Frontier First Encounters D3D

FFED3D is an adaptation of the original FFE game. As the screenshots below show, the FFE engine has been completely overhauled and produces much-improved graphics; the planets and sky/space are more detailed and most of the ships and buildings have been updated.
Two builds are currently available, by Ittiz and AndyJ. The latter was being worked on much more recently and is the definitive version, with greater stability and more bug fixes. Sadly, Andy Jones aka AndyJ passed away in July 2022.

This video shows the FFE intro movie as displayed in the FFED3DAJ version of the game (2018)
Note:- The version of FFED3DAJ shown here features several enhancements which may not be present in the basic download
However they can all be downloaded from the website below

Running The Game

Please note that Frontier First Encounters is shareware
The shareware version of the game can be downloaded from here

FFED3D - AndyJ Version

• Register a free account at Space Sim Central

• Navigate to the "DL Terminal" section, then "#-F", then "FFED3D" and download "FFED3D_complete.7z"
This download does not include the videos which are in the Ittiz package below, but is a much smaller download (176MB v 435MB)

• Create a folder called FFED3DAJ and extract the contents of this file to that folder

• Download the AndyJ patches which are called "FFED3DAJ_v1.11.zip", "FFED3DAJ_CoreFiles.zip" and "FFED3D_v1.01_ExampleSkins.zip"

• Extract the contents of these zip file into your FFED3DAJ folder, overwriting existing files when prompted

• Double-click on the "FFED3DAJ" executable

• Full details of the changes and enhancements are in the FFED3DAJ_readme and FFED3DAJ_versions files, and are configurable in the ffed3daj.cfg file

FFED3D - Ittiz Version

• Register a free account at Space Sim Central

• Navigate to the "DL Terminal" section, then "#-F", then "FFED3D" and download "FFED3D_complete.7z"

• Create a folder called FFED3D and extract the downloaded file to this folder

• Also from the downloads area download "FFED3D-beta3-Ittiz.7z"

• Create a folder called Ittiz and extract the downloaded file to this folder

• From the Ittiz folder, copy the files "FFED3D.exe" and "lua5.1.dll" to the FFED3D folder

• Double-click on the "FFED3D" executable. The other exe called "FFE D3D" is the original, older version

• If you want the bulletin board videos, copy the "DATA" folder from Ittiz to FFED3D

• Note: this version has not been worked on for several years and still contains a number of bugs