High-Resolution Frontier Elite 2

Tom Morton has re-written Frontier Elite 2 to work under the OpenGL graphics system, and the result is a great-looking game which will run under Windows and other systems. The game shows a considerable improvement in the quality of the graphics, as the screen grabs below illustrate.

glFrontier

As with the hi-res version of FFE, glFrontier remains essentially the same game as the original version, but the visual side of things is of a much higher quality. The cockpit is the same as the original, but this is no problem as it has always worked so well.

In this program, the ships do not benefit from the increased resolution as much as they do in glFFE, although there are some details visible for the first time. The major work has been in the rendering of planets and stars, which have changed almost beyond recognition.

Playing glFrontier on your Windows PC

1. Download glFrontier from here and extract the zip to a folder of your choice
2. Double click the glFrontier icon to run the game
3. Windows 10/11 users may need to right-click the icon and troubleshoot compatibility to run the game (Windows 8 works best)
4. Keep launching the program until it actually runs! The window often closes and quits the game the first few times

Tips

• The icon to select the orbital system map does not appear to work. This feature can be accessed using the F2 key
• The text entry box for your Commander's name does not show what you are typing, but does still work and will show your new name when you press Enter (use backspace to clear the old text)
• Switch between full-screen and windowed mode with F11
• Switch between GL, original and wireframe graphics with Ctrl-E
• The option to switch on filename extensions is reversed ie. deselecting it turns the feature on
• The keyboard shortcut to exit the game and return to the desktop is Ctrl-Q