Having done my bit to help Mr Braben meet his Kickstarter goal, I figured it was time this bearded ex-Cobra Mk III pilot got behind the controls again.

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I hate to think how many hours, days, ... weeks I 'wasted' in my youth playing the original Elite. It was better on the BBC Model B - if you had an analogue stick; but, I was a Speccie-owner. Wore the ink off the rubber keycaps playing the game. Sessions typically started at 8pm and ran on until 2 or 3am, sometimes later.

Yes, I'd seen Oolite - and enjoyed a couple of hours reliving my youth when I found it. Pioneer is something different altogether, a much more polished-looking game, with beautiful real physics. I downloaded it last night, and have already racked up double-digit flight hours. Many, many, many thanks to the guys developing this! And, for building a Linux version. Since I'm sitting here with an Intel Core i5, I can run with everything maxxed-out, and the machine barely breaks a sweat - even recording audio and video at DVD quality. (I'll probably need one of the forum regulars to work out how to make the above video clip playable here, though).

I'll need to have a look at the data files for the ships sometime, see what mischief I can wreak with those. Sadly I've not done 'hard' programming for a long time, and the one piece of equipment I'd love would be beyond me mathematically anyway - a navigation computer to help set up slingshots and fly-bys.

But, I'm sure there's a lot of folks could make suggestions on the best analogue controls to use with Pioneer. I'm assuming that such would probably also suit Elite: Dangerous, when I finally get my grubby mitts on my copy.