During this year’s GamesCom event in Cologne, Germany, Cloud Imperium Games and Roberts Space Industries decided to showcase some of Star Citizen’s alpha 3.0.

During a live-stream for Star Citizen, the developers demonstrated some of the content for the upcoming alpha. One of the first things they do is demonstrate a ship-to-ship transfer, with one one player attempt to squeeze out of the ship and transfer to another ship. It’s quite jangly, but they do it. You can check it out below, courtesy of MKIceandFire.

The ship-to-ship transfer did not go as planned at all, but holy crap do they manage to partially recover the mishap when one of them falls from orbit with the Nox bike and ends up using the grav-lift to glide smoothly to the surface and keep on riding like a badass. It’s a glitchy bit of awesomeness.

The server slowly starts filling up as more players, but we begin to see some neat little features… such as when an abandoned Cutlass was on the ground and he begins shooting the ship into pieces so other players won’t be able to steal it and fly it.

A brief deathmatch ensues and we see how the ships handle during chases and taking damage when engaged in dogfighting on a planet. It’s also mentioned that ships handle differently when they’re within a planet’s atmosphere compared to in deep space. Outside of a planet’s orbit ships move faster. A planet’s gravity will affect the velocity and handling of each vehicle.

They end up showcasing how you can put a Nox inside of a URSA rover, and drive it around. Surprisingly, the rover doesn’t glitch out. It’s impressive.

We also get to see how you can manipulate and mess around with the turrets in the larger ships, but only if the ships are powered up. If a ship is not powered up, you cannot shoot the turret. So you won’t be able to like hijack someone’s ship and just use the turret to try to kill the owner of the ship.

You can also utilize ship-locking. Pilots can lock or unlock the ship to prevent people from getting in or out of the ship while it’s powered up. This feature also makes it so that someone can’t just rocket blast up to your ship, open the door, shoot you in the face and steal your ride.

They also demonstrate a little bit of the Prospector, moving from the planet into orbit and explain how it’s good for hauling things and mining things.

Star Citizen’s alpha 3.0 is tentatively scheduled to release during the first half of September.