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The new Chair Surface...great idea, terrible implementation.


Ving

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Back in Alpha the external view for all chair units was focused directly on the players character, something like this:

image.png.5089db2b0947f73276a0f1577ce950e7.png

 

This was great. You would spend weeks building a ship and then fly for a few hours to another planet (before warp), but it was OK, because with the camera pointed directly at your character you could zoom in/out/through the ship and view it from any angle. This was perfect for taking screenshots of your ships in flight, you could get close ups directly in front of the cockpit, or behind the engine stacks, etc. I would post some Alpha examples, but that's not allowed ?

 

With the introduction of PvP NQ decided to change this external view and give the current 'periscope' view instead:

image.png.a6e556ff8222e3cf4e910641bd6b2ccc.png

 

Now, the camera is directly above the construct, and as you zoom in the construct disappears from your view. There is no way to zoom in directly on your character/chair. (Unless I'm missing some hidden keybind??)

 

I had assumed that with the new Chair Surface NQ would have implemented a view similar to the old Alpha chair views, where the zoom is focused on the character. Unfortunately, the external view is just a copy/paste of the periscope view ?‍♂️

 

If you put a Chair Surface on an L Static, you get a camera way up in the air above the center of the construct, with no relation to the position of the Chair Surface, and no way to zoom in on your character. 

 

This is such a bad implementation ?

 

The original Alpha external camera zoom view would be so much better, and would allow you to place Chair Surfaces in different locations, so ppl could zoom in on different sections of the construct to admire the building work.

 

1) Please NQ, add an option to change the zoom view on Chair Surfaces to the old Alpha style zoom, so we can actually use them to view constructs, rather than some nebulous empty space in the air above them.

 

and, more importantly...

2) PLEASE also add an option to change to the Alpha zoom view to all other chairs, (Command Chair, Hovercraft Seat, etc.). Not everyone PvPs and needs the 'periscope' view. As a ship builder I really want to be able to view my actual ship while flying it, and zoom in/through to my character. This would increase the enjoyment of ship building/flying no end.

 

It would probably take someone a couple of hours to implement, heck, you probably still have the old code in there somewhere :o

 

 

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  • Ving changed the title to The new Chair Surface...great idea, terrible implementation.

I agree. You just have to look at the implementation of a command chair and the avatar slouch(Abrams star trek JT Kirk copy) position and the fact that you still can' t align the position of your cross-hair central to the voxels of your construct design.  Perhaps an option to center cross-hair would be in order also. 

 

Differentiation is one thing stupidity is another.

 

 

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Hi.

 

I really like to fly my ships in 1st person view and not outside viewpoint. 1st person view is most certainly the view I get best touch to flying.
But if you want to make armored ship and cover your core and chair, it is not possible, so I have an idea for that.

What if there was some kind of camera or sensor unit what you can place outside of the ship and link it to the screen inside your bridge/control room?
This way you can have Star Trek like bridge where you can have all crew positions and big screen what shows whatever camera view you want.

Like this:

screen1.jpg.7fc8e453e30fe99b05388e060ae2169f.jpg

It would add an option for people who like to fly in 1st person/cockpit view and would also add some realism. 

As far as I know, at the moment this is not possible with LUA either.

 

Jean-Luc is asking what do you think?

129243808_picardonbridge.jpg.176d892b2951477d8254bfb2a0566881.jpg

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The lopsided seating position of the avatar in the char is very annoying when you have a symmetrical ship. it sets off the old OCD in me.

I'm not a fan of effortless 3rd person views in MMOs because of immersion reasons.
Years ago I added a request for external sensor units or even just using current elements such as radar or weapons to allow an external view. If they were all destroyed, you would loose access to third party view and thus retain the value of good cockpit visibility.

I've never used or crafted one, but do armoured windows' shutters actually open and close?

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8 hours ago, Ravenis said:

Hi.

 

I really like to fly my ships in 1st person view and not outside viewpoint. 1st person view is most certainly the view I get best touch to flying.
But if you want to make armored ship and cover your core and chair, it is not possible, so I have an idea for that.

 

 

I have some VTOL ships that sit on the tail and then transition to normal horizontal flight in the air. Needless to say this does not work very well in 1st person view since you are just looking up at the sky from the cockpit, and the new external view is making it so that I have to zoom as far back as possible just to be able to see and check the backside (tail) of my ships during landing.

 

There is also something wacky going on with sound in external view now. Rotating and looking straight at the ship front to back the motor sound suddenly cut out completely, and then come back again once I start rotating to a side/back view.

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10 hours ago, GraXXoR said:

The lopsided seating position of the avatar in the char is very annoying when you have a symmetrical ship. it sets off the old OCD in me.
 

Totally. The slouched, off-centered pilot view is infuriating. Most of my ships have 1st person cockpit designs, and I spend a lot of time adjusting the position of the glass / screens / chair to get the best, unobstructed view. Now the view in all my ships is skewed ?

 

This is one reason why I think DU will ultimately fail as a game, not because of this one issue, but because this just demonstrates how out of touch NQ are with their target audience. Building with voxels takes a lot of effort, and I would guess that most people that spend large amounts of time building ships have some perfectionist / OCD leanings. For NQ to only provide one Command Chair, and then off-set its 1st person view for the sake of copying a famous seating position from a popular franchise shows that they don't understand the players, in my view.

 

I've raise a number of bug reports about this, but nothing has changed. They could easily just make Command Chair #2 with the original, symmetrical, centered, seating position. Instead we get a completely useless Chair Surface ?

 

The attached image was sent in with my last bug report.  There is no way to get this screen centered on the target (unless ofc you use a hover seat, which doesn't have the same functionality as the Command Chair).

 

chair bug.png

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11 hours ago, GraXXoR said:



I've never used or crafted one, but do armoured windows' shutters actually open and close?

no you can't see anything through armored windows

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