Huge hidden Star Citizen city found in game files
Terra-iffic!
There aren't many places to go in Star Citizen at the moment so it's a surprise to discover an enormous city just lurking there in the game files - the city of Terra Prime.
Prime, specifically, is the capital of Terra, a planet you can read about in the Roberts Space Industries' Galactic Guide. And not only has its existence been discovered, an entire 3D model of Terra Prime has been uploaded to Max's Sketchfab so you can poke around it (via PCGamesN).
Note that loading the 3D model will eat 2GB of RAM so don't do it unless you're on a capable desktop machine.
The 3D model shows a futuristic, waterside city, with skyscrapers, a monorail and a fancy landing pad. Loads of detail has been sacrificed in order to get the file on Sketchfab, so the place has little personality or charm, but the Terra concept art on the RSI website colours it in.
This isn't the first we've seen of this 3D Terra Prime model, though. Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium Games pointed me to two older videos in which the city had been sneak-peek revealed.
Imagine breaching the planet's atmosphere and then descending down through the clouds to land there - it'd be a heck of a lot more impressive than the Star Citizen Alpha 3.0 planetary landing demo we saw recently. And that was impressive enough.
Star Citizen is a PC game. It's currently in Alpha 2.5 and aims to be in Alpha 3.0 later this year. There's no date on a beta but presumably it will be next year now. There's also no date for a final release but presumably it will be end-of-2017 or thereabouts.
Squadron 42 is a separate, accompanying game - a cinematic, storied adventure set in the same universe. The first episode of Squadron 42 is still apparently "2016" according to the game's website, but I wouldn't be surprised if first-half 2017 were more accurate now.
There's bound to be a wave of Star Citizen news early next month caused by CitizenCon, the annual fan convention. It takes place in Los Angeles but you can watch the presentation online on Sunday, 9th October at 3pm LA time, or 11pm UK time.