[Fade Rathnik]

When I first looked at cockpit3 i thought that you had put the second crewman in facing backwards, after looking closer i realized you hadn't. I think you should try that out and post it. Thinking about the athena she is a wild weasel craft, taking out turrets and other important targets on shipping. That the only time it was ever used in FS1 it could only carry stelletos(sp) then. Now thinking about it if i was flying that close to fighter cover in a fast&manuverable bomber i'd want my extra pair of eyes watching my tail when he's not watching his weapon sight inmo. Try it out it might look cooler, plus it has that whole snow speeder feel.

[TrashMan]

Hmm....Interesting idea....I'll have to see.

B.t.w. - the Athena is THE craft in FS1. Twin avengers + a horde of Fury missiles = dead enemy in 0.1 seconds flat.

[FireCrack]

Trash, the quote in your sig should be

"Only two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity; though I am not sure about the former"

[aldo_14]

*wonders how the second pilot can see anything in that configuration* *shrugs* Coming along...

Doesn't need to, I suppose; can use various interfaces, etc, to control whatever thing he controls (could be something like even tweaking the engines or something, not necessarily even requiring vision).  The rear-seat in the cutscene Apollo has absolutely bugger all vision, anyways.

[TrashMan]

Which reminds me,  we're going to have scale issues with these models.

From Preseus to Herc 2 to Athena to Ursa - the size of the piltos will vary greatly.

And antoehr thing- given the size of FS2 fighters and the FS1 intro, shouldn't ALL fs fighters have 2 pilots (with maby hte Loki and Pegasus being exceptions)?

I allwas tough Ursa having 3 piltos at least.

[Unknown Target]

The Apollo was originally meant to be a bomber, that's why it had two pilots.
And if everyone uses a standard, unscaled version of the pilot cockpit, and only scales the ships if they have to, everything will be kept to scale (well, reasonably, anyway).

[aldo_14]

Which reminds me,  we're going to have scale issues with these models.

From Preseus to Herc 2 to Athena to Ursa - the size of the piltos will vary greatly.

Just keep pilots at correct scale and model the cockpit around them accordingly.  If the cockpit is extremely large, add in some more detail behind or in front the pilot, such as (behind) a brief glimpse of life support machinery.

And antoehr thing- given the size of FS2 fighters and the FS1 intro, shouldn't ALL fs fighters have 2 pilots (with maby hte Loki and Pegasus being exceptions)?

Doubt it, myself; FS1 intro script describes the Apollo as being a 2-manned bomber (although it's not made clear if it's actually an Apollo class or some other vessel with the same design).  The gameplay of FS1/2 doesn't really make a co-pilot have any point, sadly.

[StratComm]

Yeah, if you look at the models already done, the pilots are perfectly to scale.  Some have more room in the cockpits than others, but not by nearly as much as you might think.

[FireCrack]

Yeah, there's definitley room for 3 or even 4 crewmembers in the ursa, but i left them out because of polycount reasons. If you look into the cockpit you can see quite a bit of living space towards the back end.

[TrashMan]

Well, this sucks big time:


I jsut slapped hte normal Athena texture on it to see how it would look..not bad, but it will need it's own texture.

the thing that got to me is hte cockpit - ti's the same size as the original Athena...and the pilot it blind in there.
Curretnly, the pilots are scaled down in order to fit and have their heads high enough to actually see anything. The only way to solve this is to edit hte front of hte ship and lower the front of the canopy somewhat.


B.t.w. - I don't have time right now (tests, tests, tests), but if anyone wan't a go at the HTL Athena, I can give him this model to work with. It has 3-4 differneces, but they can be very easily tweaked/removed.

[StratComm]

Why don't you just turn that black area beneath the front of the current canopy into part of the canopy itself?  By the texture, it looks like it should be that way.

And if a correctly scaled pilot will fit into the Pegasus, then surely one will fit into the Athena.  There's a good chance it should only be a single-seater though, so keep that in mind.

[Kie99]

*wonders how the second pilot can see anything in that configuration* *shrugs* Coming along...

The HUD.

[TrashMan]

Why don't you just turn that black area beneath the front of the current canopy into part of the canopy itself?  By the texture, it looks like it should be that way.

And if a correctly scaled pilot will fit into the Pegasus, then surely one will fit into the Athena.  There's a good chance it should only be a single-seater though, so keep that in mind.

I tough of that myself.

No, it's not the issue of can it fit... I can scale the pitos up an they will fit..only they won't see anything in the origianl Athena (as my cockpit is the same  so far).
when their head reaches the canopy, the instrument pannl and hte front tak up 90% of the view.

[StratComm]

Why don't you just turn that black area beneath the front of the current canopy into part of the canopy itself?  By the texture, it looks like it should be that way.

And if a correctly scaled pilot will fit into the Pegasus, then surely one will fit into the Athena.  There's a good chance it should only be a single-seater though, so keep that in mind.

I tough of that myself.

No, it's not the issue of can it fit... I can scale the pitos up an they will fit..only they won't see anything in the origianl Athena (as my cockpit is the same  so far).
when their head reaches the canopy, the instrument pannl and hte front tak up 90% of the view.

No offense Trashman, but I don't think so.  The yellow line pretty clearly outlines the cockpit in the original model, and that cockpit definitely slopes down a little bit in the front.  From what I can tell, yours has the transparent portion slicing off at a plane.  It looks like you already should have cut more of the nose off for the cockpit.

I might add, though, that I actually see quite a few differences between this model and the retail one in areas where the level of detail has not improved but the shape has changed.  Did you model this completely from scratch?

[Vasudan Admiral]

Here, this should help clear it up.


All it needs is, as Strat says, for the modeled cockpit's front to be lowered to match the yellow line. Also, remember to subdivide the cockpit canopy mesh 2 or 3 times. Look at Bob's Herc for the best example of this. (it has probably the best looking in-game glass on any fighter so far as a result. )

[TrashMan]

No offense Trashman, but I don't think so.  The yellow line pretty clearly outlines the cockpit in the original model, and that cockpit definitely slopes down a little bit in the front.  From what I can tell, yours has the transparent portion slicing off at a plane.  It looks like you already should have cut more of the nose off for the cockpit.

I might add, though, that I actually see quite a few differences between this model and the retail one in areas where the level of detail has not improved but the shape has changed.  Did you model this completely from scratch?

Yeah I did it from scrath...but  Iused hte normal Athena model (untextured) as a guideline and that way my mistake. If you look at it untextures it looks like the cockpit end up much higher..anyway, I fixed hte thing:
http://dj.rogueserv.com/TRASHMAN/Pics/AthenaProblem.jpg

[aldo_14]

Here, this should help clear it up.


All it needs is, as Strat says, for the modeled cockpit's front to be lowered to match the yellow line. Also, remember to subdivide the cockpit canopy mesh 2 or 3 times. Look at Bob's Herc for the best example of this. (it has probably the best looking in-game glass on any fighter so far as a result. )

You can just elongate a big long glass box on the front, no need to 'fill it' with hud stuff

There's a hell of a lot of ways you could HTL-up the Athena, IMO.  I'd be looking at 3500-5000 polys, including pilot, as a decent number.  Er, assuming they're well-spent polies, of course

[Roanoke]

Also, remember to subdivide the cockpit canopy mesh 2 or 3 times. Look at Bob's Herc for the best example of this. (it has probably the best looking in-game glass on any fighter so far as a result. )

Why is that ? For reflection ? I've got a cruiser in the works with some flat planes that I intend to make transparant. Do they need to be subdivided too, even though they're flat ?

[Taristin]

Also, remember to subdivide the cockpit canopy mesh 2 or 3 times. Look at Bob's Herc for the best example of this. (it has probably the best looking in-game glass on any fighter so far as a result. )

Why is that ? For reflection ? I've got a cruiser in the works with some flat planes that I intend to make transparant. Do they need to be subdivided too, even though they're flat ?

I believe the subdivision makes the glass look more smooth, and glass like when light bounces off of it. Otherwise you get... well... crapy angles on what should be a smooth surface.

[aldo_14]

Also, remember to subdivide the cockpit canopy mesh 2 or 3 times. Look at Bob's Herc for the best example of this. (it has probably the best looking in-game glass on any fighter so far as a result. )

Why is that ? For reflection ? I've got a cruiser in the works with some flat planes that I intend to make transparant. Do they need to be subdivided too, even though they're flat ?

I believe the subdivision makes the glass look more smooth, and glass like when light bounces off of it. Otherwise you get... well... crapy angles on what should be a smooth surface.

Having a high smoothing angle also helps (for max conversions, at least; AFAIK it's impossible/difficult to do via TS)