One thing I think will be cooler about Elite: Dangerous when compared to Star Citizen, is that the Elite folks are planning to respect celestial scale. In Elite, stars, planets, moons etc are supposed to be to scale and observe orbital and rotational cycles. So a moon doesn't just statically stay in the same location relative to its host planet like they do in virtually every other space sim. In Elite if you go to a planet at one time, it's moon will be in a different orbital position than another time, meanwhile, that planet is orbiting around it's star. Distances between celestial bodies will also be to scale.
Also all the stars and systems in Elite are in charted from the Milky Way and are supposed to be accurately located. From our solar system you will be able to observe the constellations we're familiar with like the Big and Little Dippers, Draco, Orion etc... but if you warp over to Alpha Centauri then obviously those constellations are irrelevant because of the position of the observer. I thought that was pretty cool.
**EDIT**
Elite: Dangerous is viewed as the direct competitor to Star Citizen for those that are unfamiliar with it. It's also a large open world space sim MMO in it's infantile stage of development. Although Elite is currently in beta, while Star Citizen has had some delays and is very much in rough alpha.
