I flew into the sun. THe ship started to burn a little bit, looked pretty cool. I had to back off tho because I didn't save

Space isn't really flat. It is in one sense, but you still get a 3 dimensional sense of movement/combat/etc. There are stars, mini-stars, debris fields, asteroid fields, planets (of course), nebulas (I believe), etc. There is a discussion about the black hole in the spoiler forum (it may not have made it in the game though from the sounds of things). One of the coolest things is that planets and stars are real and approachable. (And as mentioned, you can get too close to a star and die...same if you fly into a planet [though you can get much closer). Space also is colorful, and from the looks of the screenshots, different systems have a different look to them. Not sure what else is there, but I've seen a lot of fun stuff in the demo.

Space is unrealistically bright & colourful (which may not be a bad thing for a game)

Lots of planets (very detailed) & stars & nebulae & asteroid fields & ... well you get the idea...

Hmmm, pity about the black hole.........I think it would also be excellent if space was not flat, i.e actual gravity effects with massive bodies, though this may be hard to balance and would make for a much more sophisticated 'sim' rather than the arcade feel to FL.

Remember, this game is set in the Sirius system. Maybe it really is that colorful over there, when you're looking from the inside...

We can rule that one out. There is nothing but darkness around the real Sirius and it's adjacent star systems.

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"In all likelihood you're going to die out there. We're all going to die out there, but none of us needs to be reminded of that fact. So you die, you never existed." - Lt. Cmdr. 'Angel' Devereaux

Those beautiful astrophotography pictures are taken by overexposing the picture, which brings out colors that are so faint you can't see them otherwise. And some are just plain false color.

-Stregone

Well,I did see an unknown object in the contacts list in Tau-23 which was only about 823 metres away & it still couldn't be identified.Didn't managed to get a good look either as you there are a LOT of outcasts Stilettos in this system & piloting a Cavalier just didn't cut it against the 7 or so stilettos.

Looking at planets and stars, I've seen the info panel listing things like temperature, mass, and escape velocity.

As far as I can tell, none of these things matter in the game

ER

I haven't seen any black holes yet, but I did see a neutron star... which is pretty close I guess. Of course, as I haven't seen any actual moving of planets or stars, I'm gonna assume there aren't any pulsars... Sounds like it would be kinda fun to watch two massive objects rotating around each other at extremely high speeds... yup... real fun.

It's cool to be able to literally fly to and around planets and stars, but I'm kind of put off by the scaling of things. I was sort of hoping for something along the lines of Independence War 2, where massive bodies were truly massive, and were hundreds of millions of miles apart - not unrealistically small, few-k-diameter planetoids (with only one docking ring, bar, ship dealer, etc., on the whole planet), with only some dozen k (I try pretending it's not kilometers) dividing them.

It's still expansive enough that I'm immersed by it; I was just expecting something far grander - and with a lot more ship traffic. At least in spite of its unrealistic portayal, space in FL is very visually rewarding.

I agree, I think the scale could have been a bit more realistic.
Planets further appart, and the planets need to be far, far more massive.

Makes you more dependant on trade-lanes too

The funny thing about how planets look is the closer you get to them, the further away they seem. When you're across the system from them, they're so big they look like you could reach out and touch them. But when you're docking at a station right next to one, the curvature and the atmosphere effect make it look hundreds of miles away, like you're really in orbit.

But don't be fooled by this latter illusion. Some stations and of course the landing rings are RIGHT ON the edge of the planet object. If you're not careful, you can kill yourself easily. It looks like you've got miles of space under you, but you really only have a few inches.

The AI dies this way all the time. Go hang out at near a base that's right next to a planet and wait for a large convoy to dock with it. As the various ships maneuver to line up with different docking ports or position themselves in the waiting line, some will bump the edge of the planet and crash and burn. I've seen as many 3 ships in a convoy do this one after the other.

No wonder prices are so outrageous

Those are actually really funny, i try to expect when its coming and hail them before they make a "Dirty Landing" its like "We Hail from planet Pitts....BOOM!" and it sounds funny how they explode too, it sounds like a serious explosion, but manages to stay funny in a unrealistic sort of way. and the cool thing is, when you destroy transports and those big things, the debris they leave stays for quite a while, i remember my friend killed a large transport, i came by about 20 minutes later to see the cockpit area with only 1 engine, lots of broke off parts, charred in some places, smoking severely and floating through space, after which i rammed it and it flew down to the planet, quite a bit of fun if you ask me