Three hundred and sixty million stars just burst into life. Well, virtual stars anyway. The core program now contains a model of the area of space the rift is in. This area is 10,000 light years by 3,500 light years by 3,000 light years containing approximately 360 million star systems. 

Ships can traverse freely through this area seamlessly with no loading times. To put this in perspective, with the rift being in the middle of this area, the closest edge is 1,750 light years away. As the game is played in real time it would take a ship travelling non-stop at Warp 9.6,  ten and a half months to reach the edge of the simulation arena.

The above image shows the prototype of the scanner system. This one is set at 10 light years of range. Star density is based on real life data, and mimics what we know about this arm of the Milky Way.