How massive does that make the TIE fighters?

The Y-wing cockpit may sink deeper into the ship than the A-wing.

It does sink deeper. The y-wing cockpit windows are very small and visibility would suck. But look at the width of it, not the height. The a-wing's cockpit has very little room across the shoulders of the pilot, so we should expect it to be narrower than the x-wing or y-wing (which seem to have more space). But on FFG's model it's wider . Since the FFG model seems to have pretty good proportions and no obvious shape distortion the most obvious conclusion is that it's a scale issue.

Question: do you think the Z-95's out of scale too? It's got a huge cockpit compared to the X-wing but they're technologically very similar ships: it's hard to imagine the Z-95 has a massively more spacious cockpit than the X-wing.

It's hard to say given that we have no film evidence for the z-95 and the various EU sources have different opinions about what the ship looks like. But in its first appearance (back in 1979!) it was described as having a large bubble canopy with excellent visibility, and the old concept art for the x-wing that was later labeled as the z-95 shows a similar design.

It's also important to note that the x-wing, like the y-wing, has very small cockpit windows. So I think this is probably a delibeate design choice. The x-wing probably has better protection for the pilot at the expense of poor visibility, the z-95 makes the opposite choice.

Holding the models up in front of me, the back of the A-wing cockpit (it bulges out as it goes forward) and the widest point on the Y-wing's cockpit seem fairly equal in width, but yeah, I see where you're coming from, it looks really off scale.

That being said, the very back of the A-wing cockpit is 0.4mm across, 0.5mm is the cockpit at its widest. Assuming 1/270 scale, that would predict there to be 1.08m between the outside of the corners visible in your interior shot. Judging it by eye (and I admit I'm very fallible here) that looks sensible.

The Y-wing is 0.4 at its widest, which again is 1.08m. Looking at your shot of the hanger, that seems a bit small. Could it possibly be the Y-wing that has a scale discrepancy between its filming model (which for the Y-wing we know the mini is to scale with because it says FFG measured them) and its full scale one?

No, because you're neglecting the effect of perspective. In those pictures the a-wing is closer to the camera than the other ships, so it will look larger. Without knowing the distance between them (impossible to do against a plain black background) you can't correct for this and get an accurate comparison.

Does motion help at all?

The Y-Wing and A-Wing are both off.

"HERE WE GO AGAIN!!!!!!"

"IT'S A TRAP!!!!!!"

This is literally the shot right after that. XD

No, because you're neglecting the effect of perspective.

No I'm not. If you look at the gif that was posted you see the A-Wing and X-Wing flying with one behind the other, and you can compare them to other objects. The A-Wing in that image is clearly not that much smaller than the X-Wing is.

Yeah, in the moving shot the a-wing flies into frame before the y-wing, so perspective says if anything that it should look smaller than it actually is, and then the a-wing and the x-wing fly into frame at the same time, so they are both the same distance from camera. And in both cases the miniature looks spot on in size compared to the other 2 ships.

You know why comparing things in space is a near impossible task? Lack of reference points you can not judge on sight how big one object is compared to another object without them both being stationery on solid ground with a building or something else to compare with.

The mat painting was a best guess by an artist and can't really be taken as gospel.

You know why comparing things in space is a near impossible task? Lack of reference points you can not judge on sight how big one object is compared to another object without them both being stationery on solid ground with a building or something else to compare with.

The mat painting was a best guess by an artist and can't really be taken as gospel.

But it wasn't a best guess. there are two images of the A-Wing that show exactly how large it is. Which is to say, not very large at all.

______________________

Here's a better question for everyone.

What purpose does a cockpit THAT HUGE serve on a fast interceptor fighter? Honestly? What purpose? Why would it be that needlessly big? If we go by XWMG's A-WIng as THE canon size, then you could fit TWO pilots in that thing, when we have seen again and again in the film that the A-wing is very freaking small and can only fit ONE pilot.

Guys this is not difficult. XWMG's A-Wing is Oversized.

XWMG's A-Wing is Oversized.

No it's the size that LFL says it should be.

XWMG's A-Wing is Oversized.

No it's the size that LFL says it should be.

Well LFL is f*cking wrong.

What purpose does a cockpit THAT HUGE serve on a fast interceptor fighter? Honestly? What purpose? Why would it be that needlessly big? If we go by XWMG's A-WIng as THE canon size, then you could fit TWO pilots in that thing, when we have seen again and again in the film that the A-wing is very freaking small and can only fit ONE pilot.

Same could be said of the TIE fighter, no? The bubble canopy is the exterior surface. We don't know how much space is actually pilot seating and how much is controls or dashboard. Look at a car, for example. The window goes much further forward than the seating.

Also, seeing as you're citing the film, here's as close as we're likely to get to side by side comparisons.

The mat painting was a best guess by an artist and can't really be taken as gospel.

Again, the scaling has nothing to do with the matte painting of the hangar. I've posted pictures of the a-wing model that was used in the movie, along with cockpit interior shots that confirm the scale of the exterior model (at least enough to prove that the a-wing is small).

The bubble canopy is the exterior surface. We don't know how much space is actually pilot seating and how much is controls or dashboard.

Except we do, because we have pictures of both the cockpit interior and an a-wing model with a transparent cockpit window and the pilot clearly visible. And there is no wasted space, the pilot is crammed in there about as tight as you can get. Let me post them again:

Also, seeing as you're citing the film, here's as close as we're likely to get to side by side comparisons.

And, again, that scene doesn't work for scaling purposes because the ships aren't an equal distance away from the camera. Both a-wings are following behind their respective x-wings, so by the time you have both ships visible the x-wing has moved into the background while the a-wing is right next to the camera. They're close enough to tell that there isn't an orders of magnitude difference between the two, but you're not going to get any precise scaling out of that shot.

What purpose does a cockpit THAT HUGE serve on a fast interceptor fighter? Honestly? What purpose? Why would it be that needlessly big? If we go by XWMG's A-WIng as THE canon size, then you could fit TWO pilots in that thing, when we have seen again and again in the film that the A-wing is very freaking small and can only fit ONE pilot.

Same could be said of the TIE fighter, no? The bubble canopy is the exterior surface. We don't know how much space is actually pilot seating and how much is controls or dashboard. Look at a car, for example. The window goes much further forward than the seating.

Also, seeing as you're citing the film, here's as close as we're likely to get to side by side comparisons.

I know how cars work. I -design- starfighters. I know how much cockpit space is needed.

http://i.imgur.com/u5fkrA6.png

http://i.imgur.com/hoEIyWN.png

http://i.imgur.com/F6tuaSl.png

I am all about knowing how much space one has to occupy and yes, what I design tends to be a little bit cramped. Kind of like an A-Wing. But i'm aware of how cockpits work. Even still, the A-Wing's is TINY.

The LFL figure was based on the model which was built out of proportion to the rest of the models. So were the TIEs. If you took the film models and compared the pilots, the A-Wing pilot would be about ten feet tall. Given that and the photos above, I think it's obvious the craft was meant to be much closer to the 5-6m range.

The TIEs are not scale either; I think the canon length of 8.99m was actually meant to indicate height. A 9m height would make them only around 6-7m long; half the length of an X-Wing, which makes a lot more sense to me.

Any way you look at it, FFG used the [wrong] figures from LFL and probably didn't have much of a choice, so I don't think they can be faulted for it.

Well LFL is f*cking wrong.

Well there we go then. Captain Lackwit know more about how big a A-Wing should be then the people who made it. Despite the film evidence to the contrary. Because looking at the gifs which is much more conclusive then anything I've seen so far it does look like it should be 9.6m.

Bottom line is this.

LFL says the A-Wing is 9.6m long. So FFG made their model the size that LFL said it was.

So there is no reason to argue the point because even if you could prove for an absolute fact that the 9.6m size is wrong by producing a real A-Wing or a spec sheet from LFL saying it's something other then 9.6m it still wouldn't change the size FFG had to use.

So Im going to take my own advice and run.

"But LFL said so" isn't a very convncing argument when they've made other scale misakes. For years LFL said that the Executor was 8km long, despite indisputable film evidence that it was much longer. Why? Because some old RPG supplement said it was 8km long, and that became the official figure. It took a lot of years of fan complaints for them to finally fix the mistake. So the a-wing could very well be the same kind of situation. The movies show one size, but some random RPG author/toy company/whatever publishes a different number and suddenly that one is official.

Any way you look at it, FFG used the [wrong] figures from LFL and probably didn't have much of a choice, so I don't think they can be faulted for it.

I don't think it's really about assigning blame, it's just recognizing the obvious facts of the situation. FFG's a-wing model is too big compared to the other ships. Could there be good reasons for it? Sure. Besides the "LFL said so" reason there are other factors to consider. A tiny a-wing selling for the same price as all of the other ships might seem like a poor value, and there could be minimum feature size issues with a correctly scaled a-wing that would require FFG to sacrifice detail. But an out-of-scale a-wing being a reasonable choice to make shouldn't stop us from recognizing that the FFG model is not the same scale as the other ships.

Well LFL is f*cking wrong.

Well there we go then. Captain Lackwit know more about how big a A-Wing should be then the people who made it. Despite the film evidence to the contrary. Because looking at the gifs which is much more conclusive then anything I've seen so far it does look like it should be 9.6m.

Bottom line is this.

LFL says the A-Wing is 9.6m long. So FFG made their model the size that LFL said it was.

So there is no reason to argue the point because even if you could prove for an absolute fact that the 9.6m size is wrong by producing a real A-Wing or a spec sheet from LFL saying it's something other then 9.6m it still wouldn't change the size FFG had to use.

So Im going to take my own advice and run.

Dude are you denser than Uranium?

Same guys made this too. FFS man. you're picking and choosing which evidence you want. Instead of the one where we CAN SEE A MAN INSIDE OF IT.

FFG's a-wing model is too big compared to the other ships.

Except for the bit above where you can actually compare the A-Wing to the other ships and it looks just right.

This is why I have always maintained that trying to use the film footage to determine sizes is an utterly moronic endeavor. Whoever owns the franchise (whatever the franchise is, not just Star Wars) gets to say what the canon is. If the artists who actually did the film didn't get it right in some scenes it doesn't matter because film and television is never going to be consistent. The realities of filming make it pretty much impossible. There are GOING to be inconsistencies. The miniatures match how the A-Wing looks size wise compared to the actual film when we see footage of it next to other ships. The entire counter argument seems to rest on the idea that the set of the cockpit interior doesn't match something else. Well tough, that's film. All other data supports the given size.

The cockpit is extremely important though. It's like seeing our hands in front of us. It's 1:1.

Except for the bit above where you can actually compare the A-Wing to the other ships and it looks just right.

Again, perspective. The a-wing is closer to the camera than the x-wing, so it's going to look larger relative to the x-wing than it actually is. To properly comapre the two you either need a clear shot where the models are the same distance from the camera and there are no other perspective issues, or you need to scale them based on common features (in this case the pilots).

Whoever owns the franchise (whatever the franchise is, not just Star Wars) gets to say what the canon is. If the artists who actually did the film didn't get it right in some scenes it doesn't matter because film and television is never going to be consistent.

Except we aren't dealing with a case of the franchise owner saying "an a-wing is X meters long" and the artists getting it wrong. Most, if not all, of the various size numbers for Star Wars ships were invented after the movies by EU authors/game fluff/toy companies/etc and LFL just said "this is now official". There is nothing at all that suggests that Lucas (or anyone at a similar level of control) wanted the a-wing to be big and everyone from the model builder to the set designer completely screwed it up.

Plus, this isn't just case of some scenes getting it wrong. The ship models show a tiny a-wing, the interior cockpit shots confirm the a-wing's size relative to the pilot, and nothing in any other movie source shows a large a-wing. The ONLY place the large a-wing appears is in non-movie sources.

The entire counter argument seems to rest on the idea that the set of the cockpit interior doesn't match something else.

And this is wrong. The model of the a-wing that was used in the movie includes a visible pilot, and it gives us two choices: either the a-wing is tiny, or a-wing pilots are all giants instead of normal humans. The cockpit interior shots just confirm that the a-wing is supposed to be a tight fit around the pilot, and it wasn't a case of a careless model builder throwing in whatever pilot figure they happened to have available.

Most, if not all, of the various size numbers for Star Wars ships were invented after the movies by EU authors/game fluff/toy companies/etc and LFL just said "this is now official".

You're right that's very likely what happened. They most likely had some basic idea of how big an A-Wing should've been and at some point decided to give it a hard number. Which is the size that FFG used, and had to use because you know LFL owns the rights to it all.

So if you want to argue that LFL has it wrong, fine I don't really care one way or the other. Because how big you or I think it should be isn't relevant to the size they made it in XWM. They made it the size they had to. So it's the correct size based on the constraints they had to work with.

Again whether this matches up with the film or not is at this point completely irrelevant. Because even if you could somehow convince LFL they're wrong, it's unlikely that FFG is going to reproduce the A-Wing miniature. Frankly this whole thing is the epitome of a academic argument, that in the end means nothing and changes nothing.

Vandor, dude, your argument is very similar to the admins on the Star Wars wiki about The Moldy Crow. It was demonstratably f*cking oversized with their estimates but they told everyone to sit down and shut up, that it was the canon length when it was so clearly wrong.

It's the same thing here. You know, just because it's the cited source, doesn't mean the source is right.