What sort of geometry is required for a 3d cockpit? I'm not talking about "plug in a guy and make the glass transparent" but rather sort of a 3d dashboard with the player's POV inside the cockpit and with the dashboard visible. I mean obvious, one would have to make the control panel itself, but what about the interaction with the outer skin?
Personally I leave the cockpit as a seperate object (I believe this is required). Also helps when lodding. I usually use a cockpit tub I made much earlier, position it as closely as possible. Cut the ship hull to basically fit it. Merge the hull and tub together and try my best to move the tub's vertices to snap to the hull. Often will require a fixed uvmap, but thats ok. Once I've gotten it fitting nicely, I then detach the cockpit tub from the hull. This helps prevent slivers from showing. However, with the newer external cockpit style, I would use a "trim" to help hide the mismatches
Does the cockpit have to be some self-contained sort of model? I had a look at Steve-Os fighters in model view but it's not abundantly clear to me.
You can do it both ways. All my models so far have been part of the model mesh. There's a newer way of having it as a seperate pof. If you go that route, then you'll want to include parts of your ship that are visible from the cockpit as part of the cockpit mesh. (parts that can't be seen can be removed). BTW whats the state of the external cockpit code? Has that been put in into all main SCP code?
It seems like the cockpit glass for example, is only one face? So I assume the outside is textured and the inside is just seen through the back??
Yes, all my cockpit glass is one sided. Technically you could use an internal glass too, but too much work for too little reward. About the all you'd get is a.) possibility of tinted glass on the inside and b.) glare on the inside.
I haven't done any extensively modelling so, not sure how it is to have like the hull, wrap down into the cockpit area and then from one point have another piece of geo (ie the glass) sticking out at a perpendicular angle sorta thing.
You mean how the cockpit/glass intercepts the hull? The cockpit itself should fit snuggly (or at least appear to fit snuggly from the inside, it doesn't matter if it's slightly floating above the hull from the outside, the pilot can't see that). The glass can intercept the hull anyway you like, since you can't see it on the inside.
The terran cockpit I think covers this (First made by Venom/Nico)
I also think you need the "ShowShip" flag. This puts your eyepoint at the "head" you see the lower body and the controls... Look at BTRL for a more modern one.
"Show Ship"
Also dig through my fighters. 99% of them have cockpits.
Dunno if thats answered any of your questions or just made more
