This is silly - windscreen wipers

T

Treguard

Spaceman
Do wc ships use viewscreens, or do they mainly use radar, and look out of the large windows?

just a thought. what happens if your windows got steamed up, or they were dirty on the outside?
do these ships come equipped with windscreen wipers?

It was only a thought, but it makes some sense.

actually, wouldn't that be good to include in the next space combat sim? dirt on the windows!!
 
not such a bad idea... play one of the X-W or T-F games, and put space debri on. when all that crahes on your little window, a window cleaner is not such a bad idea :rolleyes:
 
wouldn't the shields stop any debris impacting on the canopy? I mean, if a shield stops a laser blast, won't it stop small particles of dirt?
 
good point. Hmm unless your shields are down :) Or, if the certain type of shield can only stop lasers/eletric weapons

in most games though, shields usually deflect oncoming debris (or is that the main deflector in star trek?)
 
In Star Trek the main deflector plays a much more important role in deflecting debris while at warp speeds too.

In WC, no ships go even near the speed of light except for during jumps when they drasticly exceed it, but jumping is limited :)
 
Wing Commander captial ships use a Viewscreen, as seen on the Intrepid in WC4. HOWEVER, the Victory has giant viewports while also relying on it's crew pit for it's eyes.
 
Originally posted by Firebird
In WC, no ships go even near the speed of light except for during jumps when they drasticly exceed it, but jumping is limited :)
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Except when they do! When scoops are down a ship can travel pretty much as fast as fuel and the speed of light allows. I believe Blair, for example, travels at 0.75 C in the WCM.

TC
 
The bridge of the Tiger's Claw seemed to have portholes instead of viewscreens, using monitors to recieve tactical information.
 
Didn't the original Star Trek pilot open looking through a large window on top of the ship into the bridge?
 
There is a window on the top of the Bridge, both in TOS and in TNG. You can see this when the Ent-D crashes in Generations.
 
Originally posted by Bandit LOAF
Didn't the original Star Trek pilot open looking through a large window on top of the ship into the bridge?
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The TNG "sunroof" is in a great deal of shots through out the series' run. Roddenberry stated that it was there as a tip of the hat to navigators of old who ploted their course by looking to the sky.
 
Funny...

ha.ha.ha...

I thought the topic was

'This is silly - widescreen...'

Widescreen?

I sitll don't understand a thing about 4:3 panscreen, 4:3 letterbox and 16:9 widescreen...
 
PDS systems (ala Jovian Chronicles, for example - non-computer game, btw) seem to be an oft neglected part of most space sim ships. Part of it is probably that its just not an important part of the genre, as capital ships in the games typically don't find themselves in situations where they might want to pick off a tiny fragment of fast-moving debris (on the other hand, Freespace seems to take morbid delight in 'escort the carrier through the asteroid field while under fighter attack' missions - but then again, PDS systems are typically designed to deal with even smaller objects).
Still, a PDS system would probably find uses in combat. Anything that's capable of picking off small, fast moving fragments could probably also be used against incoming warheads. So before the bombers could start their attack run, a fighter would need to move in on a high speed pass and take out the PDS hardpoints on one side before the warheads could be successfully launched.
 
The Vesuvius seemed to use wraparound viewports, as far as I can tell...The WCM ships seemed the most realistic compared to modern tech, they used the same bridge designs on WWII battleships, with CIC rows added in for good measure...
 
Originally posted by TheFraix
I sitll don't understand a thing about 4:3 panscreen, 4:3 letterbox and 16:9 widescreen...
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It's quite simple. 4:3 is the size relation of a normal TV. So if the top is 100cm wide, the screen is 75cm high. A widescreen TV has relations 16:9 which is wider (w'll duh!).
Letterbox means a picture meant for a 16:9 screen is displayed on a 4:3 screen by adding black bands above and under it.
The alternative is cutting the sides off, which fills your whole TV screen, but you miss some of the picture. Pan and scan means that instead of always just showing the exact center of the widescreen picture to fit on a 4:3 screen, the area you see is moved (panned) left and right so you always see what's important. So if someone stands at the left side of the 16:9 image, you might not see him if you'd just take the middle of the picture. With panscan the left would be displayed during this scene so he is visible. With a TV broadcast this is done for you. A DVD typically contains panscan information so the DVD player can do it automatically, and sometimes you can do it manually as well.
 
That reminds me of when i saw a TV broadcast of "The 5th Element." I noticed that when they pan and scanned it, they did a lousy job on the titles. They were all off center!!! I remember when i saw the 16:9 version on DVD (I never saw it at the theater) the titles were all dead center in the middle of the screen. But when they brought it to 4:3 aspect ratio, they were all to the left by about an inch. so much so that some of them got cut off.
 
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