Cockpit Obstruction

[[IPA] Thalamus]

What cockpit are you talking about?

Oh, i didn't know that asset - is it from Dark Age?

[[IPA] Bravo Cadett]

What cockpit are you talking about?

Oh, i didn't know that asset - is it from Dark Age?

sudden death match mode ... every1 gets a LBX AC 20 and go xD

[Toth]

The reason other mechwarrior games didn't have as much bob is they faked it. They gave you a different model in the first person view, MW4 was the worst with this. Its something we decided against a long time ago to keep with the level of immersion we were after. Honestly I don't regret it, we have a nice balance between steady aim while making you feel like the mech is bouncing around. Having the camera move with the torso (reticule issues aside) would be very disorienting and vomit inducing. Trust me we tried it, and the alpha tester team all rejected it.

In general some cockpits are just more restrictive than others. Thats their design and its somewhat intentional. Thinks like the Mauler bar will likely never be changed, although as someone mentioned the uziel could do with a camera view adjustment to improve driver visibility.

[sleet01]

PLEASE GOD THIN OUT THAT MAULER COCKPIT BAR! 

Four words: look down, then up.

I got the AAA Mauler for a Death Valley match that featured tons of fast mediums and VTOLs on the enemy's side, and at first it was great.  Then I kneeled to fire at an ASF, and when I got up again the cockbit bar was blocking my reticle.  "This is balls," I thought, "I don't remember the view being that bad when I first got this thing."  Then I realized that kneeling mode might have offset the view centering (since I was elevating the guns almost 90 degrees) so I just looked straight down while walking. When I looked up again the bar was no longer in the way.  Voila!

[xInVicTuSx]

I don't think you have much time to do that when the thing is entirely blocking your view of a heavy mech 300m off in a gunslinger and he has just as many weapons as you do. It gets really REALLY annoying and is a constant thorn in my side. The Uziel's bob is nothing in comparison.

[Xesle]

Four words: look down, then up.

I got the AAA Mauler for a Death Valley match that featured tons of fast mediums and VTOLs on the enemy's side, and at first it was great.  Then I kneeled to fire at an ASF, and when I got up again the cockbit bar was blocking my reticle.  "This is balls," I thought, "I don't remember the view being that bad when I first got this thing."  Then I realized that kneeling mode might have offset the view centering (since I was elevating the guns almost 90 degrees) so I just looked straight down while walking. When I looked up again the bar was no longer in the way.  Voila!

I was going to bring this up.  I had the same problem earlier in a Madcat Mark II. I stopped and knelt to shot at a VTOL, and when I stood back up, the bottom of the screen where the gray of the torso is had risen considerably, so It was near impossible for me to aim at anything shorter than me. 

thanks for the tip though, awesome to find my question answered before I even could ask it.

[VictorMorson]

I really think this thread got started off on the wrong foot.  It should be about very specific designs having an issue, rather than the mechanic as a rule.

In fact, I echo the OP's sentiment regarding the Uziel, specifically.  I actually dislike piloting it more than I would otherwise purely because the cockpit rock makes it drastically harder to pilot than other mechs and vehicles in a similar price range.

In short:  The mechanic is fine but some mechs could do with some tweaking specifically.

[Cujo]

I have no problems with any of the mech cockpits, if I can't see much, I deal with it and get used to it, doesn't bother me.  I don't get all the whining, what do you want nothing but glass in front of you?  Nothing but a radar?  The bob means that maybe I fight differently, avoid rapid acceleration in combat if at all possible.  Maybe I'm over-exaggerating a bit, maybe I'm just weird that I can deal with less vision space, but there are games with less visibility than this, and we've vastly improved some mechs' visibility already, and I like being able to see internal parts of the cockpit.  It may all stem from having played hockey all my life and thus I'm way used to having bars in front of my face and whatnot.  I just don't see what all the fuss is about, I use my radar and my eyes and never needed super expanded situational awareness, can't shoot multiple targets at once anyway.

[IG142]

Small windows aren't the issue, at least for me. It only gets annoying when the cockpit actually obscures the crosshair itself, most notably in the case of the Uziel and Mauler. Restricted peripheral vision I can live with, it's when I literally can't see what I'm aiming at that is problematic.

[dsi1]

The reason other mechwarrior games didn't have as much bob is they faked it. They gave you a different model in the first person view, MW4 was the worst with this. Its something we decided against a long time ago to keep with the level of immersion we were after. Honestly I don't regret it, we have a nice balance between steady aim while making you feel like the mech is bouncing around. Having the camera move with the torso (reticule issues aside) would be very disorienting and vomit inducing. Trust me we tried it, and the alpha tester team all rejected it.

In general some cockpits are just more restrictive than others. Thats their design and its somewhat intentional. Thinks like the Mauler bar will likely never be changed, although as someone mentioned the uziel could do with a camera view adjustment to improve driver visibility.

IMO a design that is so restrictive as to block vision of where your guns are pointing isn't a very good design at all, and probably wasn't intended by the original artist.

[Snow Gibbon]

My pet peeve with cockpits is that the Warhammer, Novacat and Hellbringer/Loki feel really restrictive because it's all just black. If there was more fluff on the inside it would feel better.

And yes, the Mauler cockpit bar is very irritating, but most of the time I can guess where the target is if the reticule goes red or if I fire at the centre of the targeting brackets, but only if there close enough. At long range with the prime variant it gets annoying.

[Frostiken]

I only really have a problem with the Mauler and Uziel. Though I find the Summoner's cockpit annoying as well - it feels like the roof is too low on it. The Mad Dog has a very low cockpit roof (perhaps one of the lowest in all mechs), but it has pretty much the best view of any mech in the game (maybe losing to the Shadowcat). The Summoner's cockpit looks decent on the outside, but inside it just... it's like someone adjusted my seat way down. Rather than peering out from the shoulder, it's like I'm riding in someone's lap as THEY command the mech.

Timberwolf and Mk2 cockpits are annoying as well, but only because they're oversized and stupid-vulnerable.

[=KoS= Saber15]

The Mauler bar could be fixed by having the inside part having an invisible texture, or instead of a straight line (-) it could curve down, so it'd like ( \_/ ). I don't mind having some visibility lost (MKII, Warhammer) but when the thing gets right in my face, it's pretty goddamn annoying. Yeah you can look down/up all the way, but if a Loki E suddenly pops up from a hill near you and you were shooting at Aeros with your quad UAC/2s, the bar is going to be right at 0 degrees inclination until you look down again. You don't have time to look down again and fix the bar, so you have to fire blindly. Elevated to the eleventh degree when you're attacked by a enemy from further away where a fraction of a degree in inaccuracy means a complete miss.

I saw a render of the Uziel a while ago where part of the upper cockpit area had an extra glass panel, giving it an upside down T window shape instead of the current --- window. Doing something similar with the Uziel's cockpit would greatly improve the visibility.

The Summoner's cockpit could ride a bit higher IMO, but giving it a proper cockpit instead of having your chest embedded in the bottom of the cockpit would really help with the sense of the scale.