Chris Roberts has an enviable pedigree: he’s the man behind the Wing Commander series of games, which means his work stands behind the entire genre of modern space combat simulation—without Wing Commander there would be no X-Wing or Tie Fighter or Freespace. The genre has remained stagnant since the release of Freespace 2 almost 15 years ago, and I’ll fight anyone who says there’s been a good space combat game released since then, because they’re dead wrong. But Roberts’ October 2012 launch of a crowdfunding campaign for a new space combat sim in the tradition and style of Wing Commander shattered records and showed that there are still fans of what many thought to be a dead and buried genre.

Unfortunately, throttle jocks eager to pull dusty Thrustmasters from the closet and blast off into the black will have to wait a bit longer: the semi-private alpha release of Star Citizen’s dogfighting module has slipped from this afternoon to the indefinite future. In a notice posted yesterday to the Roberts Space Industries main site, Roberts informed fans that there are still too many bugs to squash for the product to take flight. "We’re very close… just not close enough to launch tomorrow," the notice read.

The game’s crowdfunding campaign and its associated long pre-purchase period has brought in about $44.2 million as of this morning; this is a huge amount of money, but the proposed scope of Star Citizen is more than vast enough to match. The game will package a complete single-player campaign together with a persistent universe MMO with a dynamic economy; the single-player game will serve as the lead-in to the MMO. Today’s release of the dogfighting module (dubbed "Arena Commander" and styled as an in-universe combat sim game) was to be the first time backers got to actually take flight with the game’s engine.

Development of such an ambitious game, though, is fraught with delays. Roberts first publicly demoed the dogfighting module earlier this year at PAX East in Boston; Kyle Orland and I were on-hand observing, and the live demo unfolded not without some hiccups. The RSI developers had some issues with the game’s build, and there were a number of crashes (totally understandable for a live demo of an alpha game), but the game was met with roars and cheers from the eager crowd once Roberts’ in-game avatar flipped his helmet on and rocketed away from the carrier.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic

However, while Star Citizen backers may have to wait a few extra days or weeks for Roberts and his team to squash more bugs, Star Citizen isn’t the only massively multiplayer space sim riding the crowdfunding wave. Across the pond in the UK, David Braben and his team at Frontier Developments are kicking ass and taking names on another high-profile project: Elite: Dangerous.

Yes, that David Braben—half of the duo behind the great grandaddy of all space flight games, Elite. I was a bit misleading above when I called Wing Commander the source from which space combat games sprung; it would be more correct to say that Wing Commander is the mold from which story-driven space dogfighting sims are cast. Elite, on the other hand, is the one true source of space combat and trading. Elite was already six years old when Roberts and Origin launched Wing Commander in 1990, and much like its progeny, Elite is also being revived through crowdfunding.

The new game’s title is Elite: Dangerous. Though operating on less than ten percent of Star Citizen’s massive budget—Elite: Dangerous appears to have raised about $2.8 million—the game has released an entire string of playable alpha demos, including a huge update on May 15 that added hyperspace travel between systems and limited trading and dogfighting—both with computer-controlled AIs and also with other players.

And that’s only the beginning: Elite: Dangerous is scheduled to shift into what Frontier Developments is calling its "premium beta" stage tomorrow, opening the floodgates to a large wave of crowdfunding backers who have paid for the privilege of testing out the open-universe fighting-trading-piracy-whatever-else-you-want space MMO before it becomes generally available.

Plus, at least so far, Elite: Dangerous is still on track to hit its beta release date. Here at Ars, we’re primed and ready to download both Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous (and we’ve been playing with the latter’s alpha demo for several days now). We’d originally planned a head-to-head comparison immediately, but Star Citizen’s delay means we’ll be focusing first on Elite.

If you want to join up and try out the Elite: Dangerous premium beta, all you have to do is sign up—and pay $150 (or £100 if you’re in the UK). For those who prefer Star Citizen, the dogfighting module should be available to backers whose packages included alpha access (the pricing of which varies—though according to the FAQ, there are no more alpha slots available for purchase separately, but you can still buy your way in to the dogfighting module with a pass).

Even if you can’t join the fun (either you don’t want to drop the coin or you have a console—both titles are PC-only), stay tuned to Ars. We’ll be talking about both games pretty heavily as they roll toward release.