[Vasudan Admiral]

What happens if you slant those flat, horizontal polys in front of the console screens down away from the viewpoint? They seem to be using up a reasonable amount of viewing area without doing anything, so it'd probably be best to shrink them a bit. (see piccy)

What you basically want to do is manipulate the thing so that the view neatly fits in all the console screens along the bottom - giving you a maximum view area of the consoles themselves and space in front of you. It's handy that you don't have a HUD panel with the reticle on it that needs to line up with the actual reticle in game.

What I'm describing is basically something getting towards this:

I removed the flat and trimmed it to the right size in terms of fitting the consoles in, but I think chopping the flat polys off alltogether makes it look a bit too 2D. Maybe something in between?

[Scooby_Doo]

Anyone know what field of view for freespace is in degrees?  I  know the default is .75, but .75 of what? Max's cameras use either millimeter lens or FOV degrees.

Ok let's see if my math is right.....  the FOV for fs2 is in radians. .75 rad ~= 45degress.  I setup a target spot light and a target camera at the exact same spots. Set the light to have a cone of 45deg.  Now is that .75 diagnal, vertical or horiztonal?  Because each one will cause the camera to have a different cone.

[Einstine909]

I don't intend to steal any thunder here, but ive been working on this on and off for a while:



This is the actual cockpit from the Fs1 intro, i used those renders that are floating around here for reference.
I was wondering if this was anything to keep going on...

[Scooby_Doo]

Ohhhh I like.....

* Scooby_Doo goes off and steals some of Einstine ideas 

LOL the / me command actually works here
 
BTW the hardest part besides coming up with the ideas is the cockpit displays. Since I have little real good artistic ability to create a texture from scratch I have to cut and paste from existing textures.   Some of my panels ended up having to be redesigned to fit the actual texture.

[Einstine909]

* Einstine909 thanks Scooby_Doo

so it does... Well they aren't my ideas, because im just remodeling them.
Im waiting for the Fs2 engine to be able to edit textures or play animations for this cockpit to work, so this could be a while... this was talked about in another thread, tho i cant remember what one...

[Vasudan Admiral]

I thought there might be more cockpits quietly in the works.

It looks very nice - great work.

Since I've already modeled and textured that exact cockpit though, how would you feel about maybe widening yours and making some other changes and we end up using yours as the 'standard' FS bomber cockpit? That way it'd have an overall shape consistancy with mine, but it would clearly be a different cockpit. The more cockpit variations we have, the better.

[BloodEagle]

*snip*

First reaction:

HOLY $%#$, THAT'S DETAILED! 

Second reaction:

That looks like a very, very comfortable seat. 

[Einstine909]

*snip*

First reaction:

HOLY $%#$, THAT'S DETAILED! 

Second reaction:

That looks like a very, very comfortable seat. 

hehe.... that was from a bit ago, here is a new one:



@VA: I agree with you, but i also want to finish this one up, so i will start the variants after this one, so that i have a base model to work of of.

[gevatter Lars]

Now I wish that we could allready use these with the full functionality and to give it the last bit of "realsim" make the pilot/cockpit move/shacke according to the way you are flighing...or even make it shacke hard as you when you are hit by a missile or shockwave.

[Topgun]

whats with the ambient occ?

[Einstine909]

Here is a better render with a joystick, need some advice on that throttle, I just cant get it to look good...

@Topgun: a). if you're wondering why I used ambient occlusion, it's easy, it looks good and simple to setup. b).if you're wondering why it looks so bad: its because I was too lazy to change the quality setting.

[Scooby_Doo]

ambient occ? is that advanced light rendering in max?

[Einstine909]

Nah, im using blender, so... it could be but i wouldn't know

[Scooby_Doo]

I mean does it give you that shadow effect around corners?

[Einstine909]

Yes, it does. All without a single light

Now, should i model the entire cockpit or only the viewable parts (assuming you were the pilot)?

[Scooby_Doo]

What I did was delete polys that no one would ever see, in game or rendered.

[BloodEagle]

Model the whole thing, save it, then remove the obsolete polygons. Afterwards, release them both. 

[Einstine909]

well, im taking a break from the modeling, but still pushing forward. The textured panel is the target info ( the bottom left stuff on the current hud ) the image is a 256 by 256, and can be bumped up if needed.



Yes, back to crappy renders, i hate waiting 

[Vasudan Admiral]

Hmm, it might be a better idea to get it in-game before going further, so you have an idea of how much viewing area you are dealing with since I don't think you'd be able to read any of that text in game. My version had pretty much the same screen area as yours does there, and I found it incredibly cramped once all the stuff had been put on it.

I posted this earlier, but it's even more applicable in this case:

[Einstine909]

Good point,
I think i can get everything needed on to the center, center right, center left, and HUD screens, and make it readable. The camera would be closer to the HUD, and therefore make the cockpit take up less viewing space. But it is also based on preferences. I wouldn't mind having the cockpit take up all of the bottom half as long as it: a). gave enough information to be useful and b). was visually appealing and realistic. I am more of a fly-by-instruments kind of person, rather than a nose cam pilot. The cockpit puts you into the craft IMO, the more of it I see, the more I fell immersed in that ship. But anyway, I will do both, for popular demand 

I'll have the rest of the essential screens done soonish, so a render of how I envision it to look will be up in a hour or so.

edit:

I'm thinking this:



only the middle of the HUD will be the middle of the screen (monitor)