Personally, the sheer vastness is a decent part of what makes the game so cool to me. If the galaxy was ever fully explored, it would lose some of the mystery. Almost like thalassophobia, but the void draws you in.

The single furthest system from earth. It's a bit of a tourist hotspot because of that

It was permit locked few months after launch, not since.

I think it has raaxla

That's a permit locked area. You navigate toward that "Dark Bubble" and you hit an area where you can see the next stars - but your Nav Computer won't lock in. It's been like that since launch. People think it's being saved for future content. Some people are almost certain the Thargoid worlds are in there. (There IS a LOT of Thargoid activity in the region between the Pleiades sector and that permit locked bubble. - and the Big invasion ships appeared to come from that direction too).

it would take another fifty thousand real years to explore the galaxy.

@@Noorthia explore is a loud word. Map? Sure. But most of the unexplored stuff is boring empty A/B mass systems.

@@ChemFrogEngels You do realize that only about 0.021% of the total systems have been mapped right? And there is no telling what is interesting or not, if it hasn't been discovered yet. There is more than plenty to still explore.

@@TheJanstyler on paper yes, but how many wolf rayets are out there, for example, to claim FD on?

@@ChemFrogEngels Enough, most likely. There is no way to know. But the likelihood of there being more new ones out there, than the ones already discovered, is basically guaranteed.

Yeah that sucks a LOT. I am "PC Master Race" but there have been times when I wished for the smoothness and stability of a console.

That's just too bad. We wouldn't be where we are today had that not happened. You folks had plenty of time and opportunity to port over which Fdev was under no obligation to offer. At the end of the day, console held this franchise back from progressing into a new age.

@@Tamburello_1994 it's not about time, some people just don't have the fucking MONEY to make the switch.

It’s a program they use. The slap it into the program itself, it’s basically a plug in mod for ED and that’s how they’re able to draw stuff.

@@luisalfredo297 that's what I suspected, but I didn't think it was actually possible

@@darthhunter69 it is. Unfortunately, I don’t know the name of the program/mod that is used to pull something off like this. But nevertheless it’s pretty cool.

I think that's because the milky way looks like a flower and thargoids are modelled after flowers, pure coincidence obv

I think thats the gap between the arms of the galaxy where there are very few stars

Pretty sure that's the permit locked region that makes navigating in that direction a bit of a pain.

Not even that. From the few words about it by Braben, it's not a system but something to scan inside a system someone did visit the right system, but didn't scan everything (if true that narrows things down quiet a lot in fact).

@@Longlivethe4th I've read in Reddit, that a developer said in an interview: "For now, only one commander was in that system, refueled with a Star and Jump away." - about Raxxla

"Raxxla isn't real you know" "They just want you to waste time exploring their dumb dead game!" "QUIT HAVING FUN!!!"

Raxxla? I just want to honk in peace. Fuck Raxxla.

Yep, Milky Way is truly huge. Even with instantaneous travel star-to-star. Imagine if, in real life, we invented FTL travel at 2000c, it would take approximately 8 hours to reach Alpha Centuri. Exploring the entire galaxy would still take many millenia, even at those speeds. That's how big a galaxy is.

​@@regencyrow1867in game it only takes a few seconds

That is cool to hear about. Glad Im not the only one enjoying the distance

Years….

The Odyssey expansion, released the May 19 2021. Went from 15k avg players to almost 30k Edit: Got mixed up, it was the Horizons expansion released in June 15, Odyssey was the DLC

The Distant Worlds 2 expedition, 14,000 players took part in it making it the largest player created event in the games history.

@@dentara-rast And this was BEFORE Carriers existed in game! So it all had to be done with just the ship you had on hand! No swapping out unless you had something stored at Colonia. And dock every chance you get because God help you if you got into serious trouble and we couldn't rescue you! Some people wound up getting burned into dust by a bad angle attempt at boosting off of a White Dwarf or Neutron Star and wound up re-buying their ship all the way back in the Bubble because they had never docked at Colonia or the new Galactic Center anchorage! 😲 I was with the Hull Seals and man - we tried HARD to keep everyone going and repaired. But sometimes there's just nothing you can do. All that lost exploration data... 😢 There were a handful of folks who understandably got frustrated and quit early because of a crash or a stellar mishap. I can't tell you how CAUTIOUSLY I flew once we were past galactic center. You had to make it all the way to Beagle Point, and all the way back to Anchorage (or Colonia) with no ship destroying accident! I flew in and landed at Jacques Station and my hands got sweaty because I felt like I was pushing my luck and SOMETHING was going to hit me at the last second before my landing legs got locked down on the pad! 😅

An extremely deliberate route plan of star jumps to trace that specific patternm knowing full well the data is being collected and will eventually show up on something like this LOL

There was no route plotter either so the first player to cross the galaxy had to plot one jump at a time and find away across the interam gap near what became known as Beagle Point. I think the route plotter got added to Elite after he reached Beagle, so he could use it for the trip home. I bet it was amazing times to be one of the first pioneers exploring the galaxy with old tech, no engineers, no plotters, no fuel rats lol

Reached back in the earliest days of 2015, before apps like this were used frequently. It made headlines all over the place at the time - forums, gaming articles, and of course Galnet. Also, by that time there was a basic route plotter that was only limited to about 75 light years. But you still had to think 3 or 4 jumps ahead especially when traversing the brown dwarf patches between galactic arms. These were fun days.

The was no Guardian FSD Booster, Engineering, or FSD Injectors either. We can get so much more out of ships these days.