The Milky Way galaxy is a big place. Like, real big. Even so, Frontier Developments, the company behind space sim Elite: Dangerous, has gone to a lot of effort to make it as explorable as possible. So, since the game’s release back in 2015, how much have players managed to get through?
Bugger all is the answer, going by this great exploration timelapse / heatmap, created by “Orvidius NecroBones” using info from the Elite: Dangerous Star Map database.
Despite what looks like a lot of activity between 2015 and today, by the end of the video, less than 0.006 per cent of the galaxy has been touched by our dirty Earth spaceships.
Given the “brightness” of the heat map, you might find this unbelievable, but consider this: space isn’t 2D. Like I said, the Milky way is a big place.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/09/elite-dangerous-aliens-have-started-killing-players/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/r439yazy7nevhxhbnrzh.jpg” title=”Elite: Dangerous’ Aliens Have Started Killing Players” excerpt=”Elite: Dangerous’ aliens, once prone to terrifying yet ultimately peaceful encounters, have started reducing players’ ships to space dust. Of course you know, this means war.”]
If you enjoyed this, there’s a whole lot more available at Orivdius’ website, Elite: Dangerous Astrometrics. It’s updated every three days, so rest assured it’s fresh-as.
Elite: Dangerous — Galactic Exploration Heat Map Time Lapse with Decay, 2018-04-29 [YouTube]
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