External View [A definitive discussion]
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If you're looking for a way of taking pretty pics then you can get decent shots out of the top window of the Sidewinder. If however you're a true artist at the controls, then you can also get awesome video footage....check Edwin Stowe's YouTube channel for examples.
Eva??
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!!
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!!
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!!
A first person experience is of course a documented potential, but is a long way off.
Of course an external view could be individually offered from this POV, but it seems an unnecessary complication when drones would better explain it?
personally i don't like The idea of drones, just pull the data from the radar mapper into a VR unit/module that comes down over your eyes stopping you from deploying weapons and shooting that you could buy from a station in outfitting. after all the radar is a 3rd person 360 view.
(The radar but more graphically detailed that you zoom into and can spin around your own ship)
it contains information about all the ships stations around you
the idea of drones just opens the game up to "what other use could drones have" like R-type style spheres with class 1 pulse lasers attached orbiting your ship shooting at your target and so on
its like at the board meeting someone said 'how can we do this' and 1 person said 'drones' and the meeting ended
(The radar but more graphically detailed that you zoom into and can spin around your own ship)
it contains information about all the ships stations around you
the idea of drones just opens the game up to "what other use could drones have" like R-type style spheres with class 1 pulse lasers attached orbiting your ship shooting at your target and so on
its like at the board meeting someone said 'how can we do this' and 1 person said 'drones' and the meeting ended
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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.
I think many people would agree with you. ie: They'd like to view their ship (& the surroundings) via external view to "sink deeper" into the game.
But it also seems clear that offering an external view might introduce a few game play abuses, hence the list(s) in the first post trying to list & address these. Assuming we have this list (& methods of addressing them) somewhat right, a drone would seem a logical way to explain those limitations while still keeping the external view in keeping with the games ethos.
In reality, like you, I personally don't care if the external view is via a drone or explained as black magic, as long as it's available. But I do understand some limitations/nerfs need to be built into it to prevent it causing some gameplay annoyances.
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*
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.
Agreed - replay and real-time.
And i agree that camera drones are the most rational workaround, but i still dislike them as a rational workaround to a non-problem... short of full VR some concessions to real-world interfaces are inevitable, and paying too much attention to circumventing them becomes counter-productive. Ie. telling me the reason i can't switch to another view is because i'm in a cockpit just reinforces the contradiction that i'm actually at a desk glaring at a screen that won't let me view what i want to see..
Point is, imaginative engagment (ie. immersion) means indulging our imaginations and their creative play..
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I just bought 2 paint jobs and can't see them, what's the point?
The solution is simple, allow a 3rd person view of the ship, anywhere, anytime but you must first stop the ship. The ship cannot move or be controlled while you are in 3rd person, you are a sitting duck, but you can spin the camera around freely, and zoom in and out.
Stations are a good place to start.
The solution is simple, allow a 3rd person view of the ship, anywhere, anytime but you must first stop the ship. The ship cannot move or be controlled while you are in 3rd person, you are a sitting duck, but you can spin the camera around freely, and zoom in and out.
Stations are a good place to start.
You need to order the Oculus Rift DK2000: Guaranteed Breath. It simply fits onto the side of your OR.
This could save your life!
One thing I keep seeing with E : D is a constant tendency to overcomplicate things. I see it with jump fuel usage, super cruise gravity, insurance, even with the redeeming vouchers for kills.
Personally I don't want a game that's as complex as life itself. I want a game that's fun to play. I can't be the only one who wants this.
For me, drones is one of those unnecessary complications. So many games have external views at the touch of button, but nooo, here we must have drones, that take a port and need to be maintained and can be damaged and need fuel.
My vote goes for no live external view and providing external view through replay.
Personally I don't want a game that's as complex as life itself. I want a game that's fun to play. I can't be the only one who wants this.
For me, drones is one of those unnecessary complications. So many games have external views at the touch of button, but nooo, here we must have drones, that take a port and need to be maintained and can be damaged and need fuel.
My vote goes for no live external view and providing external view through replay.
This would be great.
Or at least a Singleplayer Screenshot mode.
But for the other things, this is just was David has in mind.
It has to be complicated to a certain degree, because this is no arcade game.
Its meant to be a kind of space simulation. Not in a overly done reality like sim. There already is a lot of trade off already and a lot of design decisions
to make it a fun and interesting experience to play like sound in space which
then is explained as a ships feature, to keep that "simmersion".
But David always tells reporters they making a game for themselves,
so no publisher demands a easy entry third person space shooter console game.
But then again, every Sim i know has a 3rd person view. And i always love them.
Especially those fly by cams and the free orbit around your ship ones.
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.
We have - just nothing definitive... Look at the first post.
You play as a human pilot, not a ghost or a wizard. I personally like the idea of trying to enforce a sense of reality in-game.
"I bought a paintjob I can't even see!"
"I really really want to see my ship!"
"Other games give you third-person views!"
"I bought a paintjob I can't even see!"
- Presumably you saw it when you bought it on the store page, so you know what it looks like. If you somehow bought it without seeing it, more fool you - go and look at it on the store pages.
- You chose to buy in full knowledge that 3rd person views were not available. No point complaining now. And if you didn't know, more fool you. It wasn't a secret - a simple search of the forums would have revealed that fact.
"I really really want to see my ship!"
- You can't always get what you want.
"Other games give you third-person views!"
- Go and play those other games then, if that's really the deal-breaker for you.
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