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Yes! Im sick of asking everyone if they played Frontier Elite 2 and getting nothing but blank faces. It amazed as a young gamer and amazes me more now as a programmer; written in assembler and giving the player a procedurally generated universe to explore, all on one floppy disk.

EVE Online is as close as you can get to Privateer Online.

EVE Online is as close as you can get to Privateer Online.

Just off the top of my head here is one:
http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/

There is a download-able combat prototype on the site too.

Ah hah! Now I understand why the Infinity FAQ has an answer to this very question.

Procedural is not the same as random. Procedural is a set of parameters that can be mathematically unfolded into a large amount of information. Random is a set of numbers that are unpredictable by nature. The confusion probably comes in because many Procedural methods use pseudo-random number generators. However, a pseudo-random generator is not random. For a given seed, you will always get the same sequence of numbers.

The seed is usually one of the parameters used to decide the look of the texture, so there ends up being nothing random about procedural texturing. :)

Watch the video's. Amazing. Infinity

Thats pretty interesting, I got Guild Wars because of the free online subscription but didnt get the expansion pack. either the hardcore gamers will move to BC or stop playing because all the action is in the expansion pack and they dont have it. Personally I would love a Universe Of Starcraft. But they might be too late for start craft as there another mmorpg in space space. http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/

The whole concept of procedural creation in games has not been fleshed out as I would have hoped. Procedural methods can do much more then make great FPS graphics fit on 800K. Way back in 1986, I played a game called Starflight. Starflight used fractal algorithms to create a pretty diverse universe with about 200 star systems and 800 planets. You could land on and explore each planet. Close up. Let me say that again, you could land on each planet, collect it's life, find unique artifacts and rove your little tank around for hours. All of this fit onto two low density 5 1/4" floppies. Now, the CGA graphics and restrictive CPU power did no favors. Things got pretty repetitive, but the enormity of the game went unmatched for about 12 years.

In reflection, and now that I better understand it's design, it seems to me to be a microcosm of the real universe. You have a set of rules and a set of elements and by happenstance, (not by human hands in 3ds max) worlds are born.

For a long time, we've been stuck with with character models, human built maps, plot-lines on rails and worlds confined to the imagination of the story line department. Procedural graphics and world creation could make the universe out of a few megabytes.
There are a few games here and there that use this idea. Here is a game in development using procedural graphics and fractal planet creation: Infinity

This game is coded by one person, a few volentary artists. Look for yourself at what has been achieved so far: http://fl-tw.com/

Well you Star Control people, there are plenty of non-complete projects out there that are very similar to the Star Control concept. First, there's the: incredible looking Infinity

Then there is the Starflight III game. Starflight I & II being very similar, and many feel inspirational to the Star Control series. Starflight III has been in development for bloody ages. They are making progress though, and my bets say we'll have it before long. I can't wait for it to finish.

There are others, and I've even spent about 18 months developing my own unoffical sequel to Starflight with original content. Boy is it hard, despite having basically the full requirements and design goals laid out in the best way possible, the original games. The worst part is the team's motivational considerations. It's hard to work on a game in your own time for weeks on end. I'm probably making a project that no one will play, save the few die hard fans of the old games. I had notions that there may be a wider audience, but after running the game idea past a few 13-14 year olds, I'm not sure the current generation of gamers will appreciate, or even understand a space-opera Star-Trek esq single player RPG since they are not fueled by those romantic memories of games of old. It seems if there is not some military or MMORPG element to games these days, no one wants to publish them. (there's a few exceptions)

On the other hand, there is a counter culture in game development that craves smaller independent type games. PC gamers are all getting pretty sick of 1-2 great titles each year, and the rest, which is pretty much me too crap, from the big publishers.