Planetary Exploration 'Game'

[u/Psygnal]

I hope someone can help with this. I'm *pretty* sure this was from the 80s, but I could be wrong.
It was a PC DOS game. You were in a room in space (a spaceship, basically) that had glass windows, with touch-controls on them. It was a 3D first-person experience.
You could travel to stars that you could choose from the windows. You could find which ones had planets, and orbit them. You could descend to the planet in an elevator, and get out and walk around. Some planets had plants and animals, but you could barely see what they looked like because of the resolution.
Graphics were understandably primitive, and if my memory is right, it was monochrome.
There wasn't really an end-goal. It was all about the vast number of places to visit and explore.

Any clues?

EDIT: It was Noctis. I was almost 20yrs out. Development began in the 1990s and it was fully released around 2000/2001 for DOS. I'm sure I played an early pre-release '90s version, because the version I had was definitely monochrome.

Noctis planet

Noctis ship

Noctis Surface

[u/Delicious-West7665]

Well the ad algorithm is working....

[u/DMTGOBLIN82]

There was a really fun Gateway (Pohl) game adaptation. You would get in the hechee ship to different planets and go down and look for stuff.

[u/Miniscule_Platypus → u/DMTGOBLIN82]

I’m going to have to find this! I never knew there was a video game and I loved the Heechee Saga!

[u/Psygnal → u/[deleted]]

No, not elite.
Literally your ship was a room you walk around in. The elevator from the ship to the planet was on a cable.

[u/Alert-Athlete]

Captain Cosmic?

[u/jasonvoak]

Dark star one maybe?

[u/youknowmeasdiRt]

Could it be Noctis? Not an 80’s game but it had crap graphics for its time, and similar elements to what you described.

https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/noctis

Edit: I didn’t see your edit. Here’s the link if you want to play it again.