How hard would it be to move the camera/point of view to the cockpit location on any given ship? I'm not asking to make the ship visible (although I support the idea wholeheartedly), just to move the camera...

I have no idea and am very curious now that you mention it. I too would like to know - a vague estimation would do.

this is a wilde guess (i don't have acess to VO's source code) but there would probably be a number of additions to the ship objects to make the camera positions variable from ship to ship. i'm certain it could be done, and probably without too much dificulty, but it's not the sort of thing that you can hack together in a couple minuts.

It would also be cool to have a look left and right and front and rear type thing.

-tm

Absafreakin' loutley. I agree wholeheartedly.

i would love a in-cockpit view, as well as left/right/rear view keys.

i think the classic lucas arts game "X-Wing" has the best approach to this. it provides a somehwat simple and non-intrusive in cockpit view, with very easy to use left/right/rear view shifts, which become second nature. additionally, the cockpit view can be turned off when desired.

i would love to see something similar in VO, although designing the cockpit panels and such would not only be time consuming but creatively taxing. maybe they could be player-submitted, like the ship design contest that happened a while ago?

I don't know if this would work too well given VO's "mouselook" steering mode. If your view is positioned in the center of the ship, then when you change your "look" the ship rotates around your POV evenly.

What if your view was at the top of the ship like on the behemoth? When you moved your look would the ship swing in a wide arc around the cockpit? That would look kinda funny. Would the ship still rotate around it's center? That wouldn't work too well since your POV would move if it didn't coincide with the rotational axis.

Remember that blurb in the backstory about a pilot's consciousness being linked to the ship? I like to think if it as the character experiencing the universe as the ship itself like in mechwarrior, so your POV wouldn't necessarily be where the cockpit is.

Perhaps, but then the ship should have a couple cameras on it to help the pilot, so there could still be left, right, and rear views.

And Proximo IX, the ship design contest thread is still active in the general forum. I actually just posted my first 3D model ever to it yesterday. :)

In-cockpit camera is fine as long as it doesn't draw the dashboard &c on the screen. HUD only please.

no! this is a bad idea for exactly the reasons that phaserlight pointed out. steering your ship would become unbearably confusing, and horrible, and in general not as good as the way it is now.

besides, what do you possibly hope to gain from this?

Hmm. Maybe ships would have some differences? That's an advantage (a centurion, valkyrie, or vulture has a center-ish cockpit, whereas a moth's is quite offset). This would make steering the different classes, well different. Also, it would make first-person piloting of a capship doable.

Still it would be nice to actually see out of the cockpit point of view. If I'm not mistaken, this has been brought up several times in the past, and I think it could contribute to the different feel of ships.

Personally, I would even like some cockpit grafics, like suggested here too (and in the past) but thats a whole other subject with its own complications.

I would really, really like to see the kinds of views you folks are talking about here. In fact, it's the lack of useful views that led me to eventually stop subscribing. Put in a useful external camera view that I can locate, myself, or at least some of these suggested left/right/rear/top/bottom views, and I'll happily return! Would LOVE to see this happen.

Wouldn't mind the cockpit art, either. It's a spaceship game! I want to *see* more of the spaceships; it makes it more fun for me. No need to force the cockpit view on anybody, but make it an option. The main thing for me is the views to all sides, and an external view of my ship, cuz it just looks cool.

Moving the POV would be great. And of course, more realistic. I have heard devs mention on the boards that they might add cockpit art in the long term, but with an option to disable it. Having a large cockpit in the screen would make the type of combat vendetta uses very difficult.

We do have external views, you just press F9. We do not have cockpit views, and I would very much like to see them. :)

The views that F9 gives you are just not good enough for such a beautiful game. Most of them are fine, I suppose, but a camera that revolves around the ship or hovers off to one side is useless. It's no wonder that just about no one uses it. Just being able to position that camera around the ring of its 'orbit' would be swell, even.

In Outlaw Star... ships deployed camera drones to aid in combat...

Would it be possible to have 5-6 "camera drones" deployed at all times with fixed POVs set by the pilot?

(Zoras secretly wants grappler combat too... buuuut... that's hard to work in... even though the Devus D-3 Guardians try to grapple with my ships all the time... arrgh!)

If this is done, then we'll also want the ability to rotate the ship while in an external view.

with mouselook on, I assume you mean, right? :P

re: cockpit views
I assume that you mean that you want a view that appears as if you're sitting in the cockpit of the spacecraft. Does this view necessarily have to coincide with the actual location of the cockpit on the ship? All cockpit views would be client side anyway (not visible to other players) so WHERE the virtual camera is located really shouldn't matter.

And yea, placing the camera off of the ship's center of rotation could get very confusing. I shudder to think of what piloting the Milennium Falcon must be like...

re: outside views
The rear view wouldn't be nearly so bad if the ship didn't move around so much. If the camera were more locked off, then at least it'd be usable. Although, the closer that the camera were to the ship's z axis (I'm calling x to the sides, y up and down, and z forwards and backwards, as they are in a 3D program), the easier it would be to aim weapons.

I"m all for the cockpit view so long as the current POV isn't taken out. Personally I like the current POV far more than 3rd person or in-cockpit. I think tht in-cockpit would be best with joysticks, and would like to see it an option for mouselook off only, if it becomes an option. Whether it does or not, I don't care...just don't take away the current POV.