Closed/Internal cockpits

What about closed cockpits? Instead of having a glass sphere at the front why not have the pilot inside the ship and have the pilot see… well, here’s an example:

As you can see it is actually a closed armoured panel with VR screens on the inside so it seems like it’s transparent. This way players can actually look around 360º.

1 Like

There’s certainly nothing to prevent us from using closed cockpits however our current (smaller) ships will have traditional cockpits with glass windows. This is just the design aesthetic our artists have decided to use so far.

Certanly, i do enjoy “classic” cockpits myself and it really lends itself to the feel and immersion of the ship. But perhaps later on (or in the MMO) we would have ships by a different manufacturer that features these cockpits, perhaps even have a cute pixelated/shaded filter to accentuate the fact that it’s VR and not eye sight? :blush:

Yeah I don’t see there being any issue with something like that later on.

I like the idea of smaller ships with conventional glass window cockpits with retractable heat shields for use in space, typically in FTL travel. Some examples of this are in Mass Effect and Chronicles of Riddick.

you need glass windows for situations where your ship is damaged or something working wrong. that is why modern real world space ships and tanks not use only cameras.

Definitely +1 this. I actually prefer these kind of cockpits over the regular ones. Not only does it feel more sci-fi, but it’s more logical as well. Then again having both kinds is the best, I think :slight_smile:

If there is something so wrong with your ship that all cameras stopped working, not being able to see the problem through a window is the last of your concerns.

Titanfall got the issue of visibility versus protection right. For mechs, at least.

I think its a lot safer to have a couple of armored camera clusters and have the pilot safe behind armor than to have a huge glass window. If all the cameras have been damaged, the chance that a big glass cockpit(and the pilot) would be damaged is even greater. Not to mention that with cameras you can have night vision, IR and so on. Seeing through glass doesn’t allow that. And sure, maybe its “transparent armor”, not glass, but you still have to put the cockpit close to the ship’s exterior, instead of protecting the pilot in the very core of the ship.

Hell, just put the cameras behind that magical transparent glass and the pilot in the most protected region with a bunch of monitors. If the cameras get busted, the pilot would have been killed anyway.

And if you are worried about power source, or hacking… A battery on the pilot’s seat for just the monitors/cameras will keep them working, and with the cameras having direct cables shielded with Faraday cages directly to the pilot’s monitors and isolated by the same firewall as the rest of the ship fixes hacking/interference. If somebody hacked your cameras, they might as well hack your reactor and blow you up.

On a logical point of view, a ship that is made for combat has no reason to have external windows. They at least need blast shields for combat, but those also create problems.

But this is a video game, so do whatever looks cooler. :smiley:

2 Likes

Can’t resist:

1 Like

This.

Though on the topic of whether it’d be realistic for small spacecraft to have windows, pray tell, how many manned missions outside the Earth’s atmosphere have been performed without windows? It’s not like windows were ever needed for space missions - and they’re pretty damn heavy at a time when mass is a serious concern - but for whatever reason the people going into space seem to prefer them over a (much more precise) monitor, or at least they want both.

I’ve always found the idea of entirely windowless spaceships unrealistic. Sure, in a big one you wouldn’t want anything important behind the window - perhaps a lounge area and a sensor node? - but if you’re going to be spending a lot of mass on transparent material in an otherwise light and fast ship, why not put the pilot behind it? Even ordinary glass takes a fair amount of energy to melt through.

Our current spaceships are like metal balloons that are not designed to withstand combat in any way. Windows are probably the stronger part of the ship. They exist both to save precious energy on monitors/cameras and to make humans feel better with the extreme confinement.

In a futuristic world I’m sure you could make monitors covering an entire wall of a room on a ship that would look more real than if you had a big glass window, so no need for those to make the crew feel better. And the power reactors required to power FTL sure aren’t bothered by some “led screens”.

While that is a cool idea for a cockpit, it’s not the direction we’re going for I:B and it would be out of scope to have both as some suggested.

It looks like it could be a perfect opportunity for the MOD community though.

1 Like

AngryMarine
I agree with you if you are speaking about civil ships, but military machines requires more survivability. that means that some critical systems should be protected from massive system failures and still be workable in minimum requirements.

if any model of partial damaging will be in the game some kind of what i wrote should be implemented. for example EMP weapons that have massive AOE. all your computers and cameras are gone. and only protected is still workable. protection is very expensive so only critical systems like engine and reactor controller are still working. you can use only backup direct control system with no computer assist (welcome to newtonian flights trainings).

its just ideas. but in real world thing works in the same way. it doesn’t matter - military plane or spaceship you are using.

EMP requires at least some atmosphere, it won’t work in deep space or even high enough orbit. It’s the massive displacement of charged molecules in the atmosphere that causes the EMP effect.
Even today, most military systems are shielded against EMP, and if they are supposed to get close to a star or or some other violent space phenomenon, all ships are probably shielded against it. And that’s assuming that Infinity ships use electricity to transmit power.
So let’s avoid putting too much RL there. Things must be believable, not realistic.

So, it was decided that at least small ships will have big, glassy cockpits for their pilots. It won’t change. Now, we can search for a believable explanation for that. But remember, there is already technomagic with things like FTL and fuel-less thrusters, so the most important thing is to have something believable and coherent.
Personally, I like the simple “things tend to shut down in small ships, so just in case we keep mk1 eyeballs there - and if something can break the cockpit, well, it would destroy the ship anyway, with everything in it.

I figure the reason they’re called cock pits is because you need to cock your head in an extremely uncomfortable position to see out of the little tiny… pit. Right? xD

Actually…

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006042424922

Was it Apollo 13 that used a window to sight the Earth so they wouldn’t get lost in space wile firing some engine or other?

They certainly did that in the movie. Whether or not they did that in real life I have no idea.

Well windows is one thing, Dome-shaped protruded glassed cabins is another.

Hmm, I think Alan Shepard went up without any windows. The Mercury Redstone capsule had a pariscope rather than a window.

We’ll have traditional cockpits with windows :slight_smile: