[Grey Wolf]

Almost everyone knows that the FS2 models are far too large. The cockpits are huge, and since I doubt every pilot in the GTVA is a giant, this needs to be fixed. Someone brought this up in one of the other threads, but had a very convoluted process. What if we could set it up so the ship-type tags (fighter, bomber, cruiser, corvette, etc.) resized the models? The fighter and bomber tags would decrease the size by 1/2, and all the missile and bomb POFs would also be scaled to 1/2. Is this feasible to do?

[Nico]

I don't agree, I think they're much too small in fact. come on, imagine a F16 pilots rams a F15. he won't see much of the sky in front of him... Ram a mara, the thing takes less than half your screen. too big? Nah, too small, and distance units screwed up as well.

[vadar_1]

nono venom, i was just thinking about this... compare a fighter and how big the pilot would be, to a destroyer, which houses thousands of crew...id say if you squashed everyone in the shell of ah orion (no internal systems, just a big box in space), you could get maybe 2000 people tops.

[phreak]

The navy can fit around 6000 on an aircraft carrier and that is less than 400m long

[Fineus]

But naval ships don't go prepared for massive interstellar voyages with the possibility of unknown and being stuck parsecs from anywhere for some time. I think the ships are to small for the most part... the Orion should be about twice as large as it is to give you a sense of scale when you come across one - my point is that this could be achieved by doubling everything in size except the fighters, bombers and their support craft.

Interesting idea for a mod really...

[Nico]

in interesting code thinguy would be to shrink the cockpit view, first, so you really feel like you're fighting  big fighters, not remote controlled toys. ABout the cockpit, it's usually what i use to scale my own ships, but don't forget that if some fghters like, say, the F4 phantom, have a fairly small glass cockpit, things like the F14 one easily span 3 or 4 meters log of glass only... You'll reply it's a two seated fighter. well, how do we know there's no two-seated ships in FS2? Anyway, the F22 cockpit is huge too, you could put more than one pilot under the glass area, believe me.
Anyway, yeah, capships are too small, a good exemple are the cuisers. A cain never looked much bigger than a bomber to me...
Still, shrinking fighters would make them.... ridiculous.

[Pera]

Originally posted by venom2506
well, how do we know there's no two-seated ships in FS2? .

Doesn't the Apollo have 2 seats?

[Nico]

Originally posted by Pera


Doesn't the Apollo have 2 seats?

originaly, yes. but it's clear the final one is single seated ( FS1 intro )

[vadar_1]

Originally posted by venom2506


originaly, yes. but it's clear the final one is single seated ( FS1 intro )

fs1 intro it was two-seated (his co-pilot was dead), but that looked more like a bomber, expecially with its poor manuverability. Besides, you never know if its a two-seated craft or not, some of the bombers could have a co-pilot, you just never hear from them (someone to manage the turret, and pherhaps help the aiming system with bombs).

[Grey Wolf]

It would be quite pointless to have a co-pilot on a small, one-man fighter. There would be no job for them.
For a comparison, we'll use the real-world F-16, the Incom T-65 X-Wing from Star Wars, and the GTF Perseus. The F-16, according to the official Air Force site, is 14.8 m, with a cockpit of a comparable size to the ship as the Perseus'. The X-Wing is 12.5 m, with a cockpit a bit larger than the other two's. The Perseus is 21 m, approximately 33% longer than it should be.
The reason most people are confused is the very strange HUD camera, which makes everything appear off of what they should be. That should also be fixed...

[Eishtmo]

Originally posted by Pera


Doesn't the Apollo have 2 seats?

Actually, they call it the "bomber version" of the Apollo.

[IceFire]

Your all forgetting that the AI gets seriously FUBARED when the fighters/bombers are too big.  You have to be VERY careful with the sizes or its collisions galore and AI's crashing into each other all of the time.

The "meters" in there is as realistic as the "meters a second" thing.  It should be technically called 'game units' and 'game units a second'.

[Fineus]

Could the AI and collision detection system also be changed with the source code? I am of course a total n00b to that but it's a thought...

[Nico]

I still think reducing the viewport is the simplest way.
And GreyWOlf, your exemples are biased. The F16, probably the smallest current US fighter. The Xwing? Man, the reactors on that thing are not bigger than a man, talk about realism... The Perseus has to deal with much more onboard stuff than the F16 ( shield generator, some kind of gravity well, much heavier plating ) and so needs much bigger engines. The Perseus is close to the F22, which is realistic.
And it would obviously be useless to put a copilot in a one-man fighter (sorry, couldn't resist )

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by venom2506
I still think reducing the viewport is the simplest way.
And GreyWOlf, your exemples are biased. The F16, probably the smallest current US fighter. The Xwing? Man, the reactors on that thing are not bigger than a man, talk about realism... The Perseus has to deal with much more onboard stuff than the F16 ( shield generator, some kind of gravity well, much heavier plating ) and so needs much bigger engines. The Perseus is close to the F22, which is realistic.
And it would obviously be useless to put a copilot in a one-man fighter (sorry, couldn't resist )

Bleh....

[StratComm]

The problem with the camera is that the viewing angle is bigger than what a human sees, like a wide angle camera lens.  Changing it wouldn't help though, since a fighter pilot can turn his head (without thinking too much about it) to get about 180 degrees of view while a FS pilot is pretty much restricted to looking at what is in front of him.  Narrowing the field of vision of the viewpoint would create a tunnel vision effect that would make playing much harder and less fun.

[Nico]

that is not really true, the FOV is much lower than that of a real man ( you see only what's directly in front of you in FS2 ). I could explain what would need to be changed taking the Max cameras as exemple, but i doubt that would help.

[aldo_14]

I don;t think changine ship sizes would really improve the game in any way...I can't say i've ever though 'gee, this is all wrong' chasing a Mara across the surface of an Orion, to be honest.

[an0n]

Human Eye: Gets a 180 (hor) by 160 (vert) degree view which gets worse as it gets further from the center of vision.

FS Camera: About a 55 degree field of view vert and hor.

I'm not sure how to refer to FOV changes (bigger and smaller and wider and ****) so I'll reserve my opinion until I can apply terms correctly.

[Grey Wolf]

So not many people agree with me? Oh well, seemed like a good idea....