Found the quote I was looking for on the possibility of cameras with rear (any maybe beneath) views -
...from here
...from here
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External View [A definitive discussion]
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Not so much related to an external view this, but an important point where views are concerned.
A major gameplay problem I have with no rear view, is that, as with real-life air combat, where it was pretty soon realised that you should turn into an attack, you could do that if you could look behind, which would be easy with track IR or even just banking and panning the view with a POV button on a stick if the ED craft canopies were designed to suit that. Look at all the decent fighters in WW2 and they all either started with a blown canopy, or eventually got one on later variants: P-51, Spitfire, P-47, Ki-84, A6M, Yak-3, S-199 etc. If not, they had a mirror.
Of course the canopies are mostly not designed to do that in ED, and what that means, is that for much of the time in combat in the ED alpha, you literally have no way to determine how to correctly react to incoming fire from behind, because the scale is too close for the scanner to depict positional data usefully. Now not only is that really implausible as a concept of how someone would design a craft intended to fight, but worse, it means that a lot of combat comes down to it being about guesswork rather than skill, which is hardly in keeping with the notion of becoming Elite. In fact, a lot of the time, you might just as well get up and make a cup of tea if you start taking hits in multiplayer, because with no real way to know how to manoeuvre defensively, it is game over nine times out of ten.
So with no rear view mirror or cockpit monitor, and what are to be completely blunt about it, very poor ship designs from a combat utility standpoint, this is a real gameplay issue, in fact it is something of a dealbreaker in terms of getting enjoyment out of multiplayer. I can't stress how badly we need a rear view mirror of some kind to stop that being a major critical flaw in ED's dogfight-oriented gameplay aspects, even my ****ing 1960 Morris Minor has three of them, and it's unlikely to be involved in a dogfight. However, if it ever was, at least I'd know which way to turn.
This is hardly rocket science:
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If you think an external view will brake your immersion then don't use it. I don't see how it breaks immersion because you can fantasise its a camera on the outside of your ship. You still have to manually point your guns in the right direction.
I'd love to see 'wing' mirrors, I think they'd be cool. Also could get blown off by incoming fire or a collision. It would give something of a 'real-life' anchor to the game when you pull into space dock to have some new mirrors fitted.
Just my opinion though. Don't know if external mirrors would actually work with the ship designs being the shapes they are.
True, but putting a camera on the tail which feeds to a monitor in the traditional fighter mirror position would solve that problem easily enough in reality, in the game it would be simple enough to implement too.
Thanks for this comment - cheered me up greatly +1 for the idea too. I hadn't seen the point (whilst lurking) until this.
I have to confess to wanting more instrumentation on the dash so I can tell things about the ships I can see. One of them could be some kind of "vector" graphic showing the chasing ships position behind yours, or even showing all the incoming fire so you can make a turn in a reasonable direction.
That is the more sensible and more likely approach. I was just thinking of the 'fun' aspect of having car-like wing mirrors... The HUD is a similar colour-scheme to the dashboard on my Fiat 500, so that's where the link in my dreaming comes from.
I agree with you that it's unrealistic to not have a 3rd person view or rear view mirror in a spaceship, but like others have said, it's about making game rules interesting, not realistic. A more claustrophobic and "submarine" like view could be more fun. But I'm leaning towards the argument from Chock that a rear view mirror would make the game more fun because you can react better and requires more skill, not luck. Although the scanner target might reveal this too.
And you're right, nobody would build a camera drone for this in the future. You would simply have a thousand micro cameras each feeding 600kp into a computer that synthesizes a 3D model of your own ship and the surroundings, similar to a kinect that 3D scans your surroundings. Just lots and lots of them. And then you would simply move a virtual 3D view in that live 3D model. But anyway that's just for ingame explanation.
It also makes the proposed nerf (if it is needed) that you only see what your radar / scanner sees more realistic. Ships running cold wouldn't appear on the synthetic image (even though you could see them with your naked eye.
But about not seeing stuff on scanner, I'd rather have stealth gameplay require a black paint job. Or maybe a kind of "black shield" or camouflage shield that turns your ship the color of the background. So if you can see another ship with your naked eye, the cameras would pick it up as well.
I believe this is already the case, the graphic showing your target shows the real orientation of the targets relative to you. Not in alpha myself, but I think you can know from this from what direction your attacker is shooting.
PS: One disadvantage of a permanent rear view mirror would be additional rendering. Essentially you need to render the scene two times and even with greatly reduced resolution you have to do some calculation twice. So a rear view mirror would mean additional performance costs. If the vector graphic in the target reticule is enough, it might be a better solution. Gives you the information you need to play good, and creates suspense as you can't look backwards, and saves performance.
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Did anyone mention an option to record video while you play (possibly from multiple viewing angles or a specified camera placement) that can only be replayed later, out of game? I haven't seen any sort of recording functionality mentioned in the FAQ's I have read or in the messages.
Seems something that would not violate the in-game first-person mandate but satisfy those that want Machinima and it could be cool to watch the replay of an intense battle as well. Seems like something the Elite pilots would want, to learn from their battles and replay victorious moments. Could be broadcast on displays at starports as news feeds.
As FD have stated a rear-view camera may be an option I will remain optimistic they don't take a totally inane view on their artistic vision for the game-play. Down-view and Rear-view should be required to dock at a space-station. And they will for sure be a safety selling point to prevent squashing kids whilst landing on the beach house pad on Lave for some R&R and Big Game Hunting (TM).
How about shielding your ship with Dark Matter from the Dark Matter Generator powering all your sub-systems? Dark Matter makes up most of the universe and it does not transmit light as well as other forms of matter so it might be a perfectly natural stealth technology.
Exhaust fumes making you light up on the IR scanner? With a DMG it might be more like a cloud of smoke to hide behind.
Seems something that would not violate the in-game first-person mandate but satisfy those that want Machinima and it could be cool to watch the replay of an intense battle as well. Seems like something the Elite pilots would want, to learn from their battles and replay victorious moments. Could be broadcast on displays at starports as news feeds.
As FD have stated a rear-view camera may be an option I will remain optimistic they don't take a totally inane view on their artistic vision for the game-play. Down-view and Rear-view should be required to dock at a space-station. And they will for sure be a safety selling point to prevent squashing kids whilst landing on the beach house pad on Lave for some R&R and Big Game Hunting (TM).
How about shielding your ship with Dark Matter from the Dark Matter Generator powering all your sub-systems? Dark Matter makes up most of the universe and it does not transmit light as well as other forms of matter so it might be a perfectly natural stealth technology.
Exhaust fumes making you light up on the IR scanner? With a DMG it might be more like a cloud of smoke to hide behind.
Yes, see the OP "Compromises/Alternatives: Replay editor" - [ Click! ]
It would be a lovely feature but personally I don't feel it fills the needs of an ingame external view. Imagine you're leaving a space station and a formation of ships it coming in beautifully next to you. Personally I'd love to switch to an external view and view the moment/scene unfold as it happens. I doubt it would have quite the same feel to it playing through a "recording" later.
But that's not to say that feature isn't nice in it's own right, for its own requirement/use! eg: Playing through a hectic dogfight later on for exaple! Freeze framing and viewing from different angles. Or even in slo-mo!
Unless all docking etc is automatic? We'll see in Alpha 3 I guess!
From the looks of the latest newsletter that would be highly unlikely. Perhaps in the full game or maybe even in Beta there will be options to buy a docking computer that may take some of the workload off of you so you can do other stuff but docking may be really fun! We'll find out in a few weeks time.
Yes Sterlino.
Keep Star Citizen out of this. They have decided long ago how they're going to solve this issue: by allowing external view without any HUD, and most likely during non-combat. Anyway, if they allow it during combat you would be handicapped and die very fast since you don't have any HUD support. Or point-and-click shoot, for that matter.
I voted for the similar option in this poll, which I see now is the largest single group in the poll with about 48%.
Not to point out the obvious, but you/we already have a mirror of sorts. See the ship image here (click below), once you target your enemy or click target closest enemy (normally) the guy/gal firing at you, you'll see the HUD target image of said ship and it's facing. Head on to you and it's got a good firing bead on you and you had better start jinking. So, a bit more than just covering your six with a mirror.
Edit: and no ... you don't need external views.
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You can't say that someone is "wrong" based on a poll like this. This poll is a collection of opinions and has no bearing on truth.
The poll at the top of this thread is very badly put together (sorry!) and can be interpreted in a whole number of ways...all of them with the possibility of being wrong since it's multiple choice.
You can just as easily say that that poll shows that the majority of players (twice as many) do NOT want an external view. Everyone answering yes (108) vs everyone answering no (193).
This because every option that starts with a yes seems to be FOR an external view and every question that starts with no seems to be against it.
A better poll would maybe have been:
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What do you prefer?
A: I want everything to be experienced in first person from the eyes of the pilot sitting inside the ship. Note that this might still mean the possibility to watch the ship externally on a screen/projection within the cockpit. The important thing is that the player is always constrained to what the pilot can see with his/hers own eyes.
B: I want to be able to switch into a 3rd person/external view that puts the games "camera" outside the ship and makes it possible to rotate around it so that I can get a good look at it and my surroundings. This would make it much easier to make cool looking screenshots and videos.
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But as with all statistics that could probably been misinterpreted too...
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Indeed
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In my opinion, a better poll would have been:
External view (none combat) , yes or no?
As simple as that.
Well, the preferred option is Yes: a Simple external ship viewer None Combat
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In my opinion, a better poll would have been:
External view (none combat) , yes or no?
As simple as that.
Not really, since people would then interpret "external view" differently. As I wrote in my previous post. Does a physical monitor/hologram showing this within the cockpit count? And if that was a choice would people prefer that over a fully 3rd person external view that puts the viewport outside the ship with no connection to the pilot inside the cockpit?
Well, the preferred option is Yes: a Simple external ship viewer None Combat
Sure, but it seems to me that people was suppose to answer these "three" yes and no questions separately, in other words choosing three options per person. 178 people has done the poll, that means we should have 534 actual votes, right? Well, we don't. We only have 306 which means that a lot of people probably just picked one option not realizing it was multiple choice (or just didn't care). This will of course skew the results quite significantly since people answering "No: This will break immersion fo me" might actually be on the opposite end of people answering "Yes: a Simple external ship viewer None Combat".
In other words:
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