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There is a man over here that will sell you that dream. Just don't ask him how long it will take...

I never minded the PvP or the extremely high learning curve...

What I DID hate was that their view of the game is exactly as you say, EVE is a bleak dangerous place... Just like space would be. However, space is also way way bigger than the game models.

I will be waiting for Infinity

Graphics look way way better, and the entire universe is procedurally generated meaning that every single star / planet / moon / asteroid you run into is going to be different than the last one.

They actually took the vastness of space and created a model of it that better represents what it would be like. Gates wouldn't exist (unless created by players) and you could easily just point yourself in one direction for days until you reach some empty corner and setup your own empire... Hire some NPC workers / pilots / researchers etc and soon enough you will have your own empire. Kind of like a 3D, real-time clone of those old text based 4X games

Until Elite 4 comes out (ahem, cough) Infinity: Quest for Earth looks to be its spiritual successor (yes there's seamless space travel to planetside, as showcased in the trailer)

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp8WOCuR_pQ

Site: http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/

Can't wait for this to come out... Frontier First Encouters with a DirectX engine just isn't cutting it anymore....

http://www.jumpgateevolution.com/

And less since it will probably never come out just like Project Offset.

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php

The only work they have to show is Bryce 3D pictures and an ICP they released two years ago. It's too bad that the parent got modded up, because this is a project holding its fans together by only hype. Anybody can visit the forums to see this themselves. You're likely not to encounter anything except Bryce 3D renders, text from the guy working on Infinity describing all the features, and mostly fans themselves who are excited about all the features described.

This is the game I was looking for when I first tried out EVE online, and I'm not displeased by the time I've spent with EVE, but I really wanted a dogfighting MMO, something like Battlefield 2 and 2142's dogfighting, but with more people, and in space, with cool lasers and whatnot. My fears for the game though are that it will have limited population, and you could wander pace aimlessly for a while before finding something to do. On the other hand, if it goes well, it'll be AWESOME. For anyone like me needing to satisfy their space combat needs, try ICP, you can find it at http://www.infinity-universe.com/ Infinity looks similar, but possibly with more depth, and the combat prototype is awesome, though sparsley populated. The key difference I see is that Jumpgate lacks NPC bots you can hire and have do stuff for you, whereas infinity does. Then again, JG:E has a release date planned in the near future.

I've been following this Elite/WC Privateer'ish game for a couple of years: http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php
Everything in the game except ship models and station models is procedurally generated. You can take off and land at planets seamlessly. There is no content loading.
The combat prototype is plenty of fun. Makes me miss Elite.

DarkTree's model ( essentially storing meshes of functions and filters as a texture ) is entirely applicable at runtime, especially with GPUs getting more and more sophisticated.
Its already being done too in simpler forms, to add modulated detail to texture etc. with fragment shaders essentially becoming part texture generators. There are different balance point on how much you want to let be pregenerated by CPU and cached, how much of it always recalculated on the fly, and how much simply streamed from the storage.
Baking in texture in advance has fairly obvious limitations. Finite detail, finite variations. Baking in lightmaps used to be popular too because there wasnt enough horsepower to do enough believable dynamic lighting, still everything is moving away from lightmaps. People are already trying to to full global illumination models at runtime.
Lots and lots of titles are doing procedural art at runtime already without people even noticing its procedural. Vegetation being the most obvious example.

Infinity Universe essentially tries to go Elite 42 on us and and basically generate 95% of the universe procedurally.

Yeah, pretty much. Here's a project that's attempting to create an entire universe in a similar fashion.

But don't think it's restricted to just landscapes and textures. Any content can potentially be generated procedurally - buildings, creatures, music, vehicles, whatever.

You might just want to have a look at this...

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php

Started as a 1 man project and now with a team of 8 people working in their spare time.
watch a few of the videos.

watch the high quality version right to the end.

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=93

there are some other fantastic videos up.
Yes graphics have improved but the tools have improved too. 1 man can do a lot more now than 20 years ago.

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php

Started as a 1 man project and now with a team of 8 people working in their spare time.
watch a few of the videos.

watch the high quality version right to the end.

http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=93

there are some other fantastic videos up.
Yes graphics have improved but the tools have improved too. 1 man can do a lot more now than 20 years ago.

=O That would be loving awesome... Heh - The next bioware game ~needs~ to be steampunk... I demand it! (Inb4offtopic) There are some good ideas out there that are independent -- see Infinity for one example. They gameplay itself may not be thought out yet, but it is an indie project that looks like it could be good. However, right now it just seems to be a game built around the "procedural" aspects... Gimmicks have never been good.