Elite Dangerous is getting a big update in January and a beta next week

The next large update for Elite Dangerous will arrive in late-January, and you can test some of the upcoming changes in a beta.

Frontier Developments will release the Elite Dangerous update around the end of January, and testing will begin next week on November 27.

The big update will almost "exclusively focus" on addressing "recent and longstanding issues and bugs."

For the January update, the development will work to resolve game-breaking bugs and stability issues that have been causing disconnects, softlocks and crashes which have been identified.

Future updates to the game will be coming with a public beta, the first of which will run on PC  November 27  to December 2. For console players, Frontier is looking into extending the beta on consoles.

Below you will find what the team will be addressing in the January Update and the beta. As the developer notes, this is not an exhaustive list.

If you would like to get involved in the beta, just load up the launcher and select Elite Dangerous: January Update (Beta). The team encourages players to report any bugs or issues encountered during testing.

 Elite Dangerous January Update and beta

• Repairing Thargoid-attacked stations: not all delivery numbers counted
  • We will implement a fix that will correctly account for all deliveries for starports that have been attacked by Thargoids.
• High-resolution screenshots create tiling artifacts in bright objects
  • We will implement a fix that should prevent tiling artifacts in bright objects when taking a high-resolution screenshot.
• Galaxy Map won't select systems I search forG
  • We will implement a fix that should allow you to select a searched system on the Galaxy Map.
• Keyboard stops working within game
  • We will implement a fix for this issue to ensure keyboards work in-game as intended.
• SLF female npc crew member has no audio and no text in the comms
  • We will implement a fix for this issue.

The following issues will need additional information and testing in the beta to ensure the fixes are working as intended:

FSS: Long delay when scanning planets with geological sites

• As it currently stands, in order for the geological/biological sites to be placed on the surface, the entire stellar body must be fully generated (we then know the topography and can place sites where they will be accessible). This can take tens of seconds.
• As part of the January Update, we aim to address this with an alternative process. We have run tests on thousands of in-game planetary bodies and by using this data, we're able to extrapolate the likelihood of geological/biologic sites being present on similar stellar bodies. We then use this data and indicate if the planet is ‘Unlikely’, ‘Likely’, or ‘Very Likely’ to have a geological/biological sites.
• It is not 100% guaranteed that there will be a geological/biological site on the planetary body, but does give commanders a much faster indication of probability. This will enable commanders to quickly ascertain if the planet's worth a visit.
• As this is an alternative way to display information, we would love to hear your feedback on it to determine whether or not it is better than the current process.
• Please note: this will not affect Thargoid or Guardian sites, which will show up instantaneously.

Conflict Zones have no contents

• We have identified that the LUA script responsible for populating Conflict Zones can stop running at times, which causes this kind of issue. We will implement a fix, but we'll need your feedback on whether or not the issue persists.

The Invincible Heart

• The team have been investigating this issue for some time, however, it has proven difficult to reliably reproduce in-house. As part of the beta, we'll be adding additional logging information and will need our community beta testers to try to reproduce the issue so we can collect more data to help us resolve it.

Instance splitting when fighting Thargoid Interceptor

• We'll be introducing a fix for this, but as it is a network-related issue, we'll need this to be extensively tested in the beta.

Thargoid Interceptor - Heart cycle reset

• We will implement a fix to ensure that the Thargoid Interceptor's combat state does not reset. As with the issue above, we'll also require commanders to identify if this is still occurring in the beta.

Exiting the Game just hangs, need to force terminate

• We will need additional feedback in checking if this issue is still occurring in the beta.

We'll be investigating the following issues for future updates and will detail any fixes for these when available:

• Two major issues with light from the local star (so-called "tinting")
• Thargoid Interceptor - Shutdown pulses without warning
• Core mining fragments glitch inside the asteroid
• Wing Mining - Seismic Charges malfunction
• Chat icon displays "1" while no message is there
• Black screen after respawn in CQC / Game crashing
• Massive rubber banding of npcs and player around stations and sometimes in other instances.
• Crystalline Clusters Disintegrate Without Producing Materials

VR: Double Vision and Incorrect Rendering on HMDs with Non-Parallel Displays (ex. Pimax).

• At the current time, there are no plans to provide support for new HMDs outside the officially supported systems and platforms. The officially supported platforms are Valve Index, HTC Vive and Oculus.