I'm sure some of you remember seminal 80's space sim "Elite".
One of the original creators, David Braben, is using kickstarter to fund a reboot called Elite: Dangerous.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous

For those not in the know, it was a genuine groundbreaker. The first true 3D game. The first true sandbox game. No score, 1 life. You started with a ship and 100 credits, and traded / fought your way to greatness.
It was originally released in 1984 on the BBC and Acorn Atom. Later released on most 8 bit platforms.
Followups included Frontier: Elite II (1993), and Frontier: First Encounters (1995).

There's a BBC article with more information and an interview with Braben here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20165344
The devs, Frontier Developments, are also hiring Coders / CG Artists / Animators / Concept Artists etc.
http://www.frontier.co.uk/jobs/

Here's hoping it does well. I spent a large chunk of my early teens playing this game.

Hmm. I remember that game, but it's 2.5D at best. 2 axis motion and 1 axis rotation. kinda.
Elite was true realtime 3D vector graphics.

Agree about the competition, but it's not an MMO, so no competition with Eve at least.
Personally, I welcome a resurgence of space sim games. It would make a nice change to endless braindead first person shooters.

Neither were the first true 3d game (played both when they first came out)
eg heres a similar game from the year before http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_(1983_video_game)
or from 1979 http://www.retrocpu.com/mame/roms/t/tailgunner
never really saw the fun in elite (mates liked it though) I liked his other game more, virus