How to play Elite Dangerous: Horizons on Mac
| Platforms | Computer |
Game summary
In the first of Elite Dangerous: Horizons’ expansions, Planetary Landings, players can journey seamlessly from space to surface and choose their own landing point on accurately simulated planets and moons throughout Elite Dangerous’ full-scale Milky Way galaxy.
Players coast over mountain tops, dive into canyons and take command of the new ‘SRV’ ground vehicles. Each of these 1:1 scale worlds offers incredible vistas and countless gameplay opportunities as players discover valuable resources, experience deadly combat encounters, raid bases, scout crash sites, and cooperate with other players on the planet surface and flying high above. Planetary Landings is an entirely new way to play Elite Dangerous, and is just the first part of the Horizons season of expansions.
This expansion is now part of the base game; it became unavailable for purchase on October 27, 2020.
First released: Dec 2015
Play Elite Dangerous: Horizons on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)
The easiest way to play Elite Dangerous: Horizons on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.
Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.
Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).
Elite Dangerous: Horizons installation steps for Mac
Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Elite Dangerous: Horizons like you would on any PC.
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