Visit NASA's newly discovered planets in 'Elite: Dangerous'
The space exploration game is adding Trappist-1 as a destination.
Sadly, it's unlikely that you'll ever visit the Trappist-1 system's newly-discovered Earth-sized planets in your lifetime... not unless someone develops near-light speed travel, anyway. However, you'll at least have the option of a virtual tour. Frontier Developments is promising Ars Technica that the second Elite: Dangerous version 2.3 beta will let you visit Trappist-1 and its seven worlds. The developers are really just modifying an existing system in a similar location (Core Sys Sector XU-P a5-0), but that still means that you'll get a rough sense of what it would be like. You'll get to land on at least some of them, two of which will be Earth-like.
This second beta is due sometime within the next few weeks, but the first (which should be available now) is still a big deal. It adds multi-crew support, giving you the chance to man a turret or fighter aboard a friend's ship. There's also a dramatic overhaul to the camera system (including new tools and piloting from external camera views) that should lead to more cinematic fan videos, and an avatar creator gives you a virtual persona in the game. The only catch is that you'll have to be on Windows to get an early peek -- none of the betas will be available on Mac or Xbox One.
