Elite Dangerous
Hacker ApprovedRanked 4 of 9 space simulation games by recommenders
Praised as a hardcore space sim with a 1:1 Milky Way and VR support. Caveats: boredom over long play and a heavy headset.
Praised as a hardcore space sim with a 1:1 Milky Way and VR support. Caveats: boredom over long play and a heavy headset.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Realistic 1:1 scale Milky Way
“VR in Elite Dangerous allows you to fly in outer space in a 1:1 scale Milky Way Galaxy.”
Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “Meta VR Glasses” “with a gaming rig and an interest in scale of a galaxy”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart” Hardcore spaceflight simulation
“Spaceflight simulators like Elite Dangerous are quite fun as well”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Steam Frame starts at $1059” “Elite Dangerous is the most hardcore space game I'm aware of”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “No Man's Sky Cosmos” Preferred over No Man's Sky
“Everything about ED is what I like about NMS and vice versa for that matter.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “No Man's Sky Cosmos” “Elite Dangerous does it better.”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Boredom after long play
“I also bounced multiple times off Elite Dangerous due to boredom.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “No Man's Sky Cosmos” “which I played for several hundred ours before getting bored of it”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “No Man's Sky Cosmos” Scale feels empty and disconnected
“there’s, I think, three orders of magnitude of flying around. Which really disconnects me from the feel of it all.”
Comment from 9 Sep 2026 in “No Man's Sky Cosmos” “the vast majority of them contain no story, no life, no space stations, no other players”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “No Man's Sky Cosmos”
Other space simulation games people recommend
The four most recommended other space simulation games, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Man's Sky | 97 | 100 | 49% | 7 | 10 yrs16 owners | — |
| Kerbal Space Program | 24 | 9 | 73% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Starflight | 17 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
| Elite DangerousThis page | 15 | 5 | 75% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Star Citizen | 11 | 20 | 35% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
17 of the 21 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“VR in Elite Dangerous allows you to fly in outer space in a 1:1 scale Milky Way Galaxy.”
“Spaceflight simulators like Elite Dangerous are quite fun as well”
“Everything about ED is what I like about NMS and vice versa for that matter.”
“Elite Dangerous is the most hardcore space game I'm aware of”
“Elite: Dangerous suffers from the exactly the same issue”
“I also bounced multiple times off Elite Dangerous due to boredom.”
“which I played for several hundred ours before getting bored of it”
“the vast majority of them contain no story, no life, no space stations, no other players”
“there’s, I think, three orders of magnitude of flying around. Which really disconnects me from the feel of it all.”
“personally I found the heavy HMD got uncomfortable inside of a half hour”
“frustrating and terrible game design”
“The galaxy explorer/map in Elite: Dangerous is pretty good”
“with a gaming rig and an interest in scale of a galaxy”
“Elite Dangerous does it better.”
“My favorite online game uses them along with server side anti-cheat and while cheating occasionally happens, it has never been an ongoing issue.”
“Something you couldn't do without proc-gen because there's not enough disk space to store it.”
“I've heard that Elite Dangerous is nice in VR.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.