Here is a collection of space sim related gametrailers from the GamesCom 2010:

Black Prophecy:



Star Wars: The Old Republic - Space Combat Gameplay:

I was playing Black Prophecy for about 30 minutes at gamescom.
I guess Freelancer players won't like it.

While the ship accelerates kinda like in FL there's no engine kill which can result in flying circles for some time without even seeing your enemy.
As they're supporting gamepads and joysticks your weapons are just shooting forward while you can just move your mouse about 2 cm left/right/up/down from the center.

Docking works like this:
Clicking on the station, pressing P, loading, tada, no sequence, you're docked.

I'm not sure bout the "open world" system they use but when you accept a mission on a station the game is loading again and you will be "teleported" to the first mission way point.
After fighting the first enemies another waypoint pops up. After flying a bit into its direction another loading screen pops up which teleports you to the next waypoint.

Tbh it hasn't answered my expectations. I had expect more...

Heresy War is something that comes to mind. Single player although there is talk of multiplayer as well. Reminds me of Starlancer or similar. Comes with a full modding pack as well.

Well damnit. I was hoping the game would feel like FL, but that just dented my hopes a bit...



The video I saw makes me think on-rails with very little control. Think Star Fox 64 or something. It's a cool thing but it feels gimmicky in a MMORPG, of all things, like they just wanted to add a bullet point.

and what about Infinity: Quest for Earth?
its still in early stage of development, and it has another kind of steering... not with mouse, but it will be MMO, and probably it will be free.. and with great bonus - free flying on planets, and unlimited number of systems to explore..

I think that it would be great game =)

For all intents and purposes, Infinity is vaporware. That's not to say that it isn't being developed, because it certainly is. It's just that its team is so small, and its goals so ambitious, that until they get some major backing and a larger development team, it just will not be done in any reasonable amount of time.

Black Prophecy was never supposed to be like Freelancer. Maybe like Freelancer in the sense that its combat is similar, but beyond that, it has more in common with Freespace than Freelancer. As far as I'm aware, there is no open roaming world at all, just station hubs where you get missions from. Combat looks really good from what I've seen though, and the graphics are some of the best I've ever seen for a space sim.

The Old Republic continues to leave me impressed only in that it is so oustandingly average that it's just average and nothing more. I really want to like, it. I really want to believe that it will be good, but it's an MMO, and a traditional one at that. It can't be good. It reminds me EVE Online in that when I see the cinematic trailers I say "I want to play that game! The one in the trailers!"