Ships The Vulture's Bridge: Placement of the pilot

[Iskariot]

The Vulture is considered a relatively small ship by most, but the glass dome the pilot sits in looks much more like a bridge than a cockpit.
I love the Vulture's angular lines and bug-like appearance.
The ship looks tough and she looks like she means business, and from experience most of us know she is and she does.

One thing I find very odd though, and that is the placement of the pilot.
As you can see in my screenies the pilot is placed very low in the cockpit and because of this his view is severely obstructed by the protrusions of the hull to the left and right.

I feel it would have made much more sense to place the pilot higher up in that large empty space under that huge glass dome.
This would have granted him a wonderful view to all sides.
The room under in the nose, where the pilot sits now might have been used for a bunk, personal storage or something else.
I even think it might be possible to put a third crew member there.

What do you think?

 

[avow555]

Pretty sure the cockpits are designed for First Person, whenever that rolls out.

 

[Iskariot]

Pretty sure the cockpits are designed for First Person, whenever that rolls out.

I do not doubt that for a second.
However, that does not change my critique about the weird placement of the pilot's chair.

 

[Flip]

Well, as it is now you can look down and have an unobscured view. If the seat was higher, wouldn’t you see mostly that black thing at the front of the cockpit (always wondered what this is)? You would also probably be more exposed.

I don’t know, that sounds like a logical idea at first, but I’ve never been bothered by my position in the cockpit when flying the Vulture.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Maybe FD could make booster cushions available in the store?

 

[CTCParadox]

I get that the cockpits are designed to have enough room for first person movement.
It does make it hard to get a handle on how big the ships are though, I guess we compare them to modern aircraft without thinking.

CMDR CTCParadox

 

[Zeeman]

I get that the cockpits are designed to have enough room for first person movement.
It does make it hard to get a handle on how big the ships are though, I guess we compare them to modern aircraft without thinking.

CMDR CTCParadox

ED ships are VERY large. A mere Cobra MKIII is about as wide as a boeing 737, and the same length from the wings forward.

An Anaconda is about half the size of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. The cockpit of an Asp is about the size of my bedroom (the ship itself about the dimensions of a Boeing 747 in terms of width and length), and even the Vulture is a very big machine...

[video=youtube;W4bEQlVvUvI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4bEQlVvUvI[/video]

Z...

 

[CTCParadox]

ED ships are VERY large. A mere Cobra MKIII is about as wide as a boeing 737, and the same length from the wings forward.

An Anaconda is about half the size of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. The cockpit of an Asp is about the size of my bedroom (the ship itself about the dimensions of a Boeing 747 in terms of width and length), and even the Vulture is a very big machine...

Z...

Oh yeah I know how big they are, it can be hard to feel how big they are is all.

CMDR CTCParadox

 

[Zeeman]

Oh yeah I know how big they are, it can be hard to feel how big they are is all.

CMDR CTCParadox

Actually, yes... for some reason, the cockpit, from the inside, feels quite cramped. Despite clearly being cavernous, even in small ships.

Z...

 

[Confidenze]

Actually, yes... for some reason, the cockpit, from the inside, feels quite cramped. Despite clearly being cavernous, even in small ships.

Z...

All that will change with VR

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

Maybe, at some place the vulture was initially planned smaller, and then got rescaled bigger wihtout having the pilots place corrected or the cockpit reshaped to a fitting size.

 

[Zephyriel]

All that will change with VR

I love the Vulture cockpit on my monitor because it feels small(ish). I didn't like it quite as much in VR when I realized how far from the canopy I actually was and how big everything was. Same goes for the Viper. The scanner dish is also very large when I assumed it was like a small plate directly in front of my pilot seat... I much much prefer smaller "jet fighter" cockpits like the Eagle which is awesome in VR. I feel that a large cockpit minimizes the impression of the vastness of space outside of it.

 

[Iskariot]

Maybe, at some place the vulture was initially planned smaller, and then got rescaled bigger wihtout having the pilots place corrected or the cockpit reshaped to a fitting size.

I agree with you. The placement of the pilot suggests an upscaled ship.
I wish they would have put the pilot a bit higher up.
This would make a big difference.
Perhaps when some of the devs have a bit of spare time... .

 

[Iskariot]

I love the Vulture cockpit on my monitor because it feels small(ish). I didn't like it quite as much in VR when I realized how far from the canopy I actually was and how big everything was. Same goes for the Viper. The scanner dish is also very large when I assumed it was like a small plate directly in front of my pilot seat... I much much prefer smaller "jet fighter" cockpits like the Eagle which is awesome in VR.

I can't argue with personal preferences of course.
The Eagle is beautiful ship by any ones standards, but it is of course one of the smallest ships in the game and the most jet-like of them all.
But even the Eagle is bigger than people think.
In general I do not like the planes in space type of design.
That is what I love about ED.
The space ships in general feel like true space machines instead of planes in space.

The Vulture is also a ship that is misjudged by many.
It is a much larger machine than it appears to be.
That is why I very often look at my ships with the debug cam and take in all the great detail.
If you look at that huge transparent dome that is the Vultures bridge and see the small pilot's chair at the bottom of it you realize this ship is not at all what you thought it was.

I feel that a large cockpit minimizes the impression of the vastness of space outside of it.

That I do not really get.
Space feels so incomprehensibly immense in ED that even a spaceship the size of a Coriolis is dwarfed into nothingness by it.

 

[Beast Mode]

In my humble opinion, you have to be insane to think the Vulture's cockpit is at all awkward! It's got one of the best cockpits in the game, especially for its role as a combat ship. High visibility, good placement of the pilot's seat in relation to hardpoints, fairly minimalist design.

Then again, I've got major beef with the Python and FDL being two of the best ships in the game for combat, yet having off-center cockpits, so maybe I'm biased toward the Vulture because of that, and willing overlook any flaws, such as a lower-than-ideal pilot's chair!

 

[kr1spy]

Well, as it is now you can look down and have an unobscured view. If the seat was higher, wouldn’t you see mostly that black thing at the front of the cockpit (always wondered what this is)? You would also probably be more exposed.

I don’t know, that sounds like a logical idea at first, but I’ve never been bothered by my position in the cockpit when flying the Vulture.

I agree, I'm not bothered by it either.

My personal theory about why the seat is so low is a little different. Someone once asked here how Vulture pilots got into their craft as there is no visible means to enter such as a ladder or ramp (which you see with the Cobra, Python and even the Eagle). I think that the entire canopy was/is supposed to open up. That's why you see "caution: moving part hazard" stamped on that weird black thing on the right hand side.

(not my screenshot)

I think it was supposed to move out of the way (become a step or something?) and the low floor allows you to step into the craft easily. It could be they decided to upscale the model (make it a heavy fighter) and why this step idea no longer works as the floor is now much higher up (you need a ladder rather than a step to get in that way). Just a thought.

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

I went through some screens yesterday, and a friend who positioned his vulture in front of me quite a few month ago made me realsie there is a second seat in the vulture. Maybe that explains the higher cockpit.. This seat is slightly on the left, behind the pilots one.

So It looks a bit strange that the cockpit is still so wide to the right (from pilot point of view) but prbabyl necessay when the second person wants to stand in there too.


So the cockpit itself is some kind of smaller bridge with a second level

random pics form the net:

[video]http://i.imgur.com/g3qBDvA.jpg[/video]

shows the stairs upwards to the second level on the right (left in picture)



this pic is even just form the wiki, but shows the second seat left behind and above the pilot. (right on the picture)

Makes a but more sense now why the cockpit is big as it is. But logic would anways as why making such large part of the hull of glass or another transparent material which obviously would be less durable than the usual hull. Would be too easy to snipe the pilots out (which of course the game has no mechanics for preventing it)

 

[avow555]

I do not doubt that for a second.
However, that does not change my critique about the weird placement of the pilot's chair.

Had another fly around in the Vulture and I must say the pilots chair could be better placed, it still does seem somewhat cavernous.

 

[Zephyriel]

That I do not really get.
Space feels so incomprehensibly immense in ED that even a spaceship the size of a Coriolis is dwarfed into nothingness by it.

It has to do with the fact that for some reason (and from my experience with my DK2), everything beyond a certain distance (only a few meters in fact) seems to appear at the same distance in terms of parallax. It felt very weird when I tried the Conda because I felt the front of the ship wasn't much further from me than the part directly below my canopy. Also it always felt like the nose of the ship was about to touch the planet or the station I was pointing at, which was very disturbing. I know there is a limit to the depth our eyes can perceive, but irl it's much further than that. I can tell the top of the Eiffel Tower isn't touching the moon. Maybe this has to do with not only parallax, but also our eyes's focus, which isn't reproduced in VR.

So basically, ships with small cockpits allow for some margin for outside objects, which appear farther than the nose of my ship or my canopy.

Then again, I've not tried the more recent headsets, maybe this has now been solved...

 

[Ddraig]

Problem of the Vulture cockpit area is that is too big for a combat vessel. When shields go down the first thing you hear is "Canopy integrity at 50%". Aesthetics are great as long they don't interfere with the purpose of the the given object and is my personal opinion that in this ship is a bit messed up.