Elite Dangerous Launches Beta for 2.2 Update

There has been a lot happening behind the scenes of the space simulator Elite: Dangerous, since its launch. Although later than planned, the Horizons season pass is entering its 2.2 phase, with a beta which began on Tuesday, available to anyone who purchased beta access on the Frontier store.

Lots of what is promised was reported by us during gamescom, and you can read up on it here.

If you're more interested in patch notes, then you can find the highlights right here:

Fighters

- Added F-63 Condor as a playable ship
- Added Imperial Fighter as a playable ship
- Added Taipan as a playable ship
- Added fighter specific weapon modules
- Added fighter loadouts
- Added Fighter Bays for supported ships: Corvette, Cutter, Anaconda, Type 9, Beluga, Federal Gunship and Keelback
- Added Crew Lounge
- NPC fighter pilots can be hired
- Hired pilots receive a revenue percentage
- Fighters can be given orders
- Mothership can be given simple orders when player is in a fighter
- NPC ships can use ship launched fighters

 

Surface Features

- New geological features added (fumeroles and geysers)
- Biological entities added
- POIs can now be persistant (applies to new geological and organic features)
- Mysterious things added

 

Passengers

- Added Beluga Liner as a playable ship

 

General

- Jet effects added to neutron and white dwarf stars
- Updated tutorials
- Instructor character added with dialogue across all training scenarios.
- Added additional on-screen prompts and assists to all training scenarios.
- Updated and improved existing training scenarios:
- Docking and Travel
- Basic Combat
- Added new training scenarios:
 - Basic Flight
 - Advanced Combat
 - Mining
 - SRV Training
 - Ship Launched Fighter Training
 - Mining tutorial added

And finally, perhaps the most important fix:

• Removed eject all cargo binding from all schemes by default

Of course, there are tons of other updates to Powerplay, Engineers, Wings - every aspect of the game has been touched in some way.

For the much full larger list of patch notes, check the official forums.