Best way to locate a friend in Elite: Dangerous (console)

Question

I recently got the full game of ED on Xbox One and can't figure out how to meet up with a friend.

We have both tried travelling to the same station, star, and general space coordinates, and we can't see each other. We are able to form a Wing and our icons appear on each others HUDS, but there's no option I can find to "lock destination" on a friend, plot course, etc.

Are there any in-game mechanics I'm missing? Or any workarounds that people have figured out? It seems like we are on different instances, but then why would we be able to form a wing?

Answer 1

Instancing might be different on Xbox than PC. I think there may be things around "servers" that might make it harder to join up with your friend on Xbox.

Things that have helped on a PC:

1. All be on your mutual friends' lists before you start the game.
2. Make sure you're both in open play, or both in the same private group.
3. Form a wing before you jump to the star system.
4. One of you drop out of supercruise and engage your wing nav beacon (Comms panel on upper left), and the other lock onto that (it shows up similarly to a signal source).
5. Nav lock each other (comms panel), and both navigate to the same station.

Note: tricks for making sure you both appear in the same instance can also reduce the odds of other players appearing. If you're winging up for PvP you might want to start out in different systems until you find somebody to engage with.