If you own Elite Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons, you’re in for a special treat with the recently released version 2.3 for Horizons. Frontier Development have added in a character customization utility called the Holo-Me, and they’ve also added in multi-crew ships.

The focus of 2.3 is on the new Commanders features. As a Commander players can take control of a multi-crew ship and have two other friends tag along with them.

The three person crews allows one person to command the main ship, while the other player operates the guns and targeting systems, and the third player can take flight in a small defensive fighter from the flight bay. They preview the features in the new 2.3 trailer that you can check out below.

If you check out the comment section there’s a whole lot of grumbling going on.

The thing is, both Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen are both moving toward their intended goals, albeit slowly. I do like that both titles offer something very different in the overall experience based on where they are right now in development. It does look as if Star Citizen will be the far more ambitious game in the long run, and it does sport a lot of features not available in Elite Dangerous, but with Elite you can play it from Steam or on the Xbox One right now. So it depends on what your preferences are for a space sim.

Beyond that, Horizons 2.3 also adds the new Holo-Me feature. You can actually customize your character to look like you, unlike in Mass Effect: Andromeda. And yeah, you can actually make fair-skinned people in Elite Dangerous. You don’t have to wait for an additional patch to make that option available.

The other big feature is the third-person camera. Some people felt a little peeved that this wasn’t embedded from the start… but… well… it is what it is.

Anyway, if you already own Elite Dangerous you won’t have access to these newest features save for the third-person camera. You will have to purchase the Horizons expansion to gain access to the multi-crew and Holo-Me features. You can learn more about the season pass and the different versions of the space-sim by visiting the Steam store page.