH

That looks pretty awesome. The only problem I had with the video was that it took almost no time from entering the atmosphere to hit the landscape. However, the transition from space to planetfall was really nice even in this early footage.

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