Only guesswork follows: but it's not been confirmed one way or the other yet, I think (even if the ps4 version seems to make player encounters completely transparent so far, so you only ever "see" other players in the sense that you can tell they have been to the same system at some point).
Still, Sean has mentioned before that you would be able to spot other players' suits. And they've talked about network coding having various *mumblemuble* functions, etc. :p So presumably there has at least been on the drawing board something that allows you to see other players either through a separate p2p stream that's instanced separately as you successfully scan and detect another player (so you'd be technically able to warp to and join another player via ID, for example, but only one player as a secondary to one server instance for the first player.. maybe). Or, possibly, that you would be seeing the other player as an event of the kind that lets you interact with them off-line, maybe similar to the npc encounters, based on what tech they had, ship, etc., when they registered in a system.
That's.. how I would have done this initially, at least, to create an npc-event based on the other player. Like.. you'd help them out to escape the system, or assist them in some mission, work against them to prevent a freighter run from being robbed indirectly (after the other player had escaped with the loot long ago - but that you'd contribute to the way the faction result ends up in that system on the server), things of that sort, depending on what standing you have with opposing factions, or something like that.
But agree it would be all kinds of awesome to fly in formation with another player, or assist them in real time to take down freighters or stations, or transport goods, distract sentinels when gathering resources, and so on. I don't think that's something they've included, just given what they've been saying. But it would surprise me if they didn't want to release some update for the network functions later at some point, also for the consoles.
That would fit with how Sony actually changed the "online play" label on the disc-version after they went to production, for example. That there was a version from months ago that actually had some kind of more direct network functionality, but it never made it through certification.
Anyway, so they're going to be engaged with.. not privy to any details, but guessing from how other devs under Sony worked... a core team that will be doing small maintenance for another 6 months or so on the console version. The PC version they would have probably worked on anyway. So if they're strategic about this, and have planned functions that allow it, then they might have an excuse to continue developing what they've suggested off-hand before. Like network functions (perhaps realtime), planet type deformation and erosion, cycles and changes to weather over time, faction interaction outside the player scope, etc. Perhaps some of those functions will be there on the PC version tomorrow, who knows...
Thing is that stuff like this can be a lot of work to make actually worth the effort, and it would stack with similar functions, and could be possible to develop asynchronously much more efficiently with a full team, than dropping in bits here and there over time. So I can't help but wonder if they might want to gather up a lot of that work, organise some waystation functionality to populate systems with players gathering there, while also adding perhaps several players, etc. And go with a "universe sequel" type expansion dlc, or a new game and universe, or something like that.
Again just guessing here. But from previous experience with Sony projects, the complete lack of comment they have on the network functions (and Sony changing the label on the disc-release, etc) isn't a coincidence. That there was something specific they had in mind, but it's not included at this point, and they really can't talk about functionality Sony may never be able to provide. In the same way, if it's not included at launch, they may then not actually be able to add it later, if it was never certified for that functionality, etc. This stuff sounds insane, but it's completely real.
You'd think it would make sense to just say: well, we really wanted this, but sadly it won't happen, maybe next time, etc. But that's not how it works at Sony. They might not give off that impression, with all the bungling they've ended up conducting on any number of titles before. But they're really hot on that the "advertised functionality" should be the same as what you get when you launch the game, and that these functions should be properly implemented and tested, etc. I mean, it basically descends into things like "we actually had [insert function x] working at some point, but we had to take it out" very often. Whether that's 24 players in Battlefield, smooth real-time updates for 256 players on the overhead views in MAG, or moving shadows in Killzone 2, and things of that sort - it's sometimes a question of a requirement for bandwidth use (BF and MAG ran into trouble with that - rumour has it Sony set a specific kb/s limit along with full max load for servers/number of instances/response time, and happily sacrificed everything else to get under that limit). Ping limits and matching requirements that ensured cluster updates also was patched out to allow people to join quicker. Even though that blew the entire network stack to pieces. In a similar way.. as far as I know, the moving shadows in Killzone 2 were not actually real-time, but a limited transformation added on at the tail end of the development, like a placeholder - that GG had some pretty impressive plans for. But there were functions all these teams had worked on that never made it to the full game that were either complete (and seen in actual builds), or that never were properly tested, and then not included in the release - and following that never ended up being fully developed, in spite of actually having been possible and on the drawing board.
Other end of that is the immediate overlay and presentation. Smoke and view-distance blurring, for example. You might notice a theme with the Sony developed fps-type games.. limited view-distance and narrow fov. I don't know why specifically this is, but I know for a fact that both MAG and Killzone 2 didn't have the "wooh, volumetric dust-clouds sweeping in everywhere" in the beta-builds that we had in the full releases. It was basically added after the beta-tests were complete, on the "day 1 patch". Presumably because they wanted to obscure the... at least in MAG and Killzone 2.. the non-existent pop-in and the slightly offset perspective correction on very long distances that.. .. I think it had a gameplay significance, frankly. That they had testers who didn't like the open spaces and how it affected the battles. Because there were no real technical concerns involved, there was just a very concentrated effort to make the final product that was released "fixed" as well as possible in a very short time, after it was washed through q&a.
Anyway, I'm just saying that the process HG might find themselves in is that they need to work on "core functions" rather than expand on planned functionality. And would for example get into trouble with actually deploying any of it if the differences between the PC version and the ps4 version become too great. So that's why the "technically possible, and definitely planned" thing might not be relevant. And that the type of "jump to friend's location" may actually never be seen in this game, even if it actually had been implemented a long time ago.
Again, though - only speculating here, and Sean seems to have an awfully cordial relationship with people at Sony. So maybe they can pull a rabbit out of the hat in the end after all. But odds are that the pc version is tied to some backroom ps4 agreement, that makes what you get on release day the definite feature set (and then likely without online functionality altogether).
