Horizons 2.2 – Beta 4

Frontier have been hard at work rolling out updates for Horizons 2.2 Beta. Today they rolled out Beta Update 4, which contains a plethora of fixes and changes. You can read the full list here, but a couple of notable changes are:

•  Increased boost speed of all fighters.

• Rebalanced default speed for some fighters to make them inline with their original design (the Empire Fighter was too fast compared to the others).

• Increased DPS of fighter weapons by 12.5%.

• Increased size of internal fuel tank for Beluga and Orca.

• Added some more variety to mysterious places.

• Community Goal (Materials Based) – click here for more information.

Other patch updates for 2.2 can be found here.

 

 

Horizons 1.7/2.2 Beta is Live!

At 10.13am on the 20th September the 1.7/2.2 Beta went live. Some links to information can be found below. The patch notes are extensive (to say the least!) and contain some information that was not mentioned previously. This will be updated (soon!) to the Guardians Preview blog here, or you can check for the individual updates here.

If you’re playing the Beta, please report any bugs and give feedback!

Patch Notes – Frontier

Beta Feedback & Discussion – Frontier

Bug Reporting – Frontier

Beta Testing Requests – Frontier

Bug reporting & Feedback – Reddit

General Discussion – Reddit

 

Elite Dangerous: Win 32 & DX10

In a post by David Braben on the 19th September he announced that Frontier would be ending their support for Win32 and DirectX 10.

“As you know we spend a good deal of time planning for the future, and one issue (and opportunity) we are considering is the effect of supporting Win32 and DX10, and the benefits we would get if we were to drop them. As you know, we support leading edge technology like 4K, 8K, VR, and with things like compute shaders in Horizons we really push the boundaries overall, but there are restrictions with Win32 – particularly the amount of memory we can address at one time – and with DX10 in terms of requiring an alternative rendering solution in our code. Dropping these two would help us support high end effects with a better result – to make the game better.

“About 0.5% of players that have installed Elite Dangerous have used their game on Win32 at some time. Some of these machines are capable of running Win64 (ie the hardware would support it). With DX10 (fewer than 2% of players) it is more tricky as you may need to upgrade the graphics card on such machines.

“We do appreciate that although those are small percentages, that is still a significant number of people affected. We want to give as much notice as we can. It will be at least six months before we would make the change, but we want to know your opinions first, and to give warning that the change will need to come at some point, so please let us know.”

He went on to say that the advantages of doing this would lead to,

“Principally better performance and prettier effects, but it should also help with dev time […] Obscure bugs can take a disproportionate amount of dev and QA time.”

 

Horizons 1.7/2.2 – Beta Date

Frontier confirmed via their newsletter on the 16th September that the Beta for 1.7/2.2 – The Guardians will be available to anyone with Beta access from Tuesday, 20th September 2016. You can read the full announcement below.

Note: Beta does not affect your regular saved game. It is a snapshot of the universe at a certain point in time. Once it’s over your regular save will continue unaffected.

“We’re thrilled to let you know that you’ll be jumping in your ship-launched fighters, taking on passenger missions, piloting the Beluga liner and experiencing the rest of the amazing list of features coming to 2.2 The Guardians this coming Tuesday 20th September.

“If you’ve got the PC exclusive beta access already you’ll be able to download the beta and select it from the launcher menu as you usually would, and for those who haven’t already taken advantage of beta access, we have some good news.

“If you already own horizons, or buy it now, you’ll be able to pick up beta access from the store for only £6.99 you will get beta access for 2.2, and all future updates in the Elite Dangerous: Horizons season of expansions. With Passenger gameplay, the Beluga Liner, ship transfer, new station interiors, route plotter improvements, and many quality of life improvements in 2.2 alone, now is a great time to get playing the beta and contribute to the future of the Elite Dangerous galaxy.”

If you want to know more about what is expected in the 1.7/2.2 Guardians release, please see here.

Ship Delivery – The Results!

As you may know by now there has been a fairly heated debate going on in the community regarding whether to make the delivery of ships an instant or time delayed feature. You can read Sandro Sammarco’s comments in the original post, here. On Monday evening the results came in and saw the following result:

Votes: 39,902

Delay: 70% 

Instant: 30%

As a result there will be a delay when ordering your ship to be transported from one station, to your current one. Frontier are hoping that this will still be included in the 2.2 update, but as per Sandro’s comments below, it’s possible they may arrive in between the 2.2 and 2.3 release.

“We’re still pushing ahead to try and get ship transfer in for 2.2, we just don’t want to guarantee it, just in case. At a guess (i.e. not to taken as the ultimate fact) if it doesn’t hit 2.2 beta, it would hopefully drop in before 2.3.”

The final delivery times have not been nailed down and could be slightly shorter,

“We’ll be finessing the final times, which might end up being a little shorter (we wanted to be as extreme as possible in the poll to make the potential consequence as clear as possible), but it will likely be in the same ball park, as these times will represent bulk freighter transport, which is not fast.”

Sandro also suggested that it is possible that the ships transporting ships around the galaxy could be seen in game at some point.

“…it would be cool to have visual representations of these in the future (no ETA, no guarantee).”

For all the 2.2 The Guardians release information, click here. If you’re just looking to see what’s been added to the site recently click here.