 This is Witchspace news for Friday the 21st of May 2021, I'm CMDR Buur. In a cracking news this week, the odyssey begins, the Thargoid advance is continuing, the community mobilizes and the oracle is falling. To make sure you don't miss any of our videos hit like and subscribe, click the little bell icon and remember to select all notifications and to further help support the work of this channel you'll also find us on Patreon, links to everything you need are in the description below. We reported last week that multiple Thargoid incursions had appeared in the California Colesack and Pleiades nebulae, whilst that's no insignificant event the real question was whether this was the start of a new Thargoid advance. With the regular Thargs Day tick yesterday, the collective legion eyes of the massed ranks of the anti-Xeno initiative as well as numerous independent AX commanders were on the Tharg incursions and where they might pop up next. If they stay in their nebulae it's probably an isolated incident, if they make a move out of the zones they're in then it could be the opening moves of a new Thargoid advance. Ladies and gentlemen it is now my solemn duty to report that not only have the combat zones moved from their starting locations but that they are moving toward the bubble and they are in fact now only 164 light years from Sol in the HIP16538 system. Not only that but the AXI are telling me that their observations would seem to indicate, brace yourself, that the Thargoids are following the Alexandria, that's the Aegis Megaship used in the recent CG to gather Guardian artifacts as part of ongoing research into anti-Thargoid measures and literally as we're forming this news report Galnet is now reporting that the Megaship is indeed reporting trailing Thargoids and if you weren't braced enough already the Megaship is heading to Sol. Gee thanks Aegis, told you the Thargoids wouldn't like it. Commanders this is the start of something, it's all about to get very real very close to a lot of people's homes. As the wave of Thargoid destruction continues and stations continue to burn, more on that in a moment, the guys at Operation Ida have swung into action alongside their comrades in the post-disaster evacuation service. As of this recording carrier movement throughout the galaxy is offline as Frontier attempt to battle some more down-to-earth server related issues but undeterred the two rescue and repair player driven communities are plowing forward regardless and doing it the old-fashioned way. If you want to help with either civilian evacuation or hauling for station repair I've linked to both communities as well as the anti-Xeno initiative below. Regardless of platform or what version of elite you're running jump in get involved. As my dear old great grandmother used to say it's gonna go off in here tonight. Unless you've been living under a rock it can't fail to have escaped you'll notice that the long awaited expansion to Elite Dangerous Odyssey launched on PC this week. The biggest expansion the game has ever seen Odyssey adds the much requested space legs, access to tenuous atmospheric worlds, new gameplay, new life and over 400,000 planetary settlements and 8,000 planetary ports as well as new terrain rendering technology and lighting throughout the game. The patch notes which I've linked in the video description are frankly colossal and go on and on for several pages. Like any MMO and live service game the new expansion has not been without its problems or indeed controversies. There are a number of reports of serious frame rate issues making the game unplayable for a significant number of players. This issue in itself understandably seems to be overshadowing many of the other problems in the expansion however those frame rate issues don't appear from our perspective at least to be linked specifically to older hardware that just can't keep up with the changes which gives us significant hope that this is something that can be ironed out in moderately short order. Indeed in the burr household of the three of us I'm actually running the oldest machine with an Nvidia 2060 GTX graphics card and my frame rates have so far at least been absolutely fine. It's worth reiterating as well if you are running older hardware that Odyssey eventually has to run on previous generation playstations and Xboxes which can't be upgraded or expanded. We've seen numerous reports of the latest video drivers from Nvidia and Radeon having significant benefit for some commanders so that's absolutely worth pursuing if you are having problems. There's also a simple and popular fix that was posted on Reddit that has again solved a lot of commanders problems that's linked below this video as well. As we reported last week the new terrain engine has completely rejigged the surface of every single landable planet in the galaxy and that has meant that some old favourites are now only available in horizons which is itself now on a countdown timer to the autumn console release of Odyssey. Spots like GD140 for example that were popular with the Hooning community are now unrecognisable and no longer feature the planet wide extremes of terrain that they were used to. This has undoubtedly hit communities like Newton's Gambit where the art of Hooning is practically a religion very hard indeed. Our investigations are still ongoing but our initial impression overall seems to be that the new terrain system is perhaps making planet surfaces more realistic and much less likely to spawn the extraordinary extremes that we saw prior to Odyssey. It's of course up to the individual to decide if that's a good thing or not. Elsewhere initially at least Odyssey seems to predominantly feature the gameplay that we saw in the alpha there are significantly more biological examples to be found planet side in the wider galaxy and around 28 different settlement types with we think buildings being mixed and matched to add further variety. I'll be putting my thoughts together about Odyssey and what it means to the PC and to the consoles in the coming days after we've had time to explore it some more. Do make sure you're subscribed so that you don't miss that. Right now it's still very early days of what is a significant release Frontier have stated that they are aware of problems and that they are being worked on in fact David Braben himself was on a Frontier livestream last night saying that very thing and we've already had at least one significant patch with a raft of fixes in just the 48 hours or so since Odyssey went live. Ultimately if you are having problems this is definitely an evolving situation hang in there keep testing your experience and see where it goes. And finally and what an and finally it is never did I think I'd be saying the following words in case you missed our report from earlier today which is linked on screen now it appears that the Oracle Starport damaged in last week's Thargoid attack is falling from orbit. Since we filed that report we've had multiple reports come in of other Starports damaged last week similarly appearing to have decaying orbits. This is happening on consoles, PC, horizons and Odyssey. Twitter has absolutely exploded with the news of what is a very fast evolving situation we're as confident as we can be at this point that this is a thing and not a bug no matter the version of the game you're in watch this space no pun intended. So what are your plans for whatever version of the game you're playing are you rescuing, repairing, fighting or just watching with an open mouth from the sidelines let us know in the comments below. That's it for now thanks very much for watching we'll be back later this week with more videos until then oh seven commanders follow the greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack we very much look forward to seeing you next time