I have to admit, that looks cool. If we could have actual working flight instrumentation within that cockpit, the sense of immersion would go through the roof! Thats the thing I have always loved about Micro$oft Flight Sim

A per ship 3d cockpit might be nice, would be a fair bit of work to do though.

It would require a default cockpit for ships that didn't have a custom one.

So that would need modelling, as would one for every ship that people added them too.

Andy

Yea, but 3d cockpit to be good needs to be very detalied. Every gauge, every switch etc. modeled in great detail. People would like immediately to this 3D cockpit be clickable, and when clickable that 3d switches would change their position etc. Poly count kills fps greatly, right?

2D cockpit is simpler to do, even doing unique per ship, because only what you need is one good graph artist. And even most detailed 2D cockpit would not put extra stress on your computer like detailed 3D cockpit, after all it is just a graphic. And clickable elements on cockpit panel are already implemented, so only changing their position and graphics would do the trick.

Yea, I am one of those 2D nerds if it comes to cockpits (hours in Flight sim, and Orbiter taught me in practice that it is also more comfortable to use 2D panel)

Ah, apologies, I thought that was a 3D cockpit 🙂 doh.

Yeah ok, different 2D overlay would be much easier to do!

The 2D cockpit mode may be the most comfortable to use, but for FSX I fly only with the 3D cockpit. It's so incredibly immersing, especially with Nividia 3D Vision. It would be a dream come true to see 3D cockpits in a spacesim like Pioneer but I think the Pioneer team is way too small to pull that off. Like you say, maybe 2D could be done but no sooner than talented volunteers join the team. It would be awesome though. Especially when there'll be clouds and blue skies on earth planets instead of a clear dark sky with stars during daytime. I wish my programming and artist skills were as good as my daydreaming skills... 😎

Totally agree with you there King Haggis 😳

One thing though, if 2D cockpits were utilised, would it be possible to use the massive amount of freeware gauges that are available for FS8,FS9 and FSX ? Of course aircraft gauges would only be of use within an atmospheric envelope. We would need a whole new set for space flight. I think its also important though to maintain the accessibility of the game. The present FE2 layout does do that, giving the pilot all the info they need. A balance then, between the two perhaps?

I still think this a good idea, but it all comes down to how functional and easy to use the cockpit could be. If proper gauges are used, I would like to see all of them providing useful info, not just eye candy.

Of course! As far as I remember all of them are in some popular graphic format like .png or so. (FS8, FS9, but FSX - haven't played)

And by the way - I can help with cockpits, maybe I am not very good graphic artist, but I can do some basic, generic ones and position all the things in code (if one of the devs would do a wiki about ShipCpanel.cpp which seems to be the one to edit.

That kind of 2D cockpit would be a dream come true for those like me that want to convert Pioneer into the "Whole Galaxy Orbiter Space Simulator" and convert Orbiter into Pioneer... 😀

The sense of immersion is great in a cockpit like this, A Functioning Delta Glider cockpit for Pioneer perhaps...? 😀

Greetings.

You might want to take a look at this, then: http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4942

Hey, thats really cool Orbiter is going for a similar galaxy model to Pioneer. 😎

Well, it's about 120'000 existing stars and the rest procedurally generated based on an image of the Spitzer MilkyWay. Not too accurate, I'm afraid.

The real goody is that it uses stargen for system generation. Although I have not adapted the code really properly yet, the level of data you get about individual planets is really amazing.

By the way, I made a complete periodical system with all important data (density, freezing, boiling, critical point, molecular weight etc) in preparation for a more detailed crust and atmosphere model. If anyone thinks that could be usefull for pioneer, just tell me. No need for anyone to scrap all that data together ever again.

But the Engine is not optimized for a Galaxy. I think the addon reloads the game with a different sol.cfg to simulate the new system. I am not tried it, so no idea how good it works. Perhaps the idea works fine.

greetings.

It works fine, the real problem is texture generation... Since Orbiter doesn't have dynamic planetary textures, all textures have to be generated and exported to disk before switching to the new system. On CPU that takes a seizable amount of time... ok if you want to make a realistic trip there, but not if you're looking for some fast sightseeing. Artlav has therefore tweaked the generator to run on GPU, which is reasonably fast if you have a high-end GPU (and currently still has some bugs. I have a new version in the making, but am stuck with an irrlicht bug with table clipping, which somewhat hampers my interface overhaul...). It's not ideal, but the best that can be done for orbiter currently, short of making an all-out graphics client especially for that purpose.

am i evil if i say i wouldn't like it?

perhaps you would have feel it first and see that it looks good but isn't helpful, i prefere a view in a spaceship like i would look on a large screen and not out of a cockpit window, of course fighters like the eagle would offer such a view but apart from that...

just guess such covers 75% of your sight, i didn't think that's really good for playing.

but if it's a real must, it's not a question of a big team, i guess i could make 5 different 3D cockpits in "no time".

certainly they won't look like a airbus cockpit, be warned.

btw, i really like to workout all the tidbits for them, especially since i've seen a space fighter model on skechup which has really overwhelmed me.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=39dcb7b563f4b050464f8ac2b42c08ed&prevstart=84

you will have to download sketchup and the model to see what i mean, this guy modelled everything, he used not a single texture, all is set by materials.

the pilot is superfine modelled and has real looking eyes and eyebrows, in the cockpit every switch is modelled and looks that good that you feel you must touch them. it's a fantastic piece of work and alone this is worth to install skechup.

ok, i've noticed now the pilot is from max grueter, no wonder he's superfine, you know him already?

but if you ask me, 3200 cockpits will look quite different, even to what i put into my ships.

i assume very little of something that reminds us of controls like we know, perhaps even none? or only a sphere where you lay your hands on to control the ship. graphically not very pleasing. while HUD information and view would be displayed in your mind and not on a screen.

already this shows a bit why i don't like a cast of orbiter, it needs a lot of tweaks to make from orbiter something like pioneer and it's not the purpose of it, likewise pioneer isn't orbiter and won't work imo with a feel like orbiter.

but well iv'e read

so i can easy be wrong 😉

why i'm answering to old threads?

i'm browsing them actually to find some of mine that can be removed.

Hey Gernot, please don't remove any of your tutorials, I'm still going back and learning from them! 😀

hunter cockpit

I think a 2D cockpit for each type of ship is a must do. It would give each ship it's own custom "Feel".

For example, Lets say you had a Mining craft of sorts. It may have the cabin mounted on the SIDE of the ship.

Such a cockpit might be layed out all on the Left hand side of the screen, Leaving the Top & Bottom clear for better vertical viewing.

I think this was attempted is a very resource restricted way with the cabin background images on the original Frontier games.

One could go even further and each ship could have empty gauge slots, And the player gets to place gauges & buttons of their choice.

(Still restrict the layout depending on the ship type, as above, but allow the user to choose which gauges they want to use).

Does anyone else remember the first Wing Commander game? It had a 2d cockpit view for each of the fixed directions you could look in. So looking back you got a view backwards with you seats headrest for example 🙂 That would be quite easy to implement.

I think cockpits are something to be careful with.. I really do like them, but once crew members are implemented for larger ships which would logically have a bridge rather than a cockpit, how are they going to be visible? It'll be weird if you have a crew of 8 yet not see any of them.

I thought I would google future spaceship design, and found this Boeing design. I can't see a cockpit unless it would be what looks like large windows with the shutters pulled down.

It's a three- to five-seater design, very near future. There's one window visible; that's the lower, wedge-shaped indentation on the conical surface. The window is actually on the inner surface to the left, and is facing to the right of the frame.

That's just an orbital capsule, though. It's flown under guidance from the ground and from computers on board. The window is only required for rendezvous and docking, and any window is a potential weak spot in the hull.

In the event that we ever have close-quarters combat in space (unlikely in reality, but one of Pioneer's stated features) we will either need larger windows or cockpits, or we'll need arrays of cameras, for situational awareness.

I suppose we could have something like this,

[attachment=1213:star-trek-top.jpg]

but I'm not sure it would be a good idea.

Thats very interesting.

The Bridge layout with crew visible, It very much does look the part for Multi pilot vessels.

1st thought...... It would be harder to dogfight with so little view area.

2nd thought...... What the hell is a huge cargo freighter or whatever doing ever flying like an Eagle.

3rd thought...... Thats why large freighters have Auto Turrets. Perhaps higher accuracy available to buy.

4th thought...... This is where you might also want to be able to hold a small fighter to deploy/control.

I actually think this is a good Idea. And hadn't even considered it before!

😎 Ah, Star Trek 25th Anniversary, that was a great game and the bridge controls worked just fine with it too 😉