As part of the International Aerospace Expo 2954, you can currently play what may be the most ambitious project in video game history for free. MeinMMO summarizes all the details about the “Free Fly” event from Star Citizen.
How can I play Star Citizen for free? The International Aerospace Expo 2954 (IAE for short) runs until December 5, 2024, and during this time you can try out the ambitious SciFi-MMO by Cloud Imperium (which has raised over 744 million US dollars from more than 5.4 million supporters so far (via robertsspaceindustries.com)) for free.
- Create an RSI account (via robertsspaceindustries.com)
- Download the Star Citizen client (via robertsspaceindustries.com/download)
- Start the game and get going
If you create an account for the first time in this way to participate in the “Free Fly” event, you will receive 5,000 credits for the shop.
With Alpha Patch 3.24, some new hangar features have come to Star Citizen:
Try out the latest Alpha Patch
What content is playable? Alpha Patch 3.24.3 has been on the live environment for a few days now. It builds on Update 3.24 from August 2024, which brought the personal hangar with ship lifts, cargo elevators, and cargo missions into the game. During the test, you should also be able to try out more than 150 spaceships (via joinstarcitizen.com).
You should be aware during the test that Star Citizen is still a long way from the final launch. Furthermore, from a timing perspective, it would have been certainly more exciting to be allowed to check out the game after the implementation of Update 4.0 (and the associated progress wipe). Fortunately, “Free Fly” events take place quite regularly.
What comes with Alpha 4.0? Due to the shifts in all engineering features (including life-support and fire systems) as well as the early implementation of some 4.0 innovations with Alpha 3.24.2 (such as multi-tool updates and a new vehicle HUD), the list of features for the next update has shrunk significantly.
- A new star system called Pyro will be introduced, which contains six planets and moons each, as well as space stations. Additionally, colonial outposts and the first jumping points for the persistent universe will be included.
- The core technology of server meshing allows developers to use multiple servers per shard, improving social interactions in the universe and enabling seamless transitions from one system to another.
- The entire mission system will be overhauled to be compatible with server meshing.
If you’re wondering what happened to the story spin-off Squadron 42, there was a sobering update at CitizenCon 2024 in October 2024: The single-player game of Star Citizen has all the features, shows great gameplay, but is still a long way from release.
