Ive been reading through some of this post and I havn't seen anyone mention it (If it has been mentioned ignore this :-/)
Why not be able to EVA to check your ship, for example?
The more I think about EVA the more I could add to the Elite experience!
To be able to exit through your ships hatch with a space suit and RCS pack to move you around...omg, sex in space, surely!!??
The '3rd person view could be from inside your helmet. Mostly glass in the field
of view with just enough info off the edges for air usage etc.
This surely kills all the birds with one stone.
*Once the pilot is on EVA, he certainly has no combat advantage...
*this would give an external cam view without leaving first person.
I love the idea of stepping outside my ship to do a quick external repair on a jammed hatch or some such. Then once Im done, RCS away from the ship and get some great snaps of it.
Not to mention trying atmospheric insertion in a space suit!
Surely the end of an Elite Commander but what a why to go!!![]()
Can't agree there... If you just use this thread as a guide, the solution that seems to come up over and over that people can generally seeing as standing a chance of working is a drone.its like at the board meeting someone said 'how can we do this' and 1 person said 'drones' and the meeting ended
Can't agree there... If you just use this thread as a guide, the solution that seems to come up over and over that people can generally seeing as standing a chance of working is a drone.
People keep suggesting it as an obvious way to rationalise the function.
Personally i find it overly neurotic.
Maybe the representation is just digitally generated by the ship's computer. Whatever. It's just a mandatory view that all such games need to bind players with their ships.
ATM i have absolutely no emotional investment with my ship, no "residual self-image" as The Matrix dubbed it - as far as my imagination is concerned, my 'ship' is my cockpit. That's all the visual engagement i have with it. The occasional visits to the load-out bay are too few and far between to make much of an impression, and besides you can't rotate or walk around your ship to really see any of it. It's just too zoomed-in, the FOV is way too narrow, and there's only a couple of measly angles available anyway.
I know my ship is white with a red stripe and pop-up guns on the front, but only from the front view. No idea what the rear, top or bottom look like.
Suffice to say i am most defninitely NOT bonded with my ship. It's not like owning a real vehicle where you can observe it from every angle, and every lighting condition. When you're bonded with a real vehicle, you're always eyeing it up. You'll have a favourite viewing angle or even a pose - ie. i think my bike looks best from the rear right, on its sidestand, with the forks at left lock. When i see it like that, i'm proper perving over it. I am bonded with it. It's an extension of me. Its details are a personal expression of me.
My Sidewinder has no such personal attachment. It's basically just a HUD. That's all it is to me. I says nothing about me, nothing to me. I have no pride in it, no emotional investment whatsoever.
If FD cannot understand these principals over and above some artsy-fartsy neurotic 'being there' aesthetic then i cannot put the matter more clearly. If you want players to be truly able to bond with their ships then you NEED to provide a fully free-form external view, without restrictions. It must be seamless and instantaneous and just a normal, ordinary external view with no pesky neuroticisms getting in the way.
<snip> If you want players to be truly able to bond with their ships then you NEED to provide a fully free-form external view, without restrictions. It must be seamless and instantaneous and just a normal, ordinary external view with no pesky neuroticisms getting in the way.
Agreed, which is why I think a Scene Replay option after the fact is the best way to achieve this - no need for "live" external drones at all. I don't agree with drones at all.
Just replay a moment of gameplay you were in, but are able to view that replay as if you were flying around. Pause/Play/Rewind, and fly around the scene.
*waves a big flag with "REPLAY" on it*
Agreed - replay and real-time.It would be great to be able to revisit a moment to see what happened better. But I do see that as a different requirement to an immediate external view. ie: People simply want to see what's happening "now", and not having to leave the game and plough through a dedicated video console just to see what they could have seen instantly 20mins before.
Both are great feature requests, but I do see them as different.
Now that I'm using DK2 I fear that an external view may cause me to subconsciously hold my breath and die.
The people dead set against it were right I think. It's for everyones safety.
My vote goes for no live external view and providing external view through replay.
It has to be complicated to a certain degree, because this is no arcade game.
The game should be complex, but not complicated to use. Can be a big difference. It should be easy to learn, hard to master etc and not make simple tasks not fun by making them complicated to perform.
I can't believe we STILL haven't heard anything from Frontier Developments about external views. It's obvious the majority wants and expects a 3rd person view and the paint jobs are clearly less worth if you can't admire your own ship.