I’m an idiot. 
My sincere apologies @JoergZdarsky ,
Did not thouroughly read the last part of your post.
My missplaced rage is uncalled for.
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According to my [imprecise] calculations, and my calculations are [far from] always correct, this planet on the screenshot is about the size of Netherlands (for reference, Kerbin is two or three times bigger).
Then again, KSP is great fun even (if not thanks to) its chibi planets…
It’s funny because I recall many SC fans hating on procedural generated content, claiming handcrafting every single planet would be quality over quantity.
I have to wonder how those people feel now, now that their favorite game is said to be getting pg as well 
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I too have followed both engines for many years and once financially supported SC. But I soon found out SC was more interested in profit than results. Also find it pretty ironic that SC fans are pushing the procedural element of SC here on IBS forums when I and a very few others received 95% negative feedback from fanboys for promoting procedural back in the day, even before the hangars were created.
And like you, I for example don’t care for the SC gameplay but for different reasons. I don’t care for it because the Engine is a complete waste of time and it will never perform as many can now see with their own eyes. I also don’t like the gameplay because the so called instancing that was suppose to support between 100~200 players has shrunk down to a few dozen - on a good day! Clearly your definition of ‘progress’ differs from mine, even under the most broadest terms. But there you go, there’s my rant…or opinion, once more depending on your definition.
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Just to nitpick, I’d call this the 2nd generation.
I think David Braben and perhaps some others that I’m not aware of would hold the title for the first generation of PG endeavors like this.
Check out Frontier: Elite II: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier%3A_Elite_II
It’s one of the first games I played on an old 386 sx/16. I had a nostalgia kick back around 2009 and went looking to see if he was going to make another game when I ran across I-Novae. Of course later on, Braben went and kickstarted E:D, but his tech still wasn’t quite as far along as I-Novae’s. They just hadn’t been nurturing it during the intervening years. He almost looked shocked when his kickstarter succeeded so well. I think they had to scramble to create what they did make in the time they gave themselves.
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All fair points. I am not that much pessimistic about SC but thats maybe due to the fact that I dont regularly look that much at the promo stuff and the promised timeline, but just keep watching if there is something new to be seen and look at other things meanwhile. Yes, the number of players bothers me too, however I think its too early to tell fingers-crossed.
RSIs decision of using an “FPS” engine is most often pulled out of the dark when the criticism starts, but maybe its just me that I am still confident that the CryEngine can (not must, but can) evolve to something good for the game if customized right. And, thats for sure, if RSI cannot change the CE with Foundry 42 and its original developers to work with SC over here in Frankfurt, no one can. Yeah, it might have been the wrong choice at the end of the day, but I think no one here is able to judge this currently. Personally these “those RSI idiots choose a FPS engine for a spacegame” arguments are not in any way sufficient for me. During my experiences in the Procedural Terrain thread over here, IMHO the fact that an engine is “meant for FPS” itself is not really relevant (space is in some aspects more simple as “on-the-ground-ground”-gameplay, and you just skip a few things an engine provides out of the box). Its the fundamental restrictions of an engine that can block you or have you rework certain larger parts. SC targets for a a combination of first person and space, and has a few of the original engine developers, so IMHO this decision may work out, maybe not, we’ll see. I think this cannot be compared to other games and strategies such as I:BS - the scope is completely different and might require different decisions.
In the end I dont like the simple “RSI are f*cking betrayers” statements in that “Derek Smart” style. I judge them when the money runs out and I can see what they have delivered or not. Not before. The same I am going to do with INS and Rockfish for example.
Yeah? IMHO the community was overall positive to have PG additionally on top of handcrafted content. There was a strong wish to be able to move on planets (similar to ED) besides staying on space stations and its been a stretch goal of RSI to investigate into this with the procedural approach as they soon made clear that this cannot be done handcrafted.
But if there was a negative opinion of the SC community, we’ll I also wouldnt agree as I like added procedural content for different reasons, especially in space games with an explorer kind of aspect. Thats why I felt in love with SE 
Lets see how good their PG implementation works when 2.7 comes out.
They might be able to do it… eventually. But they knew (or should have known) from the start that their choice of engine would require massive engine rewrites. It might have been simpler to do what FDev and INS have done and start with a custom-built engine. Building an engine from the bottom up would have helped with their chaotic development plan as they wouldn’t have to contort an existing engine to doing more things it was never designed to deal with. That kind of oversight does make me question the competence of the person making those decisions.
Which were largely based around it being developed by a studio that only really made FPS games, and therefore probably only expected the people using their engine to be making similar kinds of games. That being said, there aren’t a whole load of engines out on the market that would be capable of achieving what SC is after.
I think someone needs to keep them honest, in the same way that the community here (somewhat) affectionately needles the developers about keeping to deadlines (or, at least, accurate deadlines). There should be a point at which you stop promising features and actually start delivering some of them. That’s not really happening as fast as I would have liked for SC, especially given the amount of funding they have to spend on development.
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Funny you said that because I told CIG they needed to do exactly that - build an engine from the ground up - over 3 years ago. And of course I was given a good old fanboy drubbing for it. lol. I even offered to spend an extra $200 should they decide to change direction, but of course what do supporters know? Years later and creaking along with no end in sight - whatever.
What’s more I have to wonder how long JoergZdarsky has been involved with SC as Izor has pointed out procedural was derided and poo- poo-ed at every turn. I remember well because I posted videos from Inifinity.
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Oh but we can, especially after years of delay, bugs that never get fixed questioning whether they can be fixed at all and a never ending rewrite of the backend (personally if I was going to pick an engine I wouldn’t start with 32bit!). What’s more, is it really advisable to leave a host of persisting bugs until the backend is finished? Leaving things to the end may end up being a bigger problem than you think.
As for using an FPS engine, well, I think results speak for themselves as many videos demonstrate. Anyway, I doubt you are going to be swayed by any argument questioning SC, even from long term supporters of that haphazard enterprise.
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As soon as the backing started, spending roughly the same amount into SC than into I:BS, maybe a bit more, however I am no regular hardcore forum’ler at SC. But, of course, I:BS is poo-poo-ed at there in the same negative harsh way as SC is here. Thats still sad as in the end we all adore space games, but what I wonder what else you expected?
Hmm don’t get me wrong, I would not rule out that SC becomes a big fail, due to them (RSI) delivering something that is not really close to what was described during the backing phase. Sure, it can happen and there is a big risk that something like this is going to happen. Its just that most arguments are from my point of view rather opinions than facts, bound to “I dont like the community / company / promotional or backing behavior”. The videos are fine with me, I rate them positive as I like what I see - the available modules are more important to me, especially some of the next ones at 2.x. That they are late in their roadmap is a fact yes, and some of us would prefer different developing priorities is completely fine. Also that they might have been a different stage developing everything from scratch (however they would have to recreate the whole first person part for SC too again as thats a big part of their gameplay). Maybe, maybe not. But this doesnt bring me to the point where I loose faith that I receive something in the end I can enjoy, not at this point. That time may come when they deliver the release with some more crucial aspects and leaving the alpha stage / telling that their tweaking and engine customizing has ended. There are no problems to agree that the result is sh*t then
@Topperfalkon
Good post I fully agree with.
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Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the following has something to do with it:
http://starcitizen.wikia.com/wiki/Anticipated_Release_Schedule
Of course you could argue this is all due to Alpha and I’m sure you will. But even by their own statements they should already be in Beta - a long time ago. What’s more this is dangerously close to false advertising which of course they profited from. Naturally schedules get moved and releases are sometimes delayed…but what is going on is far from the occasional delay, especially with so much funding, employees and resources at their disposal.
Of course I could adapt your wait and see approach before making a final decision and that’s fine. But it doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on; if I see a drunk pilot getting on the plane or crashing into the walkway before even leaving the ground, guess what, I’m not going to wait and see if we get to our destination - I’m getting off. And I did - thank the cyber gods.
But I still have no problem with SC posts here…this isn’t CIG where people are banned for wanting to start a woman’s organization. Here IBS isn’t about stoking fanboyism and getting them to do their dirty work for them; here everyone has a voice and we can disagree - respectfully. Yes we are fans but it is a far cry from the rampant white hot fanboyism of SC…though SC fanboyism isn’t what it use to be and is slowly dying as the years tick away. What’s more we have called out the Devs here and the Devs have corrected us when we are wrong. It is a really solid partnership and one I feel very positive about. So please, don’t toss Derek Smart’s name around just because someone disagrees with you. As for Derek Smart, he is absolutely right on a few points but excessive on others.
Anyway, I guess that can be qualified as a rant - an informed one but a rant nonetheless. 
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I’m an original Elite fan from the late 80s, was wondering if anyone would pick up on that ‘generation’ comment, glad you did. 
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This is just for fun:
These guys seem to be enjoying the current iteration:
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With so much core stuff not working I feel some of the nice little polish features will now not ever be implemented. Thing like voice porting (or CIG’s version of it)
Those who know me over on Sc forums might have seen I lobbied for years to get something like ‘voice porting’ added to the game. Voice effects for players based on surroundings/helmet on/off etc, using the games own VOIP and even a base teamspeak plugin to do the same so orgs can also have great comms effects. And in the end we did see the audio devs say its on the list to come not too far in the future and even better than the old IM voice porting demo video below.
Even CR mentioned voice porting in one of his 10 for chairman videos… although he failed to grasp what it was at the time. I asked a subscriber to ask the question, bu the subscriber must of failed to explain what voice porting was.
What is voice porting? - watch the video below - listen and discover joy of voice porting
Voice porting - 2008 tech demo video from Interstellar Marines (watch from 12:40 minutes).
But other things I lobbied for like to name a Moon or Moon or Mars like body or base after late Sir Patrick Moore (BBC Sky at Night) did get thru and now Dave Haddock the lead writer keeps me updated on his search for something to name after Sir Patrick. Which was a really kind thing for him to do.
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Didn’t ED implement something like that as part of their Wings update?
To be honest, I would love it if they somehow managed to save the game because the more space sims that are out there the better it is for us players and the space game genre. That said, I don’t really see them being able to save it. And it’s pretty interesting to look at the comparisons between SC and Battlescape; I have noticed that the Infinity Engine runs very smooth and has very few bugs in comparison to SC’s Engine even though Infinity is still in the Prototype stage. The IBS Devs definitely are moving in the right direction by keeping bugs to an absolute minimum because, like it or not, supporters are still playing their game regardless of being in Prototype or Alpha.
Also I think supporters are more patient and understanding of Engine development than they are gameplay which is why we rarely see supporters here bitching about the pace of development. Another reason I kept hounding CIG to develop their own Engine was simple logic: if I want to compete in formula one, buying a Volkswagen won’t cut it no matter how much rebuilding I put into it. In short, you don’t try to squeeze your needs into an Engine but rather design an Engine to your needs. Sadly CIG squandered a great opportunity when they had enormous initial support which would have been ideal for announcing the development of a Cloud Imperium Engine. Instead they ended up taking a shortcut, which is never a good sign, and ended up with an FPS Engine for a Space game.
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In fairness, INS have had an advantage in that they’ve been working on this engine for over 10 years (albeit primarily with a single developer), and have built it with the intent of supporting large environments with a large player count.
Though, realistically speaking, if INS have got this far in 10 years with one core engine developer, it begs the question of what CIG should have been able to achieve in 4-5 years with the resources to staff the best engine devs in the industry.
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My understanding is that none of the Devs, including Flavien, never worked full time on the engine until the Kickstarter?
Well, there’s that too I guess.
And Keith still isn’t working full time
You might want to consider playing ARMA 3 with the Task Force Radio mod. It’s been providing this functionality for years via integration with Teamspeak. It’s standard fare for anyone interested in tactical realism operations.