"http://upload.localnetsys.com/upload/Maud%201.jpg
http://upload.localnetsys.com/upload/Maud%202.jpg
http://upload.localnetsys.com/upload/Warthog%201.jpg

-- Something like these? I took these a while ago."

Nice... kinda like a fps but you see a part of your ship

well I came up with this idea:

http://www.evula.org/virtualgoo/vendetta/hog_cockpit.jpg

I dunno. There are some issues with the concept, but I think that it gives the "total immersion" feel to the game.

Seriously though, I think I like Celkan's idea of just having parts of the ship show in the 3D view. Maybe just have a "show ship parts" toggle like normal FPS games where you can either show or hide the gun you're using.

LOL CP.

I'd be willing to take some time and get pictures for each ship... Valk and prom not included at the moment.

To bump this up again, here's a suggestion:

Ace Combat does something interesting with regards to cockpit views. There's a view without the cockpit, with an HUD, and when you want a cockpit, it just sticks a cockpit model in the background, so the HUD still shows as normal, but you have a cockpit surrounding you. The only difference is that when you have the cockpit showing, you cannot look directly behind you, mainly because when strapped to a chair, a real person cannot look directly behind them (meaning 180 degrees from the front) just because joints don't turn that far, and also because the back of the chair would be in the way anyway, so this changes how mouselook would work.

I'm glad you bumped this. I still feel that it would add to immersion, *but* when you put it in, it should be the same for everyone, no turning it off, else it wouldn't be fair to people dogfighting with the cockpit on. It could allso help ballancing the game out more, giving the not so good ships maybe a slightly better view (eg, you sit deeper in a cent then in a vult, thus showing more nose and less space in the cent).

a real person cannot look directly behind them (meaning 180 degrees from the front) just because joints don't turn that far

now this works in the advantage of pirates here, their parrots can look straight back and feed them info. Maybe VPRs should concider getting a bird too :p

Bloody hell CP. I almost snorted Coca Cola all over my laptop. :P

martin, was that a good snort or a bad snort. I mean, did you snort because of the joke, or did you snort because you thought the idea was horrible?

ArAsh: you could approach this several ways, but it really comes down to how people want to play. Yes, people playing without cockpits would have a certain advantage, but maybe that's something that people wouldn't mind living with. I mean heck, I play with mouselook off, so does that put me at a disadvantage over people with mouselook on?

I'm guessing Martin was refering to your post from back on Feb 16, CP. I fell out of my chair when I saw that back in Feb.

I think it would allready help if the point of view was actually from the cockpit instead of from the center of the model.

ah... right.

hmm... perhaps the best way I could thing of to preserve the HUDs fuctionality while still having the coolness factor of a rendered cockpit would be to co-implement this with the stealth/power-down ideas previously mentioned:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/6573#81527
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/3273#40582

Basically, the HUD we see is a direct brain-jacked feed from the ship's external sensors and radar.. if we "go silent", then that feed gets turned off, and we have to actually take a look out the windows...

**edit: and, if we want to be REALLY fancy, since engines and manuevering thrusters would be locked in silent mode, moving the mouse could pan you around your highly detailed cockpit interior

that is EXACTLY what I meant...

http://upload.localnetsys.com/upload/Maud%202.jpg
http://upload.localnetsys.com/upload/Warthog%201.jpg

Not so hard Devs...
or give us a CUSTOMIZABLE VIEW thanks that we could set it different for each kind of ships
seriously that's very important for imersion...