Calling all Cobras, fire up your jump drives and prepare to ditch your illicit cargo into the dark void of space with excitement. The Alpha 3 version of Elite: Dangerous is now live and available for those who backed the Kickstarter campaign to bring David Braben’s groundbreaking epic back to PCs. It adds systems, space stations and jumps – most of the final features bar trading.

And it looks awesome. And it’s out just in time for the first public demonstration of the game at a BAFTA-hosted event in London.

Alpha 3 also adds some much-needed stitching together of the game’s scenarios by making those instances physical locations in space that can be jumped to, rather than simply individual levels accessed from the main menu.

Jumping lacks fancy graphical effects, but ships still visibly warm up and their exhaust vents open before jumping, illustrating the heat mechanic so important to the game.

The new space stations are nothing short of spectacular, distinctively from the same family of the duodecahedrons of the original game, but reimagined with high-polygon models and superb detailing. They’re absolutely huge, too, and players can fly their ships inside the stations without any sort of loading screen separating them from outside space. To interact, players must find their allocated landing bay and then land their ships themselves – no automatic hand-holding here, just like in the first two games.

Check out this video of a space station landing:

Trading is still yet to be implemented, but Alpha 3 lets players sell any cargo they pick up from destroyed AI ships, and use the cash to upgrade their ships.

Why is all this important? Because it means PC-exclusive Elite: Dangerous is one major step closer to being released (current estimate: later this year), a momentous event in the lives of anyone who played the first two Elite games way back in the 80s and 90s. Only this time, it has multiplayer options and a procedurally generated universe with billions of stars to visit.

Excited? With Alpha 3 out of the way, all eyes are on the beta – and if you’re feeling rich enough you can pay R900 to be part of that when it launches later this year. Or wait for the final game, which is scheduled for around Christmas.

Update: We’ve managed to get hold of three superb hi-res images of one of the new space station’s landing bays, and they are gorgeous. Just look at the detail!