Frontier Developments has announced that the fourth and final instalment in Elite Dangerous' current season of free updates will launch on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 next week, on December 11th.

Elite Dangerous' current season - the third since the game's launch in 2014 - is known as Beyond, and kicked off in February this year. Beyond marks something of a departure for the space sim; unlike previous seasons, which focussed on fancy new banner features, it's primarily concerned with quality of life and gameplay improvements, bolstering Elite's existing core.

Beyond's three previous chapters have introduced the likes of new ships (including the Chieftain), new ship-launched fighters, enhancements to Engineering, visual improvements, new multiplayer-focussed Wing Missions, and the wonderful Galnet Audio news service, which reads out the latest in-universe goings-on and offers a friendly voice in the depths of space.

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Frontier Developments has unveiled the sleek (and slightly sexy) Mamba alongside the Krait Phantom - two new ships arriving as part of Elite: Dangerous' upcoming Beyond: Chapter Four update.

The Mamba is designed by Zorgon Peterson, the in-game manufacturer responsible for the fan-favourite Fer-de-Lance. It's a combat-focussed vessel, apparently based on an unreleased racing prototype (which might explain those striking undulating lines), and combines high speed with significant firepower. "This," says Frontier, "means the ship can hit hard and fast, vanishing before the target has a chance to react.

If you're curious about specifications, Frontier notes that the Mamba features one Huge, two Large, and two Small Hardpoints, five Internal Optional Slots, and has a laden FSD jump range of 6.37LY. Speed-wise, it can reach 316m/s and its boost tops out at 387m/s. You better have a decently sized wallet though: all this will set you back approximately 55 million credits.

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Frontier Developments has announced that the fourth and final major update of Elite Dangerous' current season, Beyond, will launch in beta for all PC players on October 30th, with a full release to follow "soon" after.

Beyond: Chapter Four, as the latest update is known, marks the conclusion of Elite Dangerous' 2018 season, which has largely focussed on expanding and improving existing areas of the space sim, rather than on introducing entirely new features.

To that end, Beyond has already brought major changes to crime and punishment in Elite Dangerous, hopefully making the multiplayer game less vexing for newcomers, as well as improvements to Engineering. It's also introduced new ships, including the Chieftain, new ship-launched fighters, and welcome features such as Galnet Audio, which reads out the latest in-game news, providing a friendly voice in the lonely emptiness of space.

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A brave attempt to rescue a stranded Commander in Elite Dangerous has ended in tragedy following malicious interference by a real-life cat.

That's according to Reddit user Cpt_Shinobi, a member of Elite Dangerous' Fuel Rats - a near-legendary organisation of players that dedicate their time to saving ill-prepared space explorers who find themselves stranded without fuel, often light years away from civilisation, from a slow, faintly embarrassing death.

The Fuel Rats have been liberating players from impending deep space asphyxiation for years and they're good at their jobs - with an incredibly high success rate of locating players, wherever in the galaxy they may be, transferring fuel, and sending them on their merry way. Few reported aid attempts have resulted in both rescuer and rescuee exploding in a horrifying head-on collision, and fewer still have been the result of a cat. Until now.

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Twitter has banned an Elite Dangerous player for writing a poem on the social media platform about killing thargoids.

Tim Wellens, an Elite Dangerous player from Belgium, was suspended from Twitter after writing a poem about killing the game's evil alien race on 4th October - National Poetry Day.

Wellens replied to a poem tweeted from the official Elite Dangerous account...

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Frontier Developments has announced that the third of its four planned content updates for Elite Dangerous' currently ongoing third season, Beyond, will launch on PC, Xbox One, and PS4 next week, on August 28th.

Beyond's Chapter Three update is the second of two previously announced smaller-scale updates coming to Elite Dangerous this year. As such, it doesn't feature the same kind of major game-changing additions seen in Chapter One (or indeed, scheduled for inclusion in Beyond's fourth and final update due toward the end of 2018) - but, based on everything announced during Frontier's recent Gamescom event, there's still plenty to look forward to.

Aside from more of Elite Dangerous' ongoing alien invasion narrative, which is still dealing with those pesky Thargoids - now with the added help of some ultra-advanced technology courtesy of the seemingly long-dead ancient race The Guardians - Beyond Chapter 3's primary focus appears to be on delivering plenty of shiny new hardware.

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Frontier Developments has announced that space sim Elite Dangerous' next big update, known as Beyond - Chapter Two, will arrive on June 28th.

This new free update, which launches simultaneously on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, is the second instalment in Beyond, Elite Dangerous' third season. Beyond is a bit different to previous seasons in that it's less concerned with introducing massive game-changing features, and more about offering much-needed and long-overdue quality of life improvements to the core Elite experience.

Beyond - Chapter One, for instance, which released back in February, overhauled Elite's crime and punishment system, in order to make the game generally more welcoming for new players. It also made long-requested changes to Engineers, improved trading, and added the brilliant Galnet Audio feature, multi-crew Wing Missions, and more.

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Elite Dangerous' first big update of 2018 - known as "Beyond - Chapter One" - will release next Tuesday February 27th on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, Frontier has announced.

This will mark the start of Elite's third season of content updates, which differs from previous seasons somewhat in that it's primarily focussed on bringing much-needed improvements, adjustments, and refinements to the core game.

Chapter One, for instance, introduces the first of several planned visual updates to Elite's universe, in a bid to make it a more aesthetically interesting, slightly less beige place. There's also an overhaul of the Crime and Punishment system to address the way that the game responds to Commanders that harass - and explode - innocent players.

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Humans have gazed up at the sky and wondered about their place in the cosmos since the very beginning. Do the same in a game like, say, Breath of the Wild, and you're presented with vivid images of clouds, stars, the sun and the moon. It's an important part of this and many other games that helps to create an illusion of a continuous space that stretches beyond what we actually experience within the confines of the game. The sky implies that Hyrule, despite being a fantasy world, is a part of a cosmos very much like our own, and we accept this even though we cannot fly up and check.

Since it matches our own experience of the sky so closely, we won't spend a lot of time thinking about how the universe around Hyrule is structured. There are quite a few games, however, in which the cosmos moves from the margins to the centre. These games take a close look at, for example, how their worlds were created or might end, the rules by which they operate, or simply how the experiences of the player fit into a larger world view. In other words, they create and explore cosmologies.

Cosmology, the attempt to describe the nature of the universe, didn't start with the advent of modern astronomy, but was present throughout all of human history. Always, real observations about the world were seen and interpreted through lenses of ideology and assumptions about how the world works (even our 'objective' study of the cosmos cannot help but be coloured by our very human perspectives).

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Frontier has announced that its first Elite Dangerous open beta of 2018, designed to gather pre-release feedback on the new Beyond update, will commence on January 25th.

Beyond is the name of Elite Dangerous's incoming season of content updates, and it differs substantially to the previous Horizons season. Where Horizons was a paid-for expansion, focussing on big marquee additions to the Elite universe, Beyond is a series of free updates largely built around long-requested quality of life improvements to the core game.

When Frontier announced Beyond at its inaugural expo event in London last year, it explained that the new season would be split into four parts. It's the first of these, known simply as Chapter One, that will enter open beta on Thursday, January 25th.

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