A Distant Star through a Distant Sky
The Voyage of the Ardent Dream
Without embellishment, Elite: Dangerous can be a gorgeous game. Buried among it’s many game mechanics is a science-based system generator that is capable of generating realistic solar systems for those who simply with to look around to fly in. These systems are often bland, as one would expect, but the diamond in the rough does not present itself to the one who sits and does not search. It takes a bit of effort and time but those diamonds are there, waiting to be found and experienced.
With the help of friends and the Twitch’s technology we’re broadcasting this search live on Wednesday nights. As with any long journey it’s best to fill the gaps with a good book or some poetry, but when we do find something… well, the pictures speak for themselves.
The Ardent Dream hovers over an icy moon orbiting a nearby gas giant. The gas giant’s ring are edge on, forming a thin line in the view.
Some of the most mundane things—in cosmological terms—make the most fascinating subjects. Moons covered in ice, broken up by eons of punishment and twisted to and fro by their parent body become amazing scenes. Moons with miles thick glaciers of frozen nitrogen become pearls, cracked and ruffled by the stresses of their inner turmoil.
An icy moon with cracks scores of miles long, formed by the stresses of the moon’s order around it’s parent gas giant.
A planetary ring, a would-be moon that never quite got there, or perhaps one that was pulverized in the far distant past, is a beauty to behold from afar. However, it takes on a much different appearance from close up. Boulders the size of buildings shuffle past each other in a chaos of orderly motion. In the Elite: Dangerous universe rings are the primary dwelling of miners and industry with dreams of glittering profit. But for an explorer passing by these rings take on a deeper, perhaps richer beauty.
A close-up view of a rocky ring system around a small terrestrial planet. While rings seem more substantial from far away, they are, in fact, the illusory result of millions of boulder-sized objects floating together.
Atmospheres are a recent addition (graphically) to Elite: Dangerous, and where a ship can safely pass through one they can be truly awe inspiring. The different mixtures of atmospheric gases along with the different colors produced by different stellar classes of stars produces a rainbow of effects both subtle and sublime.
The Ardent Dream hovers above a rocky world, its parent star seen setting in the distance.
Exploring space in your starship isn’t the only way to experience the Elite: Dangerous universe. One can exit the ship in a fighter or ground vehicle or event exit these in a spacesuit (much needed in the harsh environments you’ll encounter. Here, a hard won sunset earned by climbing a mountain in a rover to catch a glimpse of the fleeing star before it drifted away to slumber.
After a challenging mountain climb, one of the Ardent Dream’s SRV’s reaches the summit to be rewarded with a wink of light.
The Ardent Dream continues its journey, seeking more images such as these. They abound but are fleeting, and we seek to find them.
I hope you’ll join us Wednesday nights here on the Zen Bassmasters Twitch channel as we uncover previous unseen wonders of the Elite: Dangerous universe.
Thanks for you support!