It’s December 16th. Launchday. But where is my game?
This question was finally answered by a look at Elite’s facebook page, opened half past noon. “In an hour”, 30 minutes ago. 1300 CET. I somehow missed this information in the last newsletter before launch as well as on the web page.

At 1300 I launched the launcher and was presented with the option to install the game or to start the combat simulator. Naturally, I went for the installer. Like everyone else at this time.
Download speed was around 1.8MB/s with pikes into two-digit-numbers, at least while it wasn’t zero. I’ve had this phenomena of no-download-at-all during the download of the combat simulator. Maybe this is a technical issue, maybe it’s intentional (download a batch, integrity check, installation-stuff, download next), I don’t know.

The download took until… around 1800. I kid you not. Which is why there will be no game-content today.
I started the game and got the usual: choose a username, choose your starter-pack. As I did not kickstart the game, I got the basic sidewinder, 1000 credits and a random starting location in federation space. We’ll see how this works out.

I’ve thought about the keyboard layout and will probably try the following:
WASD: y-/z-axis translation
QE: roll
Mouse: pitch/yaw
Mousewheel: throttle
The alternative would be a keyboard-only setup, with the arrowpad for rotational control. I have to see how this actually works out in this game – in the X-series it usually worked well, but mouse-control is usually an asset during combat. And the arrow-keys are mapped for energy-distribution between the ship’s systems, so I’d have to find a convenient place to cram these in. Or as I said yesterday a two-joystick-setup. There’s a reason this is used in real life 6 DoF navigation.

Tomorrow the scheduled Bioshock Infinite-post will go up. Elite will return the day after that, unless there’s a major fuck-up worth talking about. Hopefully with some actual content.