SpaceSimCentral

The Adder is fine, but the Asp ain't too good. As for the Eagle - the long-range version is better, but neither excite me.

Still early days I expect but I do hope the ED devs have had a closer look at the ships in the open source games too. Many of them looked really good, Sparkova, Steve Tyler's Viper, Griff's and Gernot's ships especially.

... I do hope the ED devs have had a closer look at the ships in the open source games too. Hmm... I somehow doubt that. If I could have one Griff ship in the game, it'd be his Wolf Mk II... sweet ship!

Cockpit on the Asp just looks wrong, Steve Tyler redesign just looks a hell of lot better. 

yep, that Eagle could use some rework ;)I already accepted the fact the E:D ship designs will anything but stunning. Doesn't matter though, because the game mechanics most likely will be.

Agree Frontier don't seem to have good grasp in the ship design area so far, particular in the size of the ship. Maybe time time to throw out the old Elite sizes and make the ships bigger.

Another update from E:D has a rather nice animation of a docking concept (maybe they put it on youtube so everyone else can see it.) Also another concept pic of a Imperial Courier. 

Yeah, they've tried to infer (on the forum) that it may not end-up as the IC though - merely concept art again.As I said on the E: D forum - that's an ugly ship! I think most of their ship-designs stink, tbh. The big discussion is about multi-player (PvE or PvP etc) - and it's getting quite heated.Personally, I think they're all crazy - but then I'm as mad as a hatter too!

Not been on the frontier forum in ages is the game still single player off line or have they changed it?. These IC gun pod are way out of size with the rest of the ship, they do seem to having a bit of problem with the size of the ships.

I believe there will be two SP modes - online, with updated universe etc, and offline.But who knows - sometimes I think they made promises in the KS that will come back to haunt them.

IIRC I think they use the wording "subject to change" in the Kickstarter.

IIRC I think they use the wording "subject to change" in the Kickstarter. <chuckles> Yeah... 'subject to change' could've applied to my ex too.

Another news letter One of the biggest challenges in Elite: Dangerous (and indeed any space game) is the implementation of the cockpit. The cockpit is the core of the player’s experience while they are flying their ship. Before delving into the look and feel the first task was to isolate what are the core requirements for the cockpit. These are summarised in these key goals:Provide all the relevant and essential information required to effectively fly the ship in a combat environment.Allow the player to monitor, customize and set up various aspects of the ship’s functionality through a more detailed set of interfaces in addition to the essential items above.Provide a standardised system of UI elements across different ship types.Minimize or remove all forms of non-diegetic UI (that which is removed from the fiction and geometry of the world) and rely on the more immersive diegetic, spatial and Meta UI elements to provide feedback and functionality to the player.Provide feedback to the player through audio and visual effects as to the state of the ship and their avatar in addition to those provided by the cockpit UI.Allow the player to hang up fluffy dice within the cockpit canopy (We’ll see!). As you can see from the screen mock-up above we’re building a 3D cockpit. The cockpit functionality is built in three layers:In the World: holograms attach to items beyond the cockpit. So ships and points of interest are identified with suitable markers in their actual locations, with guides to help the player locate them.Cockpit Panel: these holograms are situated where you would expect cockpit controls, but the holographic nature provides the easy to read functionality with the flexibility of multi-functional displays, like we're starting to see in modern aircraft.Pilot’s Eye: some elements are fixed to the pilot’s viewpoint. These are elements that would follow you as you look around, such as the communications panel. Radar could use some more lines on it, bit hard to tell where the cockpit end and the outside starts. Think the real test will be when we see some video of it.Could also use some more colours far too much orange.Just noticed something else about the pic which is the target reticule and wheres the lead indicator?. They still grappling with the size issues 

Finally we get to see what the future cockpit in ED could be. Rather impressive to tell my first impression. For the developers, I would like to add and comment: In Frontier and First Encounter, you start with a ship with only minimal capacities in terms of sensors and what I call - to stick to military expressions - Situation Awareness. You were not well equiped - so, you had to die quickly.While this certainly has some realism for the situation, it would quickly send away space sim players. So what I'm hoping for is (to speak for cockpit functionality and also other aspects): - There should be a system with some upgrades to buy that get your ship better scanners or radars, but the initial equipment should be reasonable - with less output quality - but make the player at least survive- Considerable upgrades must cost the player credits in terms of mission successes and playing efforts archieved. If you want the best, you must show you are worth it.- For exploration situations, it's good to have a sideral and outside view without cockpit, when there's interesting things to observe, no one would look through the cockpit, but look through a bull's eye. I imagine an upper ship side observation area where the player can physically move to and the "second pilot" would take over the ship's command. I have a ton of other comments to make ED interesting, but I will keep it short. I wish a good job and success for the game authors. XenonS

Best place to post about any idea would be the Frontier forums [url]http://forums.frontier.co.uk/index.php[/url]

Ah, thanks Pinback! I think it's worth posting the above there. XenonS

Watch out for the fanboys :biggrin: It would be nice to have bits of equipment change the look of the cockpit but I guess it be too expensive to do.

Huuuh, there are actually tons and tons of suggestions for ED on this fansite, someone even wants a clickable cockpit :)One thing that could probably be done relatively cheap would be a ship interior like in Noctis with an Astrolabe at the top where one could move to observe the surounding 360°. Also, like in AD3000, a mothership with different smaller ships to carry out fights which then re-dock. Nice would be to act in a fleet of different ships, not only you alone against the world. XenonS P.S.I just finished The Precursors. I'm really disappointed by the abrupt end (finding the scientist) on Reandore. It's clear that the game was "cut" for release. Impressive overall.

P.S.I just finished The Precursors. I'm really disappointed by the abrupt end (finding the scientist) on Reandore. It's clear that the game was "cut" for release. Impressive overall. The game was original a lot bigger but they announced that they had decided to do two games instead of one, unfortunately they went burst and only managed to to get the first one out in a some what unfinished state. Back on topicI don't think they have said how many cockpit will be in the game but I can't see them doing a cockpit for every ship so there may just be a small number of generic cockpits for different types of ship. Can't off hand remember what the cockpits in Noctis is like and was not 3000AD more of a control panel?Always like the ship station idea that Independence War has.

Infinity's coffin was sealed ever since. When you take that long to develop something eventually everything and everyone else catches up. Not an expert, so this is just my useless opinion, but to me he wasted a lot of development time stressing on some very tiny aspects regards the rendering engine. This is one thing that struck me about Josh Parnell, although he is young, he pointedly stated in Limit Theory he is actively grounding himself in reality and won't over stress on certain things, like spending weeks just to get the algorithm right to render slightly better looking asteroids.