The artists said that they really don’t like pushing the sidebars down as it would destroy the ‘line’ of the ship or something like that.
Your suggestion also looks faaaar to traditional to me.
If they go in that direction though, @Arkenbrien had a good idea conrcerning moving the bar …:
If you look at the outside view of the interceptor you can see that the top canopy is already heavily bend “glass”. I don’t think not putting any distortion in couldn’t be explained away and after a glimpse at the outside view of the ships people would accustom to the shape.
The shape of the cockpit looks awesome from the outside.
To me it gives the impression that the pilot looks trough the top glas panel with the outwards bending glas.
From inside however the pilot looks trough the top panel and the front panel, with the bar inbetween. How about not changing the proportions and structures and instead just changing the angle of the whole outer shape of the part of the cockpit with the windows? Just rotating the whole outer structure 10° should make the bar largely disappear under the indtruments, resulting in a view like hrobertson proposed.
I’m telling you that the view should already be distorted. Adding another bend and not distorting it thus shouldn’t be such a big step. I just though it would be cool to distort but you are right, it wouldn’t help the original problem much.
I highlighted where the bends in the glass already are.
I understand where the bends are located relative to the bars.
Is there visible distortion in the game currently? I’m only going on static images so it’s hard for me to tell.
If there are going to be light reflections highlighting the bends in the glass then that would be understandable.
Unfortunately there isn’t a bend in the glass where @TARS drew that line (check Lomsor’s image). Without the bar it’s just two bits of glass stuck next to eachother. Really weird to have an obvious line.
I voted not to bar, but as numerous people already said, something more has to be done than simply remove the bar, in order to keep the canopy design not too weird ;).
You don’t need a full bend in the glass, you just need to scuff that area up more. A bent area of glass with gather dirt and scratches more easily, just a little unobstructive detail goes a long way to hint its there without distortion.
I would love to say no bar, however it feels wrong.
My eyes are looking for some kind of optical ilusion…it just feels wrong.
Added line like from Tars pics evokes glas on glas grinding, hair rising feeling. nope either
But Hrobertson´s pic seems best.
You know just lower pilot´s seat.
The no bar image was a crude hack, made quicly to present us this poll. Wish you had access to the game, the current to bar option is about an equivalent of having a piece of masking tape stuck on your sunglasses while driving a car. Something needs to be done about that.
Not exactly sure what you are talking about, to me it does look like there is a bend at the position of that bar.
The red line on the left goes from the middle of the curve to the outside of the glass by the bar’s edge. (that’s why there’s a kink between the bottom of the red line and the top edge of the front plate.)The front glass panel is angled back. If the two sheets of glass above and below the bar aren’t dead flat with each other (I think they may well be), they’re still too close to put a clean break between.
Those two knobs sticking out of the main bars could be LCD screens with ammo/power counts for the two side weapons.
On a side note - one of the main reasons i play Vanu and not NC in Planetside 2 is to avoid having bulky things in my view. The Vanu Scythe has much better visibility than, say, a valkyrie that i never fly (you tilt the nose down and use vertical thrust for more speed like a helicopter, putting that horisontal bar right in vector direction.
@hrobertson I’m all for your suggestion. However, I see two potential issues:
It’s still not clear how the changes will affect the cockpit’s overall shape and structure. It’s possible that such a shift could look ugly from the outside.
The cockpit may end up looking too similar to the bomber from the inside. My guess is that developers will want to differentiate it somewhat.
I think my edit shows that the top frame can be moved down at least a bit without compromising the general look.
@gsoto, I didn’t think a change to the exterior geometry was required, just a change to the pilot head position.
As @selbie says, a side-on orthographic projection would be really helpful.
The fact that there is not much canopy anyway, there is far more side fuselage, it is quite shallow in height so the strut thickness determines how much you will see outside of the cockpit. To me, to sustain the angular design in keeping with the body lines the struts need thinning as much as possible so view is not constricted in what is already a coffin like enclosure, anything else throws the lines off.
