@rusty_shackleford vindicated??
No, for the most part it's a 2D-ish skybox that you fly in. If you tilt your camera and fly towards a planet, you can see that you aren't actually moving towards it.
I've not done much outside of getting to the first zone. I hope it improves... quickly.
I am totally wrong. I decided to try this myself. You can fly towards planets, I went into free cam mode, it is a 3d ball with a texture on it, it's low res but it's there.
Okay, I spent the 20 minutes going towards a moon, you legit just pass through it
https://imgur.com/a/Kvq51BY
https://imgur.com/a/qD0nX8G
Yet to be determined how far this goes.. There could still be skyboxing / invisible walls.. but at least some of the planets seem to be actual 3D Models with low res textures.
This is obviously not the intended way to traverse the game, you are encouraged to abuse the **** out of fasttravel
(not just for womholing, when you fast travel from a planet to it's moon, you don't warp drive, your ship just animates flying along in a time skip) - there's no telling how much freedom you actually have yet, need to test more / open the game up with the CK.
The question for me is: can you actually travel between 2 planets even if it takes an hour+ IRL.. If so that means at least galaxies are seemlessly connected, which won't change the current gameplay for 99% of players BUT what could mods do here.. this opens up a lot more possibilities than a tiny explorable cube with a skybox slapped on it.
EDIT
I should be clear before rusty jerks himself off, that the only confirmed statement right now is that in some cases you can fly right up to the moon / planet it seems, (and right through it because it has no collision??) - but the planets SEEM to be actual 3D Models with a low res texture wrapped around them.
This in theory means, new planets can be added through mods or maybe even FTL technologies could be added to ships to make seemless travel across galaxies an actual mechanic. Possibly. Maybe a DLC is already planned for that?
All speculative at this moment but I have a small glimmer of hope this game is 2% less ****.