Man, if those Alien Luxury models came painted I would order them right now

Sadly I have the artistic skills of a blind manatee that just ate too many Funyuns

Forgot Quote, this can be ignored....

Seriously, Move along, nothing to see here...

37 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

The laser blasts are more or less presented as they are in the films, although XWA goes a bit too heavy on the lighting effects (we never see laser cannon significantly lighting the cockpit of firing craft in the films, whereas in XWA laser blasts provide quite a significant light source).

Also, it's not scale, but the field of view, and how the game handles perspective and depth of field that's the question. Here's a rough test render I did with the E-wing model I ran:

The camera is set about where the pilot's viewpoint would be. You'll want to right-click > view image to see the full resolution that makes it a bit easier to estimate the FOV. This is the actual FOV I get with my display:

Having played a lot of flight sims, I'm more concerned by the visibility over the nose, because for anything other than a low-deflection shot you have to aim at a target that's well below your line of sight (the X-wing is similarly bad about this; the pilot's seat is much too low in the cockpit for good forward visibility). The cannon barrel doesn't occupy a significant enough arc of the field of view to really interfere with me, and I pretty much look PAST it. I honestly find the canopy frame to be a bigger obstruction.

Yea, I can see this being a issue for me, in its entirety. Wow that is a very bulky cockpit frame. And if we assume the it has actual proper lighting and effects, I can see this getting out of control visually very quickly in a firefight, with things impacting shields, and returning fire.

How about we just agree the E-Wing is a silly design and also accept that the only reason I bought 2 of them last week on Amazon is because they're $9 each.

1 hour ago, FriendofYoda said:

Man, if those Alien Luxury models came painted I would order them right now

Sadly I have the artistic skills of a blind manatee that just ate too many Funyuns

🤨 Are manatees normally diabetic? Not sure how deep fried rings of dough dipped in an onion powder/water mix would affect the steadiness of their jaws otherwise.

30 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

🤨 Are manatees normally diabetic? Not sure how deep fried rings of dough dipped in an onion powder/water mix would affect the steadiness of their jaws otherwise.

I'm never able to be much good at anything after eating a bag of those delicious little buggers

Mrs. Friend will sadly attest I am sure

1 hour ago, XPav said:

How about we just agree the E-Wing is a silly design

Sorry, but I don't.

2 minutes ago, Ambaryerno said:

Sorry, but I don't.

but how cockpit open

2 hours ago, Zeoinx said:

Yea, I can see this being a issue for me, in its entirety. Wow that is a very bulky cockpit frame. And if we assume the it has actual proper lighting and effects, I can see this getting out of control visually very quickly in a firefight, with things impacting shields, and returning fire.

The closest we see to "shield splash" in the Trilogy are impact sparks, which are consistent throughout:

Note that the laser bolts themselves don't significantly illuminate anything, even though several are passing quite close to the X-wing. The shield "sparks" do, but that's something that could probably be filtered out, or at least mitigated, by polarizing the canopy or pilot's visor. TBH, a laser bolt in Star Wars is probably not much different than the tracer round on a real-world aircraft. It's there to act as a visual guide to show where you're shooting.

13 minutes ago, XPav said:

but how cockpit open

Canonically the dorsal cannon his hinged. However I think a better mechanism would be to allow the canopy to open by sliding forward, and having explosive bolts that blast the cannon clear if the pilot ejects during an emergency.

Incidentally, here's an idea how the E-wing's canon could be compensated for, using a rough HUD mockup.

So certainly, in some cases an object might be lost in the cannon. The further away the object, the more it will be obscured. However...

All it takes is sensor data to extrapolate and superimpose the obscured object over the cannon on the HUD (in fact this could be applied to other visual blindspots, as well).

Frankly, it's unfair to single the E-wing out for obstructed views considering how horrible they are in virtually every fighter in the franchise. A TIE pilot wouldn't be able to see anywhere but straight ahead of him, and through four tiny slits overhead. The Y-wing may have the WORST visibility of any other ship in the franchise, with its heavily-framed canopy, and small forward viewport. The X-wing has almost no visibility aft at all, because of the tiny rear window obstructed by the astromech. The only starfighters in the Original Trilogy that have anything approaching a genuinely acceptable field of view are the A-wing and B-wing.

On 3/2/2019 at 2:17 PM, Ambaryerno said:

Take this as you will, but after flying the E-wing in mods for X-Wing: Alliance I found the overhead gun offered very little obstruction (especially that an advanced HUD couldn’t compensate for) and the laser blasts weren’t much of a distraction.

Yeah, it’s a 20 year-old sim, but it still works as a model.  

ha, that was a great game. never had that mod, but in flight sim games, particularly star wars ones, the ships with the most bits in your field of vision are usually my least favorite to fly, minus the Tie-Defender. the importance of pilot vision is actually a thing that Aeronautical engineers learned from the rapid advancement of technology during and after WW2, where you can see the planes morph in shape as they realized the guys who could see flew better. Bomber cockpits pull forward, fighters lean in and up, etc. Just look at the P-38, which is probably the first plane to take a shape of nosecone and cockpit we're used to in modern fighters, even if its triple hull never caught on

On 3/3/2019 at 1:10 AM, Ambaryerno said:

The closest we see to "shield splash" in the Trilogy are impact sparks, which are consistent throughou  t: 

Note that the laser bolts themselves don't significantly illuminate anything, even though several are passing quite close to the X-wing. The shield "sparks" do, but that's something that could probably be filtered out, or at least mitigated, by polarizing the canopy or pilot's visor. TBH, a laser bolt in Star Wars is probably not much different than the tracer round on a real-world aircraft. It's there to act as a visual guide to show where you're shooting.

Canonically the dorsal cannon his hinged. However I think a better mechanism would be to allow the canopy to open by sliding forward, and having explosive bolts that blast the cannon clear if the pilot ejects during an emergency.

i mean you're using 1970s special effects limitations to infer intent.

That ship is a plastic toy being swung on a tracked cable past a 2d painted backdrop while a cameraman moves in an arc, and only afterword did another dude paint those blasts into each frame.

I'm pretty sure we can all agree that the Death Star is not flat despite this same clip, right?

or should we infer that no one in Star Wars has blood because we never see wounds bleed? Obviously not. its a kid friendly franchise so they let adults imagine the gore so the kids are spared people begging to live while Chewie rips meat off their bodies.

also the lightsabers cast shadows because the props the actors are holding cast shadows, and it was incredibly hard if not impossible to edit those out practically. by the same token shining tiny lights on the models at variable angles consistent with a rapidly moving light source simply isn't a doable practical effect. Even in todays CGI-effect-centric films its difficult to do realistic lighting effects for green screen events.

The blasters clearly generate light. in later films and media the show muzzle flashes, they show impact flares, etc. the blades stop casting shadows in the animated stuff. its not hard to figure out why this stuff is the way it is in the films or what they were trying to convey

I personally think we're getting waaaaaaaaaay too into this discussion. Is it practical? **** no, is it cool? I think so and given how most of Star Wars tends to go with the rule of cool law I'm intent to give it a pass.