Free and open source space sim Pioneer gets a big UI upgrade

Pioneer started off life as a basic spiritual successor to Frontier: Elite II and nowadays it continues being upgraded, to give fans of classic 3D space exploration something fun. A new release went up on February 3 that has officially removed their old UI system, in favour of more modern interfaces using the very popular Dear ImGui.

You can see some of the new UI work in the below shots (click to enlarge):

Some of the major changes for this release include:

• New galaxy skybox, improved star brightness and density.
• Redesign the BBS layout, show pertinent mission info.
• New slot-based ship equipment display.
• Completely new System Atlas mode for System Map.
• Add System Overview Widget to System Map view.
• Xylophis overhaul, new model.
• Name generation expanded, and make first + last name match.
• Rebalance goods restocking & goods availability, allowing bulk trading.
• Draw sector map labels with ImGui.
• Rewrite internal renderer API, improve performance with many draw calls.

The rendering changes sound quite exciting. Not only should it perform better than ever but it has opened things up for future enhancements, like having more complicated (and modern) graphical effects. Sounds like 2022 could be a big year for the Pioneer space sim.

See more on the official site.