Thinking about the way that we interact with the game has bought me around to another question. The cockpit is obviously one of the most important and integral parts of a game such as Elite. Remembering the original "Old Faithful" introduced us to what I consider to be one of the most well conceived 'scanner' systems and one that has been used over and over in various shapes and forms.
Following on from this we got the Frontier cockpit which further developed on the original Elite cockpit. It was very functional and IMO again produced a very clear and useful method of ship management.
Then the FFE cockpit. Essentially the same as the Frontier cockpit with some graphical updates, IMO it felt a little bit crammed and I always has a bit of a niggle over the asymmetric layout and the apparent overlap on the command/nav console. What it did do is add some more depth to the actual feel of the cockpit and of course offered something of an upgrade to the quality of the visuals.
So, to get to the point, what is the new elite console going to be like? What would you like its accessibility to be like? Should it be an evolution of the older FFE console or of the Frontier console? Should each ship have it's own individual console layout?
One thing that I would really like to see is the option to utilize a Dual Monitor configuration. Keep the main screen as a HUD based screen with things such as the scanner and current ship attitude etc. On the second screen I would like to see things like weapons selection, ship configuration, navigation and various other things like that. Possibly the option to have the other views, i.e. port, starboard and rear displayed on smaller 'ports'. Of course the primary configuration would have to be a single monitor and the game front-end to be as easy as the previous incarnations, but dual monitor would be a very nice possibility.
Perhaps even a personally configurable/skinned cockpit - the option to go into a cockpit editor and work with a drag and drop system that can be changed using something like Photoshop or similar.
In regard to views in the cockpit, maybe something like a VR setup where you are suspended inside a 360 'globe' of screens that are able to be rotated around in some manner. Is it time to think 'outside' the box a bit with the whole cockpit concept?
Following on from this we got the Frontier cockpit which further developed on the original Elite cockpit. It was very functional and IMO again produced a very clear and useful method of ship management.
Then the FFE cockpit. Essentially the same as the Frontier cockpit with some graphical updates, IMO it felt a little bit crammed and I always has a bit of a niggle over the asymmetric layout and the apparent overlap on the command/nav console. What it did do is add some more depth to the actual feel of the cockpit and of course offered something of an upgrade to the quality of the visuals.
So, to get to the point, what is the new elite console going to be like? What would you like its accessibility to be like? Should it be an evolution of the older FFE console or of the Frontier console? Should each ship have it's own individual console layout?
One thing that I would really like to see is the option to utilize a Dual Monitor configuration. Keep the main screen as a HUD based screen with things such as the scanner and current ship attitude etc. On the second screen I would like to see things like weapons selection, ship configuration, navigation and various other things like that. Possibly the option to have the other views, i.e. port, starboard and rear displayed on smaller 'ports'. Of course the primary configuration would have to be a single monitor and the game front-end to be as easy as the previous incarnations, but dual monitor would be a very nice possibility.
Perhaps even a personally configurable/skinned cockpit - the option to go into a cockpit editor and work with a drag and drop system that can be changed using something like Photoshop or similar.
In regard to views in the cockpit, maybe something like a VR setup where you are suspended inside a 360 'globe' of screens that are able to be rotated around in some manner. Is it time to think 'outside' the box a bit with the whole cockpit concept?
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. A 360 view would be great. You could even bring back the old Elite 1 method, where you could look left, right and behind and fit lasers to fire from these views.
