Choose the Coolest Cockpit (May 31, 2010)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Wing Commander games are well known for their cockpits. The tiny little viewport on the Tarsus gives the ship quite a bit of character. The bright colors of the Hornet or Sabre in the earlier games are classic, and the 'photorealistic' dashboards in Armada or Wing 3 added to the immersion. Lots of Wingnuts were also happy that these games added dropaway invisible cockpits, and the wide open struts with HUDS model became the prevailing perspective by Wing 4, Prophecy and Secret Ops. Which game has your favorite cockpits?












The last poll asked about the best bonus items available in Wing Commander retail boxes. Blueprints such as those included with WC1 won out, and a large map such as what came with Prophecy were a strong second. Soundtracks were also somehwat popular.



What's your favorite bonus item?





Calendar
1.61%
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Cloth Patch
5.03%
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Fighter Blueprints

43.66%
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Poster
1.21%
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Soundtrack
12.27%

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T-Shirt
6.24%
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Universe Map
29.98%
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Ended on May 31, 2010 | 497 votes






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Original update published on May 31, 2010
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Privater 2 and wing 4 have no cockpits, there are only HUDs.
In my opinion it kills gameplay a little bit.

I always loved Wing COmmander's cockpits.. starting with Wing1 till great Wing 3. I never turn them off even if I have a chance. The nicest are in Wing3 and Privateer1.

In il2 simulator you can also find superb cockpits in 3D of a real WWII planes designed to the last. I had a chance to compare them with real ones (in a museum - Spitfire for example), and I can confirm that most of them are accurate.
 
WC3 weren't just the best because of their fidelity, but also because they were very modest in how much they cluttered the view. The Prophecy/SO struts, however, actually made me wish for just a plain HUD like WC4's. They didn't serve any purpose other than to try to convince me that Casey really needed to work on developing his neck muscles.
 
I absolutely loved ALL of the cockpits that only had tiny slits for viewports. It made each ship feel unique. The open huds of W4 and P2 and the wide open canopies in Prophecy really sapped alot of character out the games.
 
I absolutely loved ALL of the cockpits that only had tiny slits for viewports. It made each ship feel unique. The open huds of W4 and P2 and the wide open canopies in Prophecy really sapped alot of character out the games.

I guess I appreciated that each ship got its own unique set of canopy struts, which was an improvement over just the HUD from WC4/P2. Of course they don't convey quite the same thing - each one kind of feels like you're suspended in a bubble canopy or ball turret. Compare that to the tiny single-VDU on the Ferret vs the large cockpit feel of the Broadsword, Orion or Galaxy.

I also very much like all the detail that went into the ten different left/right/rear views in Armada. Not the only game to have them, but those are really great.
 
I also liked the detail in the Armada views, but there was one other feature in the Armada cockpit that put it above the rest for me. The damage screen in the MFD gave you the percentage damage of your shields. After a little while those percentage points really gave you a sense of how many hits you can take or need to give out in any given match. A few times I survived engagements with barely any shields by managing them using that info.
 
Cockpits have really been ignored of late - it's a shame. The IL2 ones that LarkInFlight mentioned are fantastic, have moving parts etc. but have not seen anything like the hand-included cockpit models of wc1-3 anywhere else...

Wouldn't it be great to see a more modern take of cockpits? I guess the equivalent would be like many 1st Person Shooters have the player's hands showing, reloading, doing stock-strikes etc. etc. Good ol' 'hands in front of the face' when you crash (like strike commander!), operating controls, all that stuff... But in full 3d using today's tech.

Imagine going from scramble => flight from player point of view - running to craft (would give a nice view of your craft), climbing into cockpit, closing the canopy, all that atmosphere that is missing from just about every other space combat sim.

Ahhh pipe dreams. Never tire of them.
 
That's a tough poll for me: WC 1 and 2, Privateer, Armada all had very nice cockpits and WCP was a good compromise between the early cockpits and the WC4 pure HUD.

In the end I voted for Armada just because it also had some very nice Kilrathi cockpits (Kor-larh's being my favourite).
 
I had to vote WC1. Having started with WC3, then WC4, I really appreciate the cockpits in WC1. I remember when I started playing WC3, the fake looking arm for me distracted from the immersion of the game. At the time, I thought cockpits also were useless since they just limited your field of view. When I played WC1, I saw that each fighter 'felt' different primarily due to their cockpit layouts.

I remember getting frustrated with the Scimtar because the gagues weren't all in one spot, so it wasn't convenient for keeping track of everything. That actually made the gaming experience better since when you heard the other pilots complaining about that ship, you could relate and understand why they might have gripes. That being said, I still preferred the Scimtar over the Hornet. WC Privateer's cockpits are the same deal: they're pretty much the same game engine and graphics of WC1, so I gave WC1 the vote.
 
That's a tough poll for me: WC 1 and 2, Privateer, Armada all had very nice cockpits and WCP was a good compromise between the early cockpits and the WC4 pure HUD.
Heh, yeah. I still haven't voted, I just can't make up my mind. All I know is that WC3 and WC4 were the worst by a long shot.

I suppose WCP would be the top choice, if it wasn't for one detail - it had no visible cockpit damage. That's a huge drawback. It's the only thing we weren't able to re-create when working on WC1/2 cockpits in Standoff.
 
WC3 is my fav, I just wish the cockpit graphics could have been a bit more animated like they were in the 3DO cutscene where Blair does a ground attack on a shield generator. That footage was awesome.
 
I keep on remembering Strike Commander's 3D cockpit. That was a real something.
I must say, I've always wondered why the WC series stuck with 2D cockpits when the very same people, at the very same time, were making 3D cockpits for Strike Commander and Pacific Strike. Rather curious.
 
I vote for WC1, classic, rugged, damageable and distinctive. I was so disappointed that WC3 didn't have artwork for side and rear views from the cockpits. Little did I know that WC4 would be removing them entirely!

The dings and damage to the 'glass' in WC4 is so goofy looking without cockpit art, and it's criminal how cockpits are clearly visible in the cut-scenes...such a tease.

Personally I like it when cockpit art restricts the view. It gives a game character and adds a sense of depth and scale. HUD-only makes it seem like you're a 2-D plane rushing face forward through space....I still haven't forgiven WC4 for popularizing the cockpitless space-sim!

IL2 has been mentioned above, and considering the amazing detail built into flight sim cockpits it does surprise me that space-sim developers never seemed to spend any time making simpler structures (less instruments, no need for historical accuracy) for fewer craft (space-sims usually have less flyables than flight sims)

If we got any structure at all in recent years it was lazy generic 3d-strut crap with all the artistic flair of like, mechwarrior 2 'pits from how many years ago?
 
I've always wondered why the WC series stuck with 2D cockpits when the very same people, at the very same time, were making 3D cockpits for Strike Commander and Pacific Strike.
I can only guess that it was a design and cost decision. Strike Commander really strove to maximise realism and a 3D cockpit would be a major part of that. For WC, however, I'm not sure if the work towards a 3D cockpit would be all that worthwhile, especially when they gave the option to disable them entirely with WC3.
 
I must say, at times playing (wc1/2 kilrathi saga version) I was glad to be able to turn off the cockpit, purely for visibility's sake. Kurasawa 2 for example...

One wonders whether the obstructive cockpits, whilst attractive, were set the way they were for technical reasons - the size of the overlay makes the render window much smaller, which would have improved the framerate on slow computers of the day. I noticed this when running kilsaga with an emulator - the no-cockpit option did drop the framerate a little...

Mechwarrior 3 & 4 had some pretty sweet 3d cockpits, and unfortunately we must give x2/x3 it's due in this area as well. Pity you have to wade through terrible gameplay to enjoy it... (but thats another thread).

I always found the wc3 cockpits a little overdone... wc1/2/armada had just the right amount of detail and features to match the info being displayed, it just appeared the wc3 cockpits were more art than interface, which meant that I really only used the cockpit in takeoff/landing. Any time I got in a hairy situation, off would go the cockpit... Once again it looks like another art vs. design argument that was won by art... and failed in-game.

EDIT: Oh yeah, Strike Commander ftw. I still play that game now and again...
Just about got a novel here!
 
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