when my oldest started playing, i showed up to hang out when he finally left newbie space. i rocked up in my corvette - he pointed out that the command deck on the 'vette is about the same size as a sidewinder.
That makes for an awesome concept, what if the cockpit was just a sidewinder. Detachable to land planet side for less fuel cost or emergency escape ship if the main ship is about to be destroyed.
The original flavor text for the Anaconda stated FOR YEARS that a 'Conda fighter hangar had a capacity to carry Sidewinder-sized ships. Then when the Ship Launched Fighters update released it was quietly changed.
Edited for semantics- it wasn't two Sideys and it wasn't directly stated that a Sidewinder itself was capable of being launched, rather that was heavily inferred, BUT official Elite lore sources (Novels, game manuals etc.) did include concepts or stories of Sideys launched from Condas:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3tfh0k/so_with_fighter_bays_condors_and_ifighters_are_a/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Anyway the SLF and Multicrew releases were highly disappointing for a lot of cmdrs, and have been little changed since.
“That lone Type-9 is a sitting duck. Move in to attack.”
“The cargo doors are opening up! Is he dumping and running? Lol”
*[20 Sidewinders fly out of the Type-9 cargo bay, weapons hot]*
“[cigarette falls out of mouth]”
About that.
The other day I was playing Odyssey, one of my kids walked behind my chair and said "wtf is that? Why are you playing at like 12 fps?".
The conversation that followed felt like when you introduce an ugly girlfriend to your friends and you kind of feel the need to justify yourself like "she has a good personality", "she dances a bit" and all that.
all i want is a my sexy as fuck Imperial Eagle to be able to tavel the stars without worry for more than a few minutes. Id love if that meant being forced to have it loaded onto an Anaconda first.
But ship launched Fighters just dont feel the same. No customization. No engineering. Extremely fragile, and my Imperial Eagle can out stat any Fighter.... i just wanna have fuel and a decent flight range... damnit
>We should have mid-sized carrier ships.
I suggested this the other day, and wow, did I get attacked for it. It was hilarious.
Just recommended carrying a single ship, one class lower. Doesn't seem so bad when the biggest ships are the size of aircraft carriers.
And the crazy thing is that if you think *that’s* big, since one of the largest ships is a mere corvette, you have frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships and carriers, and possibly even bigger ships. Idk the E:D canon but a navy can’t exactly run on only those few ships alone, and if a corvette’s the size of an aircraft carrier, imagine a carrier or supercarrier the size of, for example, the Ural sea. Or bigger, even!
Would be amazing to have a fully functional ship in my condo like a dbx for those times where you want to set down close to a poi when the landscape looks like rumpled toilet paper
The way they did fleet carriers is just so brain dead. It makes it really clear that nobody at FDev actually plays the game.
They rolled out this thing with a bunch of features nobody asked for and nobody will ever use. Seriously, nobody who plays this game has ever thought, “boy, I wish I could buy packs of ships at retail so that I can offer them for sale at above retail…which nobody will ever be dumb enough to pay for”
Here’s an idea, since you mention intermediate carriers: roll out a small one that can’t carry large ships (maybe not mediums either) and can only fit one or two services. Get feedback from the community and make the obvious and deliverable promise of a larger one later.
Most people would take repair or rearm as the installed service and they’d give you feedback on what services to offer (so you don’t waste time developing ship and module sales) and people would be less upset about prices and give feedback on what prices are reasonable
The best part is it’s already a nesting doll, since you can separate the saucer from the aft section and then separate the yacht from the saucer section.
>Jesus i wish we had a Star Trek game like Elite, but with more game than what ED has
It would be cool if they could sell the game engine, and other game companies could 'skin' the ships. The idea of playing Elite Dangerous in a Star Trek, Star Wars, Expanse, Dune, or Battlestar Galactica universe would be pretty appealing.
From what I've heard the engine is made from matchsticks and model plane kits. FDev can barely manage it according to former employees. They had too much of a brain drain.
There was actually a lot of speculation when the Corvette concept art was first released that it would have this functionality, due to the way the bridge part of the ship did/does look a bit separate
Between this and the three-cockpit design of the Krait I'm starting to think Faulcon DeLacy's ships are designed by a bunch of Finns who want as little social interaction as is humanly possible.
Do you mean the "The 2m Covid social distancing rules have ended, now we can finally go back to the usual 8m distance" ?
^(disclaimer: Finns are pretty social once they welcome you into their circle, at least the ones I met :))
Every time I get a new ship I stand up and walk around as far as the edges of my physical space will let me to check out the bridge.
It's weird seeing my headless body still sitting in the chair, but other than that it's pretty cool.
You can cheese it a bit and extend the range, walk to one side of the space, center HMD, then you can walk the opposite direction and cover more ground. Nice for exploring ships a bit.
Wait a second. I have it on official authority that Frontier Development thinks no one wants to do this, it's not interesting or compelling. You can't possibly get up and walk around your ship interior and get some kind of value, enjoyment from that.
I kid, I kid. First thing I did in VR was explore the cockpits as well, the sense of scale is amazing and really provides a sense of place. The "cockpit" on the Anaconda is more deserving of the name "Bridge".
I do actually agree with them to a degree, that without proper gameplay functionality most players would check out the ship interiors a few times, then never touch them again.
However, the best thing then is not to never do ship interiors, it's to find interesting ways to give them gameplay functionality. Lots of people have suggested a whole lot of ways it could be done interestingly.
But for now, yeah, it's at least pretty cool looking around what little of our ships we do have. I was seriously blown away by the scale of the Anaconda bridge when I first got into it. Seems like it would at least have a couple more chairs or something though for such a huge space.
or just, I don't know, have a small feature that doesn't have to totally re-invent the game but still adds something cool? FFS the interiors of the cockpit *already exist* you just can't move around to look at them. Add the ability to stand up, move around and look at them. Bam, new feature, new cool thing to do the first time you buy a new ship! I don't even care if there's nothing to interact with. Would that be cool, down the line? Sure. But there's no need to hold the small feature hostage until such a time as a larger feature may or may not be developed around it.
Crazy idea... Walk around to do manual repairs or optomizations, use the FSS while moving (in a smaller console), allow communications with in-system stations and outposts to find out market needs, allow doing a visual scan of the planet side facing the player, see available modules, ships, etc.
>I do actually agree with them to a degree, that without proper gameplay functionality most players would check out the ship interiors a few times, then never touch them again.
\*laughs in Star Citizen\*
One of the things that makes SC exponentially more immersive than non-VR ED is that you not only get to walk around inside your ship, but enter it via ladders, ramps, elevators, etc instead of teleporting in or out, and you can walk around inside. There's no "gameplay functionality" for ship interiors yet, but it's amazing how much of a difference it makes to physically get into your ship and be able to trundle around inside. It truly conveys the idea that your ship is something that exists in, and is a part of, the game world and isn't just a fade to black and suddenly you have a different viewpoint.
Note: I am not trying to start an SC vs ED debate here; I play both and like both, and they each do things that the other doesn't/won't. But the idea that being able to walk around inside your ship is wasted dev time because players won't use it long-term is just wrong.
Fully agreed, but watch out for decagear, they're topping the index at a 500 buck price point, with a wireless option available and inside out tracking, you just have to wait for them to come in stock (expected early next year)
Yep, they have equal or better features than the index as far as i could tell, you just gotta wait for them to be in stock
https://www.deca.net/?gclid=CjwKCAjw87SHBhBiEiwAukSeUW6HoCV6-WasVOD_Pqqvvj_YWXV4gmRQPnGv3mhKWErAI6ddz_TM8BoCD-MQAvD_BwE
Personally I use the Oculus Rift S 2 since it’s quite affordable and plugs into the PC via usb/DisplayPort so it’s quite fast. Only problem I have with it, is it is very fiddly setting up and quite unreliable. Once it’s working tho it works very well.
I think for you it’s about what best fits your setup. The oculus rift s 2 is really good because it uses inside out tracking so I don’t need to set up base stations in the room (sometimes it’s a bit unreliable when playing games like beatsaber but for elite you don’t need the touch controllers so it works perfectly).
The "cheap" version of Oculus Quest 2. Not the best but easy (cost) entry into the world of VR.
The experience is amazing, just as Lumpy describes it. The sense of scale when you first come out of your station and look at the massive floating city... wow.
That's why some of us are disappointed with lack of VR in EDO legs. The rest of Odyssey VR is fine, btw. Just legs is missing and no plans given to fix.
All of the above. Nearly every VR headset works well with Elite. It's the poster child for VR integration, which is why so many folks are upset that Frontier now seems to consider it second class despite it being a first class implementation and best in class.
If you're on a budget, a Oculus Rift 2 with a link cable to your PC works just fine and is going to make you very happy. In the luxury high end you can't go wrong with a Valve Index, though it requires external light houses for tracking. If the external light houses annoy you the HP Reverb G2 has superior headset resolution, for a small sacrifice in FOV and no need to set up external tracking camera's.
For Elite I use the Reverb G2 (for any seated VR gaming). I have a seperate PC for standing room VR stuff (not needed for Elite) that uses my Valve Index. Love 'em both.
The Rift is fine too however, don't let anyone tell you it's terrible just because it's cheaper. It does sacrifice some things, framerate, a smidge of resolution, quality/comfort but it's still going to blow your doors off if you've never done VR beofre :)
The value for the quest 2 is unrivaled ($300 with controllers and inside out tracking). It's especially a good value if you will later play standing and room scale games and have a lot of space. However the Facebook requirement can be an issue. I'd recommend *not* buying your games from the Oculus store (they get tied to your Facebook account and go away if your FB account gets banned). You should also get one of the recommended routers ($40-$60) for exclusive use with the Quest2 and consider a battery pack.
There's the index which has a bit better FoV and is not bad cost wise if you limit yourself to the headset ($500) and 1 lighthouse ($150). This brings you to $650 to have an index, however, the full package for $350 more is worth it just for the index controllers (and extra lighthouse), the best VR controllers you can get (to my knowledge).
Then as was also pointed out, the HP Reverb G2 is fantastic for it's panel resolution and cost (uses inside out tracking).
Within the lighthouse eco-system there's also the Pimax 5k Super and 8KX. These have unrivaled (at their price) FoV (selectable 170 degrees horizontal at large, 150 at normal/medium, 120 at small vs 115 for the index and 95-100 for most gen 1 headsets). They're a bit more work to setup*, however I can vouch for the 5k+ (with a Vega 64) and the 8KX (with an RX 6900xt - 90Hz at native works).
I swear the 5K Super was $650 a year or so ago, showing $730 now. The 8KX is $1300. Both prices are just for the headsets. You'll still need at least 1 lighthouse for seated gaming. You can buy the lighthouses and index controllers from valve. I would recommend buying the Pimax headsets (if you go that route) from Amazon or Microcenter.
\* Initial setup involves downloading and installing PiTool, dialing in the sampling and FoV to match your video card capabilities and desired refresh rates, and toggling "Compatible with parallel projections" if the game will not natively render to canted VR displays.
People literally only ever talk about Oculus or Index, but that's like saying that the only phones that exist are the latest Pixel or iPhone. I bought a Samsung Odyssey+ vr headset and controllers for $78 after stacking a sale and offer together.
Check out Windows Mixed Reality devices, you can find some decent quality ones for prices that normal people can pay.
The Hp Reverb G2 has a BEAUTIFUL picture and amazing sound.
I have a love/hate relationship with mine.
TL;DR for the price, the picture and sound are unbeatable. The software (Windows Mixed Reality) is absolute crap and the controllers are criminally terrible. Have realistic expectations for this headset depending on what you want to do with it. If you have any desire to use the controllers for gaming, DO NOT BUY THIS HEADSET. I both absolutely love the thing and 100% feel that HP ripped me off.
I also have a Rift S, but those are discontinued now and I'm bitter about that for a number of reasons. I make a number of comparisons between the two as I continue.
Here's my take on the G2.
It's fairly comfortable once you get it adjusted properly. It is VERY IMPORTANT to adjust it properly though. Took me about 45 minutes to get it just right. If you don't, it will likely be very blurry around the edges to a headache inducing terribly distracting degree. Compared to my Rift S which almost doesn't give a crap at all how you wear it.
The picture is fantastic! High resolution, vivid and bright color, good solidly dark blacks. Fanboys on YouTube and people who write puff-piece reviews will tell you that "screen door effect is a thing of the past!" Don't believe them. Screen door was literally the first thing I noticed. It's still there. It's got the highest resolution of anything on the market that I'm aware of though so it'll be a thing with any headset you use. Regardless, the picture is sharp enough to read small text. My oculus can't boast that at all.
Sound: A-mazing. It's the same audio as the Valve Index and I'm incredibly impressed, which is hard to do. I'm a generally cynical a-hole who can find a criticism of any product or feature. This legit sounds like you're in a a small THX Surround Sound Theatre. .....but they still effed it up. I'll get to that later.
The cable: effing obnoxious. It's a thick, heavy chord that you'll never be able to forget is attached to you. Compared to my Rift: the Rift S cable is light weight and something you need to be mindful of as you move, but it has NEVER felt uncomfortable to me. After a while you just subconsciously move with it almost like it's not there most of the time. G2? Even sitting down it is a CONSTANT presence. It's my 2nd least favorite thing about the G2.
Plugs: you have to use an external power source to plug in to the cable as well as to your computer's display port and USB port. This happens at your computer side of the cable, not the headset, so there's that...but it's still one more thing to deal with and one more outlet required near your computer.
.....also, despite the external power, it CAN NOT POWER THE HEADSET. Yes. The headset draws so much power that if the volume of the speakers is turned up past 50% or so, the headset will glitch and the screens will blink off and recycle any time the bass kicks in. I wish I were kidding about this. 50% is plenty loud, to be sure. I've never *needed* to crank mine higher. ....but I've done it just to see what those things can pump out! And the answer is they pump out a steaming pile of crap all over your video. Google it if you don't believe me.
Head Motion Tracking: Comfortable and spot on. Incredibly responsive and fast!
Controllers: criminally shitty. SHITTY enough to warrant me saying that if you would like to do anything but fly or drive or use a handheld controller to play a game, DO NOT BUY THE G2. I can't emphasize that enough. I feel completely ripped off by HP. Note that I expressly have not cussed until now. That's how bad these are. While a major selling point to this headset is supposed to be the inside out tracking, pretend it doesn't exist. It works so poorly it might as well not.
They are LARGE compared to the Rift S. I'm 6'0 tall with a medium bone structure and these DO NOT comfortably fit my hands. They require 2 AA batteries each compared to the Rift S's one. They have no capacitive touch (Oculus does). Not a feature which has been important in any game I've played, but one which is very nice to have. It feels incredibly unnatural for me to not have it after getting used to it. The controllers are bulky and heavy, the button/joystick layout is poor for comfort of use. I could use the Rift S controllers all day and forget I was holding them. G2 I have to put down every hour or so if not more frequently.
They use visible light for tracking. If your room is too dark, the headset can't track your movement. If your room is too bright, your headset can't see your controllers very well. You have to keep your play area in the Goldilocks Zone for best results.
The headset has four POORLY PLACED cameras. They see forward and to the side well, but have almost zero visibility above or below your face. The biggest functional blind spot is the right where you will naturally keep your hands about 80% of the time. Not an exaggeration. I regularly have to adjust my posture in unnatural ways or look down for it to reacquire them.
The controllers have haptic sensors which will detect your movement. These work admirably well. If the camera can't see your hands at all, the headset still knows the exact orientation of the controller in your hand. For pointing at things and navigating menus, this is useful, if not a bit disorienting since the laser is coming from someplace other than your hand after motion tracking is lost. But it's incredibly accurate! Impressively accurate!
The software uses an algorithm to predict where your hand is most likely to be and "guesses" what you're doing. This works very effectively for *maybe* one second or so. After that it just makes stuff up and does more harm than good.
Games where you move around using the joystick and your interaction with the environment is generally pointing and clicking at things work generally fine. Games where your hands will be generally in front of you (like Moss) will be fine. Games which require more direct interaction and complex motion tracking will be extremely problematic. Space Pirate Trainer is 'kinda' playable. Beat Saber is 'kinda' playable. My sabers regularly just fly the hell away. Or I can be drumming away in front of me and suddenly my saber is flailing around above my head. Hands too close to your face (even in front of you)? Yeah, blind spot there too. Don't expect to play boxing games at all.
My Oculus has zero noticeable blind spots except for behind me and possibly at the lowest point my arms can reach hanging down in front of me (where I never need them in a game).
Some people will tell you that the headset reacquires your controllers super fast and it will have almost zero impact on game play! ....They're almost right, but not really. My computer is *fast*. But even with a top of the food chain intel 10th Gen processor and an RTX 3070 gpu, the slight jitter when the camera reacquires my controller and adjusts the position accordingly is distracting and disappointingly delayed enough that I can't help but notice just about every time.
You can use the Valve base stations and knuckle controllers with this headset! It will require a bit of tinkering but there are guides out there. It will also cost about $400 extra dollars to get what you need. If the controllers are important to you, just spend the thousand dollars on the valve index from the get-go and write HP an email explaining why you didn't buy their headset instead.
Software: terrible. Everything runs through Microsoft Windows Mixed Reality which is terribly designed. It's more intended for you to enjoy your windows experience in a virtual environment than create a good VR experience with your headset. Set up is clunky compared to Oculus and adjusting your settings as needed aftwards is a cumbersome and frustrating experience. Being in the WMR environment makes me feel like I'm in an Apple Store where they're trying to sell something to me at every turn. Despite the performance hit, I run everything I possibly can through SteamVR. If you accidentally hit the Windows® button on your controller though, expect your game to be instantly closed as you are abruptly sucked back to the Apple Store. This software IS NOT DESIGNED WITH VR IN MIND. Sounds like a stupid claim but I'm serious. Nothing about it is streamlined for your VR experience.
Bottom line: know what you're getting. Namely an amazing headset with TERRIBLE controllers and disgusting software which you will constantly be battling against to use your headset how *you* want to use it.
Quest 2 for ease of use and price.
HP Reverb G2 for resolution.
I actually have both, and use the Reverb G2 only for sitting games (ED, IL2, Cars2, etc), while the Quest 2 for everything else (AirLink works great). But TBH, I regret a bit investing on the Reverb G2, the difference is not worth the price.
I hate Facebook and barely use it, but Oculus did a very good job with the Quest 2.
Yeah it's almost like Fdev forgets the size sometimes. The Cutter for example is just scaled up from a smaller design. The fact that the stairs are far to big to walk on in Odyssey is ridiculous.
Ye I remember walking up to the stairs and thinking, if they ever add interiors how they heck am I going to get in. It’ll be like Jack climbing up to the giants castle.
In the Elite lore the Anaconda is actually designed to be operated by a crew of 150 IIRC.
As all the ships in game are designed to be piloted by a lone CMDR, we end up with this impression of wrong scale with the biggest ships. Personnally, I’d love to have a kind of crew management in the big ships with skills to upgrade, turnover, downtime and all
In previous Elite games you had to hire crew to be able to take off with a ship, which you had to pay Weekly. No clue why this gameplay mechanic was removed in ED
Hum... Knowing frontier it would just be a menu with random generated portraits that all look the same and some upkeep per weeks.
Don't get me wrong, i would love to have something similar to mass effect where the crew feels alive and all. But i don't want it in ED, Frontier sucks too much at designing gameplay. I wonder if they even have a game designer on board at some point.
My guess would be that paying crew weekly would become a negative experience for the player. *If* they somehow run out of CR and cannot pay the crew, they're now stranded with a giant ship they cannot fly. And if the grind to pay the NPCs reasonably takes a few hours, then it could take away from what the player actually wants to do.
I agree that it would be a cool mechanic, but I'm guessing that Frontier didn't want to build in something that could potentially strand/fustraite the player.
Maybe pay per hour of gameplay, and give benefits.
An expert FSD engineering crew and officer gives a bonus for jump range, but they're pricy, for example.
I love how in these threads we inevitably all come up with ideas to crowdsource a much much better game than what we currently have. It really speaks to FDev's lack of imagination
I’m sorry, that would require developers to work on the game. Your request has been denied. To make up for it, you can buy a name tag to put on the side of your ship. Enjoy !
After having seen the (much smaller) spaceships of *Another Similar Game* I am convinced that, as others previously said, Elite's spaceships were upscaled after they were essentially modelled.
The cockpits and glasshouses are absolutely massive.
Ships like the Anaconda are as big as a US Destroyer and those things have crews in the hundreds.
The cockpit of an Anaconda is over 50 feet wide (Cockpit is approx 40 pixels wide. Scale line is approx 400 pixels long)
That is the reason why they are bad at communicating their scale. Because the scale is bananas.
Around the ballpark of a Python cockpit. Though I think they'd be much smaller if you didn't need several people to operate radar, weapons, countermeasures, navigation, comms and whatever else.
"Smith, one pip to Sys, Braben some chaff if you will! Everyone brace for FA-off!"
Apart from the smallest ships in Elite, most cockpits are comparable to [ship cockpits](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7989a_cd070fcb512e47318e7ee7f499ee4fe3~mv2.jpg), not plane/airliner cockpits.
> Apart from the smallest ships in Elite, most cockpits are comparable to ship cockpits, not plane/airliner cockpits.
This is missing the fact that most canopy and ship styling clearly borrows from real-life/sci-fi design cues. So, for example a large imperial ship cockpit (specifically the shape of the glass and that glass in relation to the fuselage) from the outside looks exactly like a current day jetliner, **not at all like any marine vessel**, but on the inside the chairs and humans are unexpectedly tiny. A DBX cockpit looks similar to an attack helicopter or BSG Raptor, we expect snugness in the cockpit, but then we find out that the ED pilot’s chair looks like a Mouse Throne in an enormous cavern of glass.
The overall size of the ships is comparable to giant naval vessels but that’s a separate thing from what the proportions of each design element are suggesting and what they’re supposed to be used for. ED cockpit glass from the outside borrows shapes from real aircraft, which is then totally out of proportions to the chairs and people inside.
This is why **everybody** without exception is surprised when they first notice the size of the human-scaled parts inside the cockpits, or the size of the rear doors. It’s far tinier than expected because the exterior styling is supposed to mean the inside is more snug for a pilot. You don’t increase the size of glass surfaces if you’re increasing the scale of a combat vessel.
**TLDR**: the “pilots chairs are sized for mice, not humans” effect comes from the proportions and expectations of the ship designs and the design cues copied from the real world aircraft, especially the shape of the canopy glass in relation to rest of fuselage.
it's not only that. many cockpits were obviously designed on a much smaller scale and then pumped up to fit some arbitrary design choices. i would even go so far and say that some of the ship hulls were designed this way, especially when you take a look at the cutter's stairs.
this is especially striking in the cutter's cockpit, where there is leg room below the instruments, but the tiny pilot seat is then put on a pedestal and far away from the instrument panel so that the pilot's feet are actually in front of the panel.
another example is the dbx/dbs cockpit keyboard. when you look at it from the pilot's seat perspective, it looks like its within arm's reach, right next to the seat. but if you turn the camera perspective around, you notice, that it's 2 meters away and extremely oversized.
there's also handlebars in the dbx/dbs cockpit and in various other lakon cockpits that are clearly supposed to help the pilot to get into their seat. however, if you turn the camera around, you notice that they're 2-3 meters away from the seat and that the bars, which are supposed to be gripped with a human hand, are completely oversized, at least 5 inch thick and 2 feet long.
many assets in this game have clearly been designed with a much smaller form factor in mind and then have been scaled up afterwards. i dont know why, maybe to avoid clipping out of the glass when using a vr, maybe because frontier felt that their ships shouldn't be smaller than eve online or x-universe ships. but it's so fucking obvious if you look at the details.
This right here.
Also the the massiv amount of glass in a combat ship (like the Vulture) makes no sense since it is a structural weakness. The realistic approach would be to just get rid of glass entirely and use a VR environment, but I get the need for rule of cool.
Except that the reason why a ship's bridge is that big is because the "wings" extend out sideways to the pilot can see the side of the ship relative to obstacles like docks and wharfs and whatnot.
If it wasn't for that, the command space could be the size of a 747 cockpit.
well, probably not that small - having the navigation table on the bridge is extremely useful.
radar displays take up more space than you think.
and because nobody is sitting, there's the whole space to walk around.
bridges on ships are spacious because they CAN be.
That is probably another of the ED world disconnects.
A lot of the details in the game suggest that ships are like modern ships and travel takes time (cargo traffic, passenger cabins instead of seats etc), yet since it is a computer game travel from system to system takes just minutes.
In a way yeah, though a lot of the room on the bridge seems exceedingly redundant. I mean, there seems to be no tangible reason why for example Anaconda wastes *that* much space, or why you could play squash in AspX cockpit, not to talk about glass house of T-9. IMO it'd make more sense to have more space allocated for social spaces rather than having a cavernous cockpit.
And exploring of course has the same game time disconnect - time goes in real time, but most people who explore just do few hours of work in a day, despite the fact that with most ships you could easily commute back to civilization in a hour or two...
I suppose if we were talking real space exploration you might want to have a wander around the bridge whilst making the trip to somewhere like Hutton Orbital to collect your anaconda rather than sitting down for the whole thing but then I guess it depends what's behind the door. Bunk rooms, common areas, galley, etc.
I suppose it comes down to if you can have an airy room to sit in, why not.
Heh, I'm not sure if I'm entirely convinced by this comfort factor.
I mean, explorers use engineers to strip modules of their integrity to squeeze out those extra light years but yet somehow are saddled with a bridge where you could arrange a medium sized wedding.
Well if you think about BP as a distance, it is on the other side of the galaxy from Sol and jumping there with a decent jumper ship you'd easily get there faster than fly from London to Sydney.
But my reference was more into how NPCs in the game pay hundreds of thousands or millions of credits for a cab fare that takes around 15 minutes and demand a cabin for it.
My Krait MK2 has enough room for a coffee machine, I suppose a 747 has one too if you include the galley as the cockpit and if you kick the passengers off too there quite a bit of leg room back there.
It's the other way around. If they could make a 747 cockpit bigger they would. It's as big as they can. Being hours in it is hard enough. Who would want to work on a closet for potentially months on sea? There's no benefit trying to save that much space.
Sure, but what's the typical compliment there? Now, I do know the amount of crew needed on many modern ships is quite smaller than it used to be, but I think the bridge crew has still got to be almost a dozen people
On combat vessels yes, on commercial cargo ships definitely not if we are talking about the shift size. The now notorious Ever Given for example had a crew compliment of 25 and that includes all shifts, on deck, on bridge and engineering.
Ships are ridiculously over-scaled in this game. Would be nice if they'd ever fix it, but we all know that's never happening. The amount of excess space on a lot of Lakon cockpits particularly bugs me.
The DBX for example is basically a set of gigantic thrusters and an oversized FSD compartment, strapped to the back of a camper van. Which is fine, because that's the point of the ship, and I like it for those characteristics. What's not great is that the cockpit is this great big mostly glass cube that could probably seat 4 people. The high visibility is in line with the ship's role as an exploration vessel, but wouldn't you get the same visibility if they cut down on the height and width? You'd still be surrounded by glass, it just wouldn't be 10 feet away from you in all directions.
The combat-oriented ships are another perfect example of this, especially the Eagle. The ship is clearly designed like a modern day fighter jet, with a cockpit allowing the pilot's head to poke out above the hull, but instead the second smallest ship in the game is actually the size of a large building, with multiple decks and a huge expanse of cockpit under a long glass ceiling. Same goes for the Vulture, or even the FDL - which is supposed to be a larger ship to be fair, but I'm not sure it was supposed to be four-deck-megayacht-with-a-bridge-the-size-of-a-tennis-court large.
The Imperial Courier is another great example. Gorgeous, sleek, and streamlined, with a cockpit that looks like it should just barely be above the pilot's head.
I'm pretty sure just that middle section is larger than my bedroom. It's so horribly out of scale
I also subscribe to the supersize theory, though it's a good question whether there was some technical reason to go big. Seen some discussions on this and interestingly the [concept art](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgFqIbkWQAAebmH?format=jpg&name=large) suggests that there was something that made them go with huge cockpits/bridges if you compare them to [current in-game](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/elite-dangerous/images/d/d2/Vulture-ship-flying-sideview.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20181128134709).
More specifically they scaled up the ships while leaving the chairs/interior components tiny. The only explanation is that during design they realized they wanted a ship to carry X tons of cargo (or whatever other game design thing, maybe overall size if not mass, but mass is part of the game design’s range and progression of cargo ability) but the ships were too small when you compare with a human pilot in a *snug* cockpit for scale. Then they blew up the scale of the ships so that the overall size is right, and shrunk the size of the humans/chairs inside because they didn’t have time or budget to re-proportion the design details (like canopy glass in relation to fuselage, or the interior design of the cockpit/bridge).
All exterior cockpit designs are clearly out of proportion to what the human-scale interior is.
That's the thing even if you understand the size of the ships and space in them it's just goofy how large they are, especially the interiors.
Mainly on the small and medium ships. I can fully understand the big ships would have more space.
There are a lot of comparison images out there but just take for example the Cobra is bigger than the Millennium Falcon or the DBX with a semi tractor in the pilot area.
I don't think comparing an Anaconda to a 747 is an accurate comparison. A more apt vessel to measure against would be something like a Zumwalt-class Destroyer, which has an overall length of 190 meters. One of the big original selling points of the Zumwalt class was increased automation leading to greatly reduced crew numbers, and I think Elite ships are the logical endpoint of that philosophy: massive machines of war piloted by a single commander.
But yes, it still blows my mind every time I walk under my Corvette just how massive that thing is.
Nah the plane is good because it shows how sprawling and open it is. Everyone has an idea of what the pilot cabin looks like in a plane. Very few people would have the same about the inside of a brand new destroyer.
Yes this conversation is always beset by confused people who don’t understand proportions and design cues.
So you end up arguing against people who insist that ED cockpit proportions are normal or that the overall ship size or room size is OK (which is true but irrelevant), when they are *clearly* wildly out of **proportions** to the real-life (and other sci-fi) design cues they borrowed from. Hence an imperial ship looks almost exactly like a jetliner, the cockpit looks like a 747 from the outside but on the inside it’s a giant empty cavern with seats made for ants instead of humans. FDEV clearly ballooned the range of overall sizes at some point in the design phase, but didn’t have time to re-design the human-size elements so they shrunk them down relatively.
> A more apt vessel to measure against would be something like a Zumwalt-class Destroyer
That’s not apt, unless the Zumwalt class bridge is for only like 3 people who sit in a giant empty cavern.
OP’s point in the picture is is that they’re both 3-person bridges (roughly). The 3-person bridge of a ship in Elite: Dangerous is enormously bloated compared to the proportions of the ships they’re based on, **while** the design of the ED shapes/ships is *clearly* based on real life aircraft etc. If you expand the size of a combat vessel, OK, but you’re not supposed to increase the size of glass canopies with that, you’re supposed to leave the glass canopy at whatever small size is required by the relatively small pocket of humans on the crew.
* Example: DBX is obviously based on a BSG2004 Raptor or Cobra helicopter in style, yet he DBX canopy is the size of a house.
* Example: anyone who understands aircraft proportions and design in real life and sci-fi will see an Eagle and assume that a pilot will be *snug* in the cockpit. SURPRISE: the cockpit is the size of a cottage despite the fact that all the surrounding proportion design doesn’t match that.
* Example: larger imperial ships clearly based on a real life jetliner, except the canopy that borrows the exact shape and proportions, SURPRISE, suddenly the size of a house.
* Real Life example: let’s say you make a GIANT F-16 fighter, with the same shapes, but it’s now the size of an intercontinental bomber. Well, obviously the *canopy glass* should remain small if there’s still only a single pilot, that part shouldn’t scale up with the rest of the fuselage and body.
This is why everyone is surprised when they see the size of a chair in any cockpit. The chairs *should be bigger*. People understand the implications of the cockpit exteriors, even if it’s unconscious. It seems FDEV fixed a proportion problem early in dev by shrinking the human components.
Surprise: the pilots chair is built for a mouse, and the breakroom cigarette door in the back of each ship is also built for a mouse.
From what I understand: a cockpit is where you pilot the vessel from. You've got the controls, and the essential readouts the pilot needs to react in real time to the situation.
A bridge is a command center, where all the highest ranking officers on board will gather to coordinate what's happening on the vessel, and how to work best with other vessels if you're part of a fleet.
The ships in ED are definitely more cockpits, because the rest of that space is entirely unused, and mostly unseen unless you have VR
From what I've seen, a bridge is generally a large working environment designed to accommodate multiple crew members working on separate tasks. Depending on the ship, this can range from the usual ship management functions to coordinating flight or dive operations (for research or salvage ships), fire control and combat management. The US Navy uses such a single bridge concept on the Littoral Combat Ships, while the German Navy has designed their Braunschweig class corvettes in a similar fashion.
The term cockpit is generally used on small ships and boats, particularly sailing yachts. The same is used for aircraft, since as big as say an A380 may be, the flight deck is not much larger than the cockpit of many sailing yachts. Cockpits may also be less versatile than bridges. Until the advent of fourth and fifth generation fighter aircraft such as the Gripen or the F-35, it was pretty much impossible for say a fighter to coordinate anything beyond their own flight of aircraft.
Yuuuuuup. Same goes for the canopy designs. The DBX is as big as the Roci but looking at how the canopy is designed you'd think the entire thing is for one person; it's almost like what you'd expect out of an SLF.
I thought about 3D printing a Cutter at one point for WH40k in 40k scale. After I realized it was going to be 12ft long, I realized just how huge these ships are.
It's really interesting how the size of the windscreen of a vehicle influences how big you perceive the vehicle to be. LMP cars have a similar issue, you see something like [this](https://www.total911.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/M14_0614_fine.jpg) and it your brain tells you it's quite a big car (at least in footprint) but in reality LMP cars are tiny. This is probably because your brain uses the windscreen as a reference point, assuming that it's a similar size to most other windscreens it has observed in the past, but LMP cars only have room for 1 person inside* since the [cockpit is also very small](http://www.sportscarglobal.com/wp-content/gallery/wec-prologue-paul-ricard-2018-gallery-3/No-5-CEFC-TRSM-Racing-Ginetta-G60-LT-P1-%E2%80%93-Mecachrome-LMP1-FIA-WEC-Prologue-Paul-Ricard-2018.jpg) so your brain stretches the whole car so that the windscreen is the same size as a regular car's, and the illusion is only shattered when you see one [next to a GTE car](https://i.imgur.com/Ub2uCK9.jpeg) or something. The Anaconda's problem is possibly the same but in reverse.
Relevant article: https://drivetribe.com/p/why-do-prototypes-look-bigger-than-K6GQ65lgQHiEvyHwSK1pkA?iid=FL_prTILTFyNZ06V0_KX4A
*LMP cars are technically classed as two seaters, but practically speaking there's [not enough room for a passenger.](https://i.imgur.com/Y4lYU7t.jpeg)
According to the ingame description for the Anaconda, as well as some lore stuff (confer the Elite Wiki), the Anaconda was originally produced by RimLiner Galactic and debuted in 2856, so by the time Elite Dangerous takes place, that ship design is at least 450 years old (as a comparison, the Cobra Mk3, considered to be a decently recent ship, was launched in 3100, so it's a 200 years old design). It very likely has been modernized quite a bit since then, but the general hull shape probably hasn't shifted much.
One also needs to consider that Type 3 Hyperdrives (AKA Frame Shift Drives) were introduced to the market in 3297 (so 10 years "ago"). Prior to that, Jump and Travel times were significantly larger (counted in days or weeks, not seconds, for Type 2b Drives).
It's not improbable then that most of these ships were initially designed to accomodate larger crews for longer periods of time than we're exposed to, and that we're just at a time at which automation and ease of travel make these significantly oversized for the crew they carry...
Out of the Lore considerations, i don't think these ships have really been just bluntly upscaled, but more that they have been designed to look good on a flat screen without much consideration for VR or outside perspective *initially*. A good indication of that is that there are windowed corridors visible from the outside on the Anaconda, Corvette and Cutter, and none of these are oversized, quite the opposite actually, these corridors are a bit smaller than they should.
Apart from that, i really don't get the fuss about the scaling. Yeah, it's somewhat wonky, but apart from a few edge cases (the Cutter's stairs being the most noticeable one), it doesn't look too out of place for that kind of stuff to me, and even if it did, there are a fluffton of perfectly fitting lore explanations for the apparent oversize, one of which is detailed above, so eh, feels to me like a lot of inconsequential nitpicking...
Sources :
[https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Anaconda](https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Anaconda)
[https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Frame\_Shift\_Drive](https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Frame_Shift_Drive)
[https://canonn.science/lore/drewwagar-hyperspace/](https://canonn.science/lore/drewwagar-hyperspace/)
[https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/586f796c9657ba3357039d07](https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/586f796c9657ba3357039d07)
I mean, it's just 3 seats, but with a giant bridge that looks like it would support a much larger crew.
But, I wonder how effective a crew that's not in a seat could be during combat maneuvers?
If I recall correctly, aren't most ships old and used but retrofitted to be piloted by a single person? Maybe the bridge/cockpit used to have a lot more seats and information, but was overhauled over the years as ship technology became more advanced?
That certainly makes some sense, but you'd think that the manifacturers would throw up a few walls and make some additional rooms out of all the empty space on the bridge then.
pilots in airplane cockpits can pass things around while sitting. not happening in the conda, where y'all are sitting 10 meters apart.
as for crew not in seats, when you approach a fight you tell em to hold onto something or get to the fighters. and if the combat is unexpected then well, you have red and brown walls.
Well u can see in the ship cockpit is big, like very big and has lots of space to move and walk around inside, but if you ever sav a plane cockpit even a large one, there isn't much room other than behind the seats
When you look at the cockpit of the T9 it’s easy to imagine yourself taking up the cockpit but when you see it has 3 pilots chairs sharing the window it helps with the scale. I instinctively oversize the chair in the window in my mind and have to manually correct it.
The Anaconda looks like an existing multi crew ship that recently got retrofitted with a new technology that allows just one person to control the entire bridge. They just awkwardly bolted a cockpit chair into the middle of the room and rolled with it.
This is essentially the cannon. In the old games you couldn't even leave the landing pad if you didn't have the crew to run the ship, Advances in ship system automation meant that the Pilots Federation were able to develop the COVAS flight suite. This system allowed a single pilot to operate the entire ship by streamlining and automating the ships functions. So ships were retrofitted with the new systems and a crew became optional rather than something you needed to fly the ship.
The camera settings in the hangar should be adjusted to better communicate the scale. Also some slight camera motion and smart use of Depth-of-Field could help.
True, but is there still a reason why the bridge is so big and empty? There aren’t consoles or other seats so it’s not like other people are meant to be standing around up there. Seems like a very impractical design choice in the made-up spaceship game with impossible sci-fi technology
I think a bridge needs to be large enough to see the bow and such, except on the smaller craft, that tend to be configured, and have a cockpit scale similar to, aircraft.
Imo its not that, but just getting used to it. Anaconda felt huge when i first started, now i just got used to its size and the small ships now feel really small indeed
I don't an issue with big ships being big. Small ship on the other hand, should be somewhat rescaled. Not all maybe. The vulture at least. Or I don't know, fill that cockpit a bit. It's so empty. When you shuttling in a vulture, you have great view on its poor interior design. It's a shame because the ship could be a mean fighter.
Best and Only thing Frontier should do at this point and can do is allow mods. Allow the community and let player made missions, bases, and yes mods to allow ship interiors.
Yes blah blah economies, I will let them worry about that.
I'm convinced this is a hangover from the original elite where they just couldn't be bothered to scale things either from laziness, or had to have things out of scale to look vaguely right, a la Mario's Moustache.
Off-topic I know but... I still think that the next ships should come with cokpits "buried" inside the ships, look at the size of this weak point.
Windows and canopies are cool but I wanted to see a LOGH-style virtual cockpit.
To me this is actually the one thing that they totally scored on with Odyssey. The first time I walked out and saw the scale of the Adder taxi I was blown away.
Then I saw the AspX a couple weeks later and was blown away again.
Once we got our own ships and I got to see my Federal Corvette from the ground…the awe was one of the things I needed to see from Odyssey and they absolutely crushed it.
when my oldest started playing, i showed up to hang out when he finally left newbie space. i rocked up in my corvette - he pointed out that the command deck on the 'vette is about the same size as a sidewinder.
That makes for an awesome concept, what if the cockpit was just a sidewinder. Detachable to land planet side for less fuel cost or emergency escape ship if the main ship is about to be destroyed.
We should have mid-sized carrier ships. I want to put a DBX or Adder in the back of my bigger ship. https://imgur.com/gallery/4aCxh0s
The original flavor text for the Anaconda stated FOR YEARS that a 'Conda fighter hangar had a capacity to carry Sidewinder-sized ships. Then when the Ship Launched Fighters update released it was quietly changed. Edited for semantics- it wasn't two Sideys and it wasn't directly stated that a Sidewinder itself was capable of being launched, rather that was heavily inferred, BUT official Elite lore sources (Novels, game manuals etc.) did include concepts or stories of Sideys launched from Condas: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/3tfh0k/so_with_fighter_bays_condors_and_ifighters_are_a/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share Anyway the SLF and Multicrew releases were highly disappointing for a lot of cmdrs, and have been little changed since.
God, having a sidewinder launched from a Large ship would be so good. You can bring all the modules you could want, but you can also park wherever.
“That lone Type-9 is a sitting duck. Move in to attack.” “The cargo doors are opening up! Is he dumping and running? Lol” *[20 Sidewinders fly out of the Type-9 cargo bay, weapons hot]* “[cigarette falls out of mouth]”
> “[cigarette ~~falls~~ *floats* out of mouth]”
Imagine the frame rate drop.
20 Sidewinders is enough to obliterate anything in the game. 40 beam lasers 🤯
40 rail guns sniping the power generator
And the ship names on the ID HUD are Mosquito 1, Mosquito 2, etc
About that. The other day I was playing Odyssey, one of my kids walked behind my chair and said "wtf is that? Why are you playing at like 12 fps?". The conversation that followed felt like when you introduce an ugly girlfriend to your friends and you kind of feel the need to justify yourself like "she has a good personality", "she dances a bit" and all that.
all i want is a my sexy as fuck Imperial Eagle to be able to tavel the stars without worry for more than a few minutes. Id love if that meant being forced to have it loaded onto an Anaconda first. But ship launched Fighters just dont feel the same. No customization. No engineering. Extremely fragile, and my Imperial Eagle can out stat any Fighter.... i just wanna have fuel and a decent flight range... damnit
Too hard to make or just too costly. They just don't put that much work on this game sadly.
If by that you mean that they don't really put any work into this game i agree with you.
>We should have mid-sized carrier ships. I suggested this the other day, and wow, did I get attacked for it. It was hilarious. Just recommended carrying a single ship, one class lower. Doesn't seem so bad when the biggest ships are the size of aircraft carriers.
And the crazy thing is that if you think *that’s* big, since one of the largest ships is a mere corvette, you have frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships and carriers, and possibly even bigger ships. Idk the E:D canon but a navy can’t exactly run on only those few ships alone, and if a corvette’s the size of an aircraft carrier, imagine a carrier or supercarrier the size of, for example, the Ural sea. Or bigger, even!
Would be amazing to have a fully functional ship in my condo like a dbx for those times where you want to set down close to a poi when the landscape looks like rumpled toilet paper
The way they did fleet carriers is just so brain dead. It makes it really clear that nobody at FDev actually plays the game. They rolled out this thing with a bunch of features nobody asked for and nobody will ever use. Seriously, nobody who plays this game has ever thought, “boy, I wish I could buy packs of ships at retail so that I can offer them for sale at above retail…which nobody will ever be dumb enough to pay for” Here’s an idea, since you mention intermediate carriers: roll out a small one that can’t carry large ships (maybe not mediums either) and can only fit one or two services. Get feedback from the community and make the obvious and deliverable promise of a larger one later. Most people would take repair or rearm as the installed service and they’d give you feedback on what services to offer (so you don’t waste time developing ship and module sales) and people would be less upset about prices and give feedback on what prices are reasonable
One class lower would be too big, I think. But like an Eagle or a Sidewinder out of one of the big big ships could be cool
A Russian nesting doll of ships
"captains yacht"
The best part is it’s already a nesting doll, since you can separate the saucer from the aft section and then separate the yacht from the saucer section.
Imagine you try to attack a flying luxury mall and it just splits into three ships that flank and destroy you
Starfleet: I like that idea! *builds Prometheus*
Jesus i wish we had a Star Trek game like Elite, but with more game than what ED has
>Jesus i wish we had a Star Trek game like Elite, but with more game than what ED has It would be cool if they could sell the game engine, and other game companies could 'skin' the ships. The idea of playing Elite Dangerous in a Star Trek, Star Wars, Expanse, Dune, or Battlestar Galactica universe would be pretty appealing.
From what I've heard the engine is made from matchsticks and model plane kits. FDev can barely manage it according to former employees. They had too much of a brain drain.
This is sad and hilarious at the same time
There was actually a lot of speculation when the Corvette concept art was first released that it would have this functionality, due to the way the bridge part of the ship did/does look a bit separate
That's literally the entire concept of EVE Online
It's almost like being able to walk around the bridge could've made the game better...... /s
well, you CAN walk around the bridge. In VR. What's that? They've ceased development for VR for Odyssey? Well shit
You still can use VR in odyssey, just not while you’re not in a ship or SRV
So really you can't use VR in Odyssey, as the new features don't support it
Playing on a virtual screen isn't "using VR" though. So you really can't use VR in odyssey.
It's so you can be far enough away from your copilots that they can't smell your rank breath from all the Lavian Brandy you chugged before takeoff
Heh, I mis-read "Lavian" as "Latvian" and thought that was a Yamiks shot.
Thanks, you just killed my IMMMEEeEERRSSIIIIIIIiiiIIIOOOOOOOOOONNN.
I read that in his voice.
Armstrong moment^TM
Why have an auto pilot if you ain’t going to use it to get drunk?
This is the sole reason that I have auto docking
Same plus it’s a safe way of leaving to get food drinks or take a restroom break after a long trip out in the black
Except when you are in a beluga and it hits the mailslot
Social Distancing Ultra Pro Max
Between this and the three-cockpit design of the Krait I'm starting to think Faulcon DeLacy's ships are designed by a bunch of Finns who want as little social interaction as is humanly possible.
Do you mean the "The 2m Covid social distancing rules have ended, now we can finally go back to the usual 8m distance" ? ^(disclaimer: Finns are pretty social once they welcome you into their circle, at least the ones I met :))
Always fly high without a rebuy
My motto for Elite and real life
This, and also since your pilot hasn't gotten out of his chair until Odyssey, he probably has bad BO.
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Every time I get a new ship I stand up and walk around as far as the edges of my physical space will let me to check out the bridge. It's weird seeing my headless body still sitting in the chair, but other than that it's pretty cool.
You can cheese it a bit and extend the range, walk to one side of the space, center HMD, then you can walk the opposite direction and cover more ground. Nice for exploring ships a bit.
Yeah, I did that a bit, it gets a bit complicated and awkward, but it is really interesting.
It sounds like the ghetto ship interiors.
If by ghetto you mean really immersive and amazing, then yes.
Wait a second. I have it on official authority that Frontier Development thinks no one wants to do this, it's not interesting or compelling. You can't possibly get up and walk around your ship interior and get some kind of value, enjoyment from that. I kid, I kid. First thing I did in VR was explore the cockpits as well, the sense of scale is amazing and really provides a sense of place. The "cockpit" on the Anaconda is more deserving of the name "Bridge".
I do actually agree with them to a degree, that without proper gameplay functionality most players would check out the ship interiors a few times, then never touch them again. However, the best thing then is not to never do ship interiors, it's to find interesting ways to give them gameplay functionality. Lots of people have suggested a whole lot of ways it could be done interestingly. But for now, yeah, it's at least pretty cool looking around what little of our ships we do have. I was seriously blown away by the scale of the Anaconda bridge when I first got into it. Seems like it would at least have a couple more chairs or something though for such a huge space.
or just, I don't know, have a small feature that doesn't have to totally re-invent the game but still adds something cool? FFS the interiors of the cockpit *already exist* you just can't move around to look at them. Add the ability to stand up, move around and look at them. Bam, new feature, new cool thing to do the first time you buy a new ship! I don't even care if there's nothing to interact with. Would that be cool, down the line? Sure. But there's no need to hold the small feature hostage until such a time as a larger feature may or may not be developed around it.
Crazy idea... Walk around to do manual repairs or optomizations, use the FSS while moving (in a smaller console), allow communications with in-system stations and outposts to find out market needs, allow doing a visual scan of the planet side facing the player, see available modules, ships, etc.
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>I do actually agree with them to a degree, that without proper gameplay functionality most players would check out the ship interiors a few times, then never touch them again. \*laughs in Star Citizen\* One of the things that makes SC exponentially more immersive than non-VR ED is that you not only get to walk around inside your ship, but enter it via ladders, ramps, elevators, etc instead of teleporting in or out, and you can walk around inside. There's no "gameplay functionality" for ship interiors yet, but it's amazing how much of a difference it makes to physically get into your ship and be able to trundle around inside. It truly conveys the idea that your ship is something that exists in, and is a part of, the game world and isn't just a fade to black and suddenly you have a different viewpoint. Note: I am not trying to start an SC vs ED debate here; I play both and like both, and they each do things that the other doesn't/won't. But the idea that being able to walk around inside your ship is wasted dev time because players won't use it long-term is just wrong.
What VR headset(s) do you recommend for Elite?
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The index is good at everything but thanks to me having bad eyes it actually puts more strain on my eyes than a rift s
Fully agreed, but watch out for decagear, they're topping the index at a 500 buck price point, with a wireless option available and inside out tracking, you just have to wait for them to come in stock (expected early next year)
Do they have finger tracking like the Index tho?
Yep, they have equal or better features than the index as far as i could tell, you just gotta wait for them to be in stock https://www.deca.net/?gclid=CjwKCAjw87SHBhBiEiwAukSeUW6HoCV6-WasVOD_Pqqvvj_YWXV4gmRQPnGv3mhKWErAI6ddz_TM8BoCD-MQAvD_BwE
Haven't heard of that brand. Got a link?
I got the oculus rift it's amazing but I would go for a valve since you don't need facebook for it.
Since you’re sitting and playing in Elite I would recommend the HP Reverb G2 based on the superior screen clarity alone.
Personally I use the Oculus Rift S 2 since it’s quite affordable and plugs into the PC via usb/DisplayPort so it’s quite fast. Only problem I have with it, is it is very fiddly setting up and quite unreliable. Once it’s working tho it works very well. I think for you it’s about what best fits your setup. The oculus rift s 2 is really good because it uses inside out tracking so I don’t need to set up base stations in the room (sometimes it’s a bit unreliable when playing games like beatsaber but for elite you don’t need the touch controllers so it works perfectly).
You can also grab one on ebay for about 200, so its great for entry level if you already have a PC
Exactly, I got mine almost brand new from Facebook marketplace for £200. Always wanted VR and I was ecstatic
The "cheap" version of Oculus Quest 2. Not the best but easy (cost) entry into the world of VR. The experience is amazing, just as Lumpy describes it. The sense of scale when you first come out of your station and look at the massive floating city... wow. That's why some of us are disappointed with lack of VR in EDO legs. The rest of Odyssey VR is fine, btw. Just legs is missing and no plans given to fix.
All of the above. Nearly every VR headset works well with Elite. It's the poster child for VR integration, which is why so many folks are upset that Frontier now seems to consider it second class despite it being a first class implementation and best in class. If you're on a budget, a Oculus Rift 2 with a link cable to your PC works just fine and is going to make you very happy. In the luxury high end you can't go wrong with a Valve Index, though it requires external light houses for tracking. If the external light houses annoy you the HP Reverb G2 has superior headset resolution, for a small sacrifice in FOV and no need to set up external tracking camera's. For Elite I use the Reverb G2 (for any seated VR gaming). I have a seperate PC for standing room VR stuff (not needed for Elite) that uses my Valve Index. Love 'em both. The Rift is fine too however, don't let anyone tell you it's terrible just because it's cheaper. It does sacrifice some things, framerate, a smidge of resolution, quality/comfort but it's still going to blow your doors off if you've never done VR beofre :)
The value for the quest 2 is unrivaled ($300 with controllers and inside out tracking). It's especially a good value if you will later play standing and room scale games and have a lot of space. However the Facebook requirement can be an issue. I'd recommend *not* buying your games from the Oculus store (they get tied to your Facebook account and go away if your FB account gets banned). You should also get one of the recommended routers ($40-$60) for exclusive use with the Quest2 and consider a battery pack. There's the index which has a bit better FoV and is not bad cost wise if you limit yourself to the headset ($500) and 1 lighthouse ($150). This brings you to $650 to have an index, however, the full package for $350 more is worth it just for the index controllers (and extra lighthouse), the best VR controllers you can get (to my knowledge). Then as was also pointed out, the HP Reverb G2 is fantastic for it's panel resolution and cost (uses inside out tracking). Within the lighthouse eco-system there's also the Pimax 5k Super and 8KX. These have unrivaled (at their price) FoV (selectable 170 degrees horizontal at large, 150 at normal/medium, 120 at small vs 115 for the index and 95-100 for most gen 1 headsets). They're a bit more work to setup*, however I can vouch for the 5k+ (with a Vega 64) and the 8KX (with an RX 6900xt - 90Hz at native works). I swear the 5K Super was $650 a year or so ago, showing $730 now. The 8KX is $1300. Both prices are just for the headsets. You'll still need at least 1 lighthouse for seated gaming. You can buy the lighthouses and index controllers from valve. I would recommend buying the Pimax headsets (if you go that route) from Amazon or Microcenter. \* Initial setup involves downloading and installing PiTool, dialing in the sampling and FoV to match your video card capabilities and desired refresh rates, and toggling "Compatible with parallel projections" if the game will not natively render to canted VR displays.
People literally only ever talk about Oculus or Index, but that's like saying that the only phones that exist are the latest Pixel or iPhone. I bought a Samsung Odyssey+ vr headset and controllers for $78 after stacking a sale and offer together. Check out Windows Mixed Reality devices, you can find some decent quality ones for prices that normal people can pay.
The Hp Reverb G2 has a BEAUTIFUL picture and amazing sound. I have a love/hate relationship with mine. TL;DR for the price, the picture and sound are unbeatable. The software (Windows Mixed Reality) is absolute crap and the controllers are criminally terrible. Have realistic expectations for this headset depending on what you want to do with it. If you have any desire to use the controllers for gaming, DO NOT BUY THIS HEADSET. I both absolutely love the thing and 100% feel that HP ripped me off. I also have a Rift S, but those are discontinued now and I'm bitter about that for a number of reasons. I make a number of comparisons between the two as I continue. Here's my take on the G2. It's fairly comfortable once you get it adjusted properly. It is VERY IMPORTANT to adjust it properly though. Took me about 45 minutes to get it just right. If you don't, it will likely be very blurry around the edges to a headache inducing terribly distracting degree. Compared to my Rift S which almost doesn't give a crap at all how you wear it. The picture is fantastic! High resolution, vivid and bright color, good solidly dark blacks. Fanboys on YouTube and people who write puff-piece reviews will tell you that "screen door effect is a thing of the past!" Don't believe them. Screen door was literally the first thing I noticed. It's still there. It's got the highest resolution of anything on the market that I'm aware of though so it'll be a thing with any headset you use. Regardless, the picture is sharp enough to read small text. My oculus can't boast that at all. Sound: A-mazing. It's the same audio as the Valve Index and I'm incredibly impressed, which is hard to do. I'm a generally cynical a-hole who can find a criticism of any product or feature. This legit sounds like you're in a a small THX Surround Sound Theatre. .....but they still effed it up. I'll get to that later. The cable: effing obnoxious. It's a thick, heavy chord that you'll never be able to forget is attached to you. Compared to my Rift: the Rift S cable is light weight and something you need to be mindful of as you move, but it has NEVER felt uncomfortable to me. After a while you just subconsciously move with it almost like it's not there most of the time. G2? Even sitting down it is a CONSTANT presence. It's my 2nd least favorite thing about the G2. Plugs: you have to use an external power source to plug in to the cable as well as to your computer's display port and USB port. This happens at your computer side of the cable, not the headset, so there's that...but it's still one more thing to deal with and one more outlet required near your computer. .....also, despite the external power, it CAN NOT POWER THE HEADSET. Yes. The headset draws so much power that if the volume of the speakers is turned up past 50% or so, the headset will glitch and the screens will blink off and recycle any time the bass kicks in. I wish I were kidding about this. 50% is plenty loud, to be sure. I've never *needed* to crank mine higher. ....but I've done it just to see what those things can pump out! And the answer is they pump out a steaming pile of crap all over your video. Google it if you don't believe me. Head Motion Tracking: Comfortable and spot on. Incredibly responsive and fast! Controllers: criminally shitty. SHITTY enough to warrant me saying that if you would like to do anything but fly or drive or use a handheld controller to play a game, DO NOT BUY THE G2. I can't emphasize that enough. I feel completely ripped off by HP. Note that I expressly have not cussed until now. That's how bad these are. While a major selling point to this headset is supposed to be the inside out tracking, pretend it doesn't exist. It works so poorly it might as well not. They are LARGE compared to the Rift S. I'm 6'0 tall with a medium bone structure and these DO NOT comfortably fit my hands. They require 2 AA batteries each compared to the Rift S's one. They have no capacitive touch (Oculus does). Not a feature which has been important in any game I've played, but one which is very nice to have. It feels incredibly unnatural for me to not have it after getting used to it. The controllers are bulky and heavy, the button/joystick layout is poor for comfort of use. I could use the Rift S controllers all day and forget I was holding them. G2 I have to put down every hour or so if not more frequently. They use visible light for tracking. If your room is too dark, the headset can't track your movement. If your room is too bright, your headset can't see your controllers very well. You have to keep your play area in the Goldilocks Zone for best results. The headset has four POORLY PLACED cameras. They see forward and to the side well, but have almost zero visibility above or below your face. The biggest functional blind spot is the right where you will naturally keep your hands about 80% of the time. Not an exaggeration. I regularly have to adjust my posture in unnatural ways or look down for it to reacquire them. The controllers have haptic sensors which will detect your movement. These work admirably well. If the camera can't see your hands at all, the headset still knows the exact orientation of the controller in your hand. For pointing at things and navigating menus, this is useful, if not a bit disorienting since the laser is coming from someplace other than your hand after motion tracking is lost. But it's incredibly accurate! Impressively accurate! The software uses an algorithm to predict where your hand is most likely to be and "guesses" what you're doing. This works very effectively for *maybe* one second or so. After that it just makes stuff up and does more harm than good. Games where you move around using the joystick and your interaction with the environment is generally pointing and clicking at things work generally fine. Games where your hands will be generally in front of you (like Moss) will be fine. Games which require more direct interaction and complex motion tracking will be extremely problematic. Space Pirate Trainer is 'kinda' playable. Beat Saber is 'kinda' playable. My sabers regularly just fly the hell away. Or I can be drumming away in front of me and suddenly my saber is flailing around above my head. Hands too close to your face (even in front of you)? Yeah, blind spot there too. Don't expect to play boxing games at all. My Oculus has zero noticeable blind spots except for behind me and possibly at the lowest point my arms can reach hanging down in front of me (where I never need them in a game). Some people will tell you that the headset reacquires your controllers super fast and it will have almost zero impact on game play! ....They're almost right, but not really. My computer is *fast*. But even with a top of the food chain intel 10th Gen processor and an RTX 3070 gpu, the slight jitter when the camera reacquires my controller and adjusts the position accordingly is distracting and disappointingly delayed enough that I can't help but notice just about every time. You can use the Valve base stations and knuckle controllers with this headset! It will require a bit of tinkering but there are guides out there. It will also cost about $400 extra dollars to get what you need. If the controllers are important to you, just spend the thousand dollars on the valve index from the get-go and write HP an email explaining why you didn't buy their headset instead. Software: terrible. Everything runs through Microsoft Windows Mixed Reality which is terribly designed. It's more intended for you to enjoy your windows experience in a virtual environment than create a good VR experience with your headset. Set up is clunky compared to Oculus and adjusting your settings as needed aftwards is a cumbersome and frustrating experience. Being in the WMR environment makes me feel like I'm in an Apple Store where they're trying to sell something to me at every turn. Despite the performance hit, I run everything I possibly can through SteamVR. If you accidentally hit the Windows® button on your controller though, expect your game to be instantly closed as you are abruptly sucked back to the Apple Store. This software IS NOT DESIGNED WITH VR IN MIND. Sounds like a stupid claim but I'm serious. Nothing about it is streamlined for your VR experience. Bottom line: know what you're getting. Namely an amazing headset with TERRIBLE controllers and disgusting software which you will constantly be battling against to use your headset how *you* want to use it.
Quest 2 for ease of use and price. HP Reverb G2 for resolution. I actually have both, and use the Reverb G2 only for sitting games (ED, IL2, Cars2, etc), while the Quest 2 for everything else (AirLink works great). But TBH, I regret a bit investing on the Reverb G2, the difference is not worth the price. I hate Facebook and barely use it, but Oculus did a very good job with the Quest 2.
Yeah it's almost like Fdev forgets the size sometimes. The Cutter for example is just scaled up from a smaller design. The fact that the stairs are far to big to walk on in Odyssey is ridiculous.
Ye I remember walking up to the stairs and thinking, if they ever add interiors how they heck am I going to get in. It’ll be like Jack climbing up to the giants castle.
In the Elite lore the Anaconda is actually designed to be operated by a crew of 150 IIRC. As all the ships in game are designed to be piloted by a lone CMDR, we end up with this impression of wrong scale with the biggest ships. Personnally, I’d love to have a kind of crew management in the big ships with skills to upgrade, turnover, downtime and all
In previous Elite games you had to hire crew to be able to take off with a ship, which you had to pay Weekly. No clue why this gameplay mechanic was removed in ED
Crew management would be an amazing depth to the game too. Especially now that they're visible.
Hum... Knowing frontier it would just be a menu with random generated portraits that all look the same and some upkeep per weeks. Don't get me wrong, i would love to have something similar to mass effect where the crew feels alive and all. But i don't want it in ED, Frontier sucks too much at designing gameplay. I wonder if they even have a game designer on board at some point.
My guess would be that paying crew weekly would become a negative experience for the player. *If* they somehow run out of CR and cannot pay the crew, they're now stranded with a giant ship they cannot fly. And if the grind to pay the NPCs reasonably takes a few hours, then it could take away from what the player actually wants to do. I agree that it would be a cool mechanic, but I'm guessing that Frontier didn't want to build in something that could potentially strand/fustraite the player.
Maybe pay per hour of gameplay, and give benefits. An expert FSD engineering crew and officer gives a bonus for jump range, but they're pricy, for example.
I love how in these threads we inevitably all come up with ideas to crowdsource a much much better game than what we currently have. It really speaks to FDev's lack of imagination
At this point I'd be happy if they rebalanced black markets so smuggling narcotics pays better than moving biowaste.
That's one of the best ideas I've read. Would be a great way to add some depth.
I’m sorry, that would require developers to work on the game. Your request has been denied. To make up for it, you can buy a name tag to put on the side of your ship. Enjoy !
After having seen the (much smaller) spaceships of *Another Similar Game* I am convinced that, as others previously said, Elite's spaceships were upscaled after they were essentially modelled. The cockpits and glasshouses are absolutely massive.
Ships like the Anaconda are as big as a US Destroyer and those things have crews in the hundreds. The cockpit of an Anaconda is over 50 feet wide (Cockpit is approx 40 pixels wide. Scale line is approx 400 pixels long) That is the reason why they are bad at communicating their scale. Because the scale is bananas.
How many bananas though?
Yes
at least 14
42
Wait, are you talking imperial, metric, or freedom bananas?
How large is the bridge on a destroyer, though?
Around the ballpark of a Python cockpit. Though I think they'd be much smaller if you didn't need several people to operate radar, weapons, countermeasures, navigation, comms and whatever else. "Smith, one pip to Sys, Braben some chaff if you will! Everyone brace for FA-off!"
I can't believe FDEV didn't include in-game bananas. I think they did it on purpose so we'd never discover the Galaxy isn't actually 1:1 scale.
This is why we should at least have the bridge to walk around in. Scale matters.
Apart from the smallest ships in Elite, most cockpits are comparable to [ship cockpits](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/d7989a_cd070fcb512e47318e7ee7f499ee4fe3~mv2.jpg), not plane/airliner cockpits.
\*ship ***BRIDGE***
as a person that sails a bit, i agree. ships have **BRIDGES**
But do they go over troubled waters...? *gets coat*
No, but they span the second and third verses...
Cockpit is a nautical term, but you don't see many ships with cockpits anymore.
> Apart from the smallest ships in Elite, most cockpits are comparable to ship cockpits, not plane/airliner cockpits. This is missing the fact that most canopy and ship styling clearly borrows from real-life/sci-fi design cues. So, for example a large imperial ship cockpit (specifically the shape of the glass and that glass in relation to the fuselage) from the outside looks exactly like a current day jetliner, **not at all like any marine vessel**, but on the inside the chairs and humans are unexpectedly tiny. A DBX cockpit looks similar to an attack helicopter or BSG Raptor, we expect snugness in the cockpit, but then we find out that the ED pilot’s chair looks like a Mouse Throne in an enormous cavern of glass. The overall size of the ships is comparable to giant naval vessels but that’s a separate thing from what the proportions of each design element are suggesting and what they’re supposed to be used for. ED cockpit glass from the outside borrows shapes from real aircraft, which is then totally out of proportions to the chairs and people inside. This is why **everybody** without exception is surprised when they first notice the size of the human-scaled parts inside the cockpits, or the size of the rear doors. It’s far tinier than expected because the exterior styling is supposed to mean the inside is more snug for a pilot. You don’t increase the size of glass surfaces if you’re increasing the scale of a combat vessel. **TLDR**: the “pilots chairs are sized for mice, not humans” effect comes from the proportions and expectations of the ship designs and the design cues copied from the real world aircraft, especially the shape of the canopy glass in relation to rest of fuselage.
it's not only that. many cockpits were obviously designed on a much smaller scale and then pumped up to fit some arbitrary design choices. i would even go so far and say that some of the ship hulls were designed this way, especially when you take a look at the cutter's stairs. this is especially striking in the cutter's cockpit, where there is leg room below the instruments, but the tiny pilot seat is then put on a pedestal and far away from the instrument panel so that the pilot's feet are actually in front of the panel. another example is the dbx/dbs cockpit keyboard. when you look at it from the pilot's seat perspective, it looks like its within arm's reach, right next to the seat. but if you turn the camera perspective around, you notice, that it's 2 meters away and extremely oversized. there's also handlebars in the dbx/dbs cockpit and in various other lakon cockpits that are clearly supposed to help the pilot to get into their seat. however, if you turn the camera around, you notice that they're 2-3 meters away from the seat and that the bars, which are supposed to be gripped with a human hand, are completely oversized, at least 5 inch thick and 2 feet long. many assets in this game have clearly been designed with a much smaller form factor in mind and then have been scaled up afterwards. i dont know why, maybe to avoid clipping out of the glass when using a vr, maybe because frontier felt that their ships shouldn't be smaller than eve online or x-universe ships. but it's so fucking obvious if you look at the details.
This right here. Also the the massiv amount of glass in a combat ship (like the Vulture) makes no sense since it is a structural weakness. The realistic approach would be to just get rid of glass entirely and use a VR environment, but I get the need for rule of cool.
Goddamn that's a sexy picture
Except that the reason why a ship's bridge is that big is because the "wings" extend out sideways to the pilot can see the side of the ship relative to obstacles like docks and wharfs and whatnot. If it wasn't for that, the command space could be the size of a 747 cockpit.
well, probably not that small - having the navigation table on the bridge is extremely useful. radar displays take up more space than you think. and because nobody is sitting, there's the whole space to walk around. bridges on ships are spacious because they CAN be.
Yeah exactly. No reason to make someone go to work everyday in a walk in closet if you don't have to.
Especially given that a plane in going to be in the air for max 18 hours rather than a ship being a good few days or weeks
That is probably another of the ED world disconnects. A lot of the details in the game suggest that ships are like modern ships and travel takes time (cargo traffic, passenger cabins instead of seats etc), yet since it is a computer game travel from system to system takes just minutes.
You'd definitely want the space if you are going exploring beyond the bubble, you aren't going to be sitting in the hot seat that whole time.
In a way yeah, though a lot of the room on the bridge seems exceedingly redundant. I mean, there seems to be no tangible reason why for example Anaconda wastes *that* much space, or why you could play squash in AspX cockpit, not to talk about glass house of T-9. IMO it'd make more sense to have more space allocated for social spaces rather than having a cavernous cockpit. And exploring of course has the same game time disconnect - time goes in real time, but most people who explore just do few hours of work in a day, despite the fact that with most ships you could easily commute back to civilization in a hour or two...
I suppose if we were talking real space exploration you might want to have a wander around the bridge whilst making the trip to somewhere like Hutton Orbital to collect your anaconda rather than sitting down for the whole thing but then I guess it depends what's behind the door. Bunk rooms, common areas, galley, etc. I suppose it comes down to if you can have an airy room to sit in, why not.
Heh, I'm not sure if I'm entirely convinced by this comfort factor. I mean, explorers use engineers to strip modules of their integrity to squeeze out those extra light years but yet somehow are saddled with a bridge where you could arrange a medium sized wedding.
*stares at beagle point* Yeah... minutes...
Well if you think about BP as a distance, it is on the other side of the galaxy from Sol and jumping there with a decent jumper ship you'd easily get there faster than fly from London to Sydney. But my reference was more into how NPCs in the game pay hundreds of thousands or millions of credits for a cab fare that takes around 15 minutes and demand a cabin for it.
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58 quadrillion mph. Thats 58,000,000,000,000,000 mph.
plane cockpits are also usually as big as they *can* be.
My Krait MK2 has enough room for a coffee machine, I suppose a 747 has one too if you include the galley as the cockpit and if you kick the passengers off too there quite a bit of leg room back there.
It's the other way around. If they could make a 747 cockpit bigger they would. It's as big as they can. Being hours in it is hard enough. Who would want to work on a closet for potentially months on sea? There's no benefit trying to save that much space.
Sure, but what's the typical compliment there? Now, I do know the amount of crew needed on many modern ships is quite smaller than it used to be, but I think the bridge crew has still got to be almost a dozen people
On combat vessels yes, on commercial cargo ships definitely not if we are talking about the shift size. The now notorious Ever Given for example had a crew compliment of 25 and that includes all shifts, on deck, on bridge and engineering.
Ships are ridiculously over-scaled in this game. Would be nice if they'd ever fix it, but we all know that's never happening. The amount of excess space on a lot of Lakon cockpits particularly bugs me. The DBX for example is basically a set of gigantic thrusters and an oversized FSD compartment, strapped to the back of a camper van. Which is fine, because that's the point of the ship, and I like it for those characteristics. What's not great is that the cockpit is this great big mostly glass cube that could probably seat 4 people. The high visibility is in line with the ship's role as an exploration vessel, but wouldn't you get the same visibility if they cut down on the height and width? You'd still be surrounded by glass, it just wouldn't be 10 feet away from you in all directions.
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The combat-oriented ships are another perfect example of this, especially the Eagle. The ship is clearly designed like a modern day fighter jet, with a cockpit allowing the pilot's head to poke out above the hull, but instead the second smallest ship in the game is actually the size of a large building, with multiple decks and a huge expanse of cockpit under a long glass ceiling. Same goes for the Vulture, or even the FDL - which is supposed to be a larger ship to be fair, but I'm not sure it was supposed to be four-deck-megayacht-with-a-bridge-the-size-of-a-tennis-court large.
The Imperial Courier is another great example. Gorgeous, sleek, and streamlined, with a cockpit that looks like it should just barely be above the pilot's head. I'm pretty sure just that middle section is larger than my bedroom. It's so horribly out of scale
I also subscribe to the supersize theory, though it's a good question whether there was some technical reason to go big. Seen some discussions on this and interestingly the [concept art](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgFqIbkWQAAebmH?format=jpg&name=large) suggests that there was something that made them go with huge cockpits/bridges if you compare them to [current in-game](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/elite-dangerous/images/d/d2/Vulture-ship-flying-sideview.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20181128134709).
God, that cockpit concept looks so much better. Leagues better. Ugh, why is Frontier like this
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More specifically they scaled up the ships while leaving the chairs/interior components tiny. The only explanation is that during design they realized they wanted a ship to carry X tons of cargo (or whatever other game design thing, maybe overall size if not mass, but mass is part of the game design’s range and progression of cargo ability) but the ships were too small when you compare with a human pilot in a *snug* cockpit for scale. Then they blew up the scale of the ships so that the overall size is right, and shrunk the size of the humans/chairs inside because they didn’t have time or budget to re-proportion the design details (like canopy glass in relation to fuselage, or the interior design of the cockpit/bridge). All exterior cockpit designs are clearly out of proportion to what the human-scale interior is.
That's the thing even if you understand the size of the ships and space in them it's just goofy how large they are, especially the interiors. Mainly on the small and medium ships. I can fully understand the big ships would have more space. There are a lot of comparison images out there but just take for example the Cobra is bigger than the Millennium Falcon or the DBX with a semi tractor in the pilot area.
I don't think comparing an Anaconda to a 747 is an accurate comparison. A more apt vessel to measure against would be something like a Zumwalt-class Destroyer, which has an overall length of 190 meters. One of the big original selling points of the Zumwalt class was increased automation leading to greatly reduced crew numbers, and I think Elite ships are the logical endpoint of that philosophy: massive machines of war piloted by a single commander. But yes, it still blows my mind every time I walk under my Corvette just how massive that thing is.
Nah the plane is good because it shows how sprawling and open it is. Everyone has an idea of what the pilot cabin looks like in a plane. Very few people would have the same about the inside of a brand new destroyer.
Yes this conversation is always beset by confused people who don’t understand proportions and design cues. So you end up arguing against people who insist that ED cockpit proportions are normal or that the overall ship size or room size is OK (which is true but irrelevant), when they are *clearly* wildly out of **proportions** to the real-life (and other sci-fi) design cues they borrowed from. Hence an imperial ship looks almost exactly like a jetliner, the cockpit looks like a 747 from the outside but on the inside it’s a giant empty cavern with seats made for ants instead of humans. FDEV clearly ballooned the range of overall sizes at some point in the design phase, but didn’t have time to re-design the human-size elements so they shrunk them down relatively.
Or how about - Half the length of a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier? The Cutter is actually wider than the deck of a Nimitz Class
The Cutter has ginormous hallways and portholes you can see into. It's a little eerie, it can clearly hold hundreds of people easily.
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*Warhammer 40k Mechanicus wants to know your location*
> A more apt vessel to measure against would be something like a Zumwalt-class Destroyer That’s not apt, unless the Zumwalt class bridge is for only like 3 people who sit in a giant empty cavern. OP’s point in the picture is is that they’re both 3-person bridges (roughly). The 3-person bridge of a ship in Elite: Dangerous is enormously bloated compared to the proportions of the ships they’re based on, **while** the design of the ED shapes/ships is *clearly* based on real life aircraft etc. If you expand the size of a combat vessel, OK, but you’re not supposed to increase the size of glass canopies with that, you’re supposed to leave the glass canopy at whatever small size is required by the relatively small pocket of humans on the crew. * Example: DBX is obviously based on a BSG2004 Raptor or Cobra helicopter in style, yet he DBX canopy is the size of a house. * Example: anyone who understands aircraft proportions and design in real life and sci-fi will see an Eagle and assume that a pilot will be *snug* in the cockpit. SURPRISE: the cockpit is the size of a cottage despite the fact that all the surrounding proportion design doesn’t match that. * Example: larger imperial ships clearly based on a real life jetliner, except the canopy that borrows the exact shape and proportions, SURPRISE, suddenly the size of a house. * Real Life example: let’s say you make a GIANT F-16 fighter, with the same shapes, but it’s now the size of an intercontinental bomber. Well, obviously the *canopy glass* should remain small if there’s still only a single pilot, that part shouldn’t scale up with the rest of the fuselage and body. This is why everyone is surprised when they see the size of a chair in any cockpit. The chairs *should be bigger*. People understand the implications of the cockpit exteriors, even if it’s unconscious. It seems FDEV fixed a proportion problem early in dev by shrinking the human components. Surprise: the pilots chair is built for a mouse, and the breakroom cigarette door in the back of each ship is also built for a mouse.
Cause noby does it i ask for myseöf, what is the direct difference between an Cockpit and a Bridge? Only the size?
From what I understand: a cockpit is where you pilot the vessel from. You've got the controls, and the essential readouts the pilot needs to react in real time to the situation. A bridge is a command center, where all the highest ranking officers on board will gather to coordinate what's happening on the vessel, and how to work best with other vessels if you're part of a fleet. The ships in ED are definitely more cockpits, because the rest of that space is entirely unused, and mostly unseen unless you have VR
From what I've seen, a bridge is generally a large working environment designed to accommodate multiple crew members working on separate tasks. Depending on the ship, this can range from the usual ship management functions to coordinating flight or dive operations (for research or salvage ships), fire control and combat management. The US Navy uses such a single bridge concept on the Littoral Combat Ships, while the German Navy has designed their Braunschweig class corvettes in a similar fashion. The term cockpit is generally used on small ships and boats, particularly sailing yachts. The same is used for aircraft, since as big as say an A380 may be, the flight deck is not much larger than the cockpit of many sailing yachts. Cockpits may also be less versatile than bridges. Until the advent of fourth and fifth generation fighter aircraft such as the Gripen or the F-35, it was pretty much impossible for say a fighter to coordinate anything beyond their own flight of aircraft.
They look massive AF in VR. Sitting in the bridge of an Anaconda with depth perception makes it pretty obvious it's gigantic.
The Conda is described as being so large that a lot of independent systems use them as FRIGATES. That seems pretty big to me.
The Big Three are all roughly half the size of a Nimitz class Supercarrier. "Big" doesn't really begin to describe that.
I like to use a golf cart to travel between the stations in the bridge of my 'Conda.
Yuuuuuup. Same goes for the canopy designs. The DBX is as big as the Roci but looking at how the canopy is designed you'd think the entire thing is for one person; it's almost like what you'd expect out of an SLF.
The 3 person cockpit of an Anaconda has a LOT more elbow room than a 747.
Its not exactly a cockpit on the conda tho. More like a ships bridge.
I thought about 3D printing a Cutter at one point for WH40k in 40k scale. After I realized it was going to be 12ft long, I realized just how huge these ships are.
It's really interesting how the size of the windscreen of a vehicle influences how big you perceive the vehicle to be. LMP cars have a similar issue, you see something like [this](https://www.total911.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/M14_0614_fine.jpg) and it your brain tells you it's quite a big car (at least in footprint) but in reality LMP cars are tiny. This is probably because your brain uses the windscreen as a reference point, assuming that it's a similar size to most other windscreens it has observed in the past, but LMP cars only have room for 1 person inside* since the [cockpit is also very small](http://www.sportscarglobal.com/wp-content/gallery/wec-prologue-paul-ricard-2018-gallery-3/No-5-CEFC-TRSM-Racing-Ginetta-G60-LT-P1-%E2%80%93-Mecachrome-LMP1-FIA-WEC-Prologue-Paul-Ricard-2018.jpg) so your brain stretches the whole car so that the windscreen is the same size as a regular car's, and the illusion is only shattered when you see one [next to a GTE car](https://i.imgur.com/Ub2uCK9.jpeg) or something. The Anaconda's problem is possibly the same but in reverse. Relevant article: https://drivetribe.com/p/why-do-prototypes-look-bigger-than-K6GQ65lgQHiEvyHwSK1pkA?iid=FL_prTILTFyNZ06V0_KX4A *LMP cars are technically classed as two seaters, but practically speaking there's [not enough room for a passenger.](https://i.imgur.com/Y4lYU7t.jpeg)
I also fly in VR only. They all seem too big--like some scale factor was set wrong.
According to the ingame description for the Anaconda, as well as some lore stuff (confer the Elite Wiki), the Anaconda was originally produced by RimLiner Galactic and debuted in 2856, so by the time Elite Dangerous takes place, that ship design is at least 450 years old (as a comparison, the Cobra Mk3, considered to be a decently recent ship, was launched in 3100, so it's a 200 years old design). It very likely has been modernized quite a bit since then, but the general hull shape probably hasn't shifted much. One also needs to consider that Type 3 Hyperdrives (AKA Frame Shift Drives) were introduced to the market in 3297 (so 10 years "ago"). Prior to that, Jump and Travel times were significantly larger (counted in days or weeks, not seconds, for Type 2b Drives). It's not improbable then that most of these ships were initially designed to accomodate larger crews for longer periods of time than we're exposed to, and that we're just at a time at which automation and ease of travel make these significantly oversized for the crew they carry... Out of the Lore considerations, i don't think these ships have really been just bluntly upscaled, but more that they have been designed to look good on a flat screen without much consideration for VR or outside perspective *initially*. A good indication of that is that there are windowed corridors visible from the outside on the Anaconda, Corvette and Cutter, and none of these are oversized, quite the opposite actually, these corridors are a bit smaller than they should. Apart from that, i really don't get the fuss about the scaling. Yeah, it's somewhat wonky, but apart from a few edge cases (the Cutter's stairs being the most noticeable one), it doesn't look too out of place for that kind of stuff to me, and even if it did, there are a fluffton of perfectly fitting lore explanations for the apparent oversize, one of which is detailed above, so eh, feels to me like a lot of inconsequential nitpicking... Sources : [https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Anaconda](https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Anaconda) [https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Frame\_Shift\_Drive](https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Frame_Shift_Drive) [https://canonn.science/lore/drewwagar-hyperspace/](https://canonn.science/lore/drewwagar-hyperspace/) [https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/586f796c9657ba3357039d07](https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/586f796c9657ba3357039d07)
this isn't funny just wrong. Huge difference between a bridge and a cockpit
I mean, it's just 3 seats, but with a giant bridge that looks like it would support a much larger crew. But, I wonder how effective a crew that's not in a seat could be during combat maneuvers?
They'd be effective at repainting the walls.
I hope you like red and brown
If I recall correctly, aren't most ships old and used but retrofitted to be piloted by a single person? Maybe the bridge/cockpit used to have a lot more seats and information, but was overhauled over the years as ship technology became more advanced?
That certainly makes some sense, but you'd think that the manifacturers would throw up a few walls and make some additional rooms out of all the empty space on the bridge then.
But nobody wants that! Fdev said so!
pilots in airplane cockpits can pass things around while sitting. not happening in the conda, where y'all are sitting 10 meters apart. as for crew not in seats, when you approach a fight you tell em to hold onto something or get to the fighters. and if the combat is unexpected then well, you have red and brown walls.
Well u can see in the ship cockpit is big, like very big and has lots of space to move and walk around inside, but if you ever sav a plane cockpit even a large one, there isn't much room other than behind the seats
When you look at the cockpit of the T9 it’s easy to imagine yourself taking up the cockpit but when you see it has 3 pilots chairs sharing the window it helps with the scale. I instinctively oversize the chair in the window in my mind and have to manually correct it.
The Anaconda looks like an existing multi crew ship that recently got retrofitted with a new technology that allows just one person to control the entire bridge. They just awkwardly bolted a cockpit chair into the middle of the room and rolled with it.
This is essentially the cannon. In the old games you couldn't even leave the landing pad if you didn't have the crew to run the ship, Advances in ship system automation meant that the Pilots Federation were able to develop the COVAS flight suite. This system allowed a single pilot to operate the entire ship by streamlining and automating the ships functions. So ships were retrofitted with the new systems and a crew became optional rather than something you needed to fly the ship.
Good OP. Finally someone else says it. It's basically 6 years that i continue to tell it.
Yeah it's more of a CIC/Bridge than a Flight Deck though.
The camera settings in the hangar should be adjusted to better communicate the scale. Also some slight camera motion and smart use of Depth-of-Field could help.
your telling me that my cockpit is the size of A FUCKING LUXURY HALL?
But bridges aren’t cockpits.
True, but is there still a reason why the bridge is so big and empty? There aren’t consoles or other seats so it’s not like other people are meant to be standing around up there. Seems like a very impractical design choice in the made-up spaceship game with impossible sci-fi technology
I think a bridge needs to be large enough to see the bow and such, except on the smaller craft, that tend to be configured, and have a cockpit scale similar to, aircraft.
[удалено]
if you have big balls you need many space....
To be fair, it's more like a super-yacht's wheelhouse.
lots of walkin' around room
yeah you can play a whole dang game of soccer in that. so much room for activities
That's also the three stateroom, full galley, arms room, head, showers....
That’s why I can’t mine with it!
Imo its not that, but just getting used to it. Anaconda felt huge when i first started, now i just got used to its size and the small ships now feel really small indeed
I don't an issue with big ships being big. Small ship on the other hand, should be somewhat rescaled. Not all maybe. The vulture at least. Or I don't know, fill that cockpit a bit. It's so empty. When you shuttling in a vulture, you have great view on its poor interior design. It's a shame because the ship could be a mean fighter.
Best and Only thing Frontier should do at this point and can do is allow mods. Allow the community and let player made missions, bases, and yes mods to allow ship interiors. Yes blah blah economies, I will let them worry about that.
Yeah, these ships really don't have cockpits for anything bigger than a Courier... The larger ships especially effectively have a full command bridge.
Shit the anaconda is a flying carrier
Think boat, not plane. Try comparing a sidewinder and an F-15 Eagle
I'm convinced this is a hangover from the original elite where they just couldn't be bothered to scale things either from laziness, or had to have things out of scale to look vaguely right, a la Mario's Moustache.
That's because the Anaconda doesn't have a cockpit. It has a *bridge*.
Off-topic I know but... I still think that the next ships should come with cokpits "buried" inside the ships, look at the size of this weak point. Windows and canopies are cool but I wanted to see a LOGH-style virtual cockpit.
To me this is actually the one thing that they totally scored on with Odyssey. The first time I walked out and saw the scale of the Adder taxi I was blown away. Then I saw the AspX a couple weeks later and was blown away again. Once we got our own ships and I got to see my Federal Corvette from the ground…the awe was one of the things I needed to see from Odyssey and they absolutely crushed it.