...That said, while in real life I'd imagine that panoramic visibility is a game changer in dog fighting, the technological limitations of the average player are likely going to limit the impact in the game.
I'm guessing that most people don't have virtual reality setups that are going to let them look around the cockpit, so it may be rather a moot point to worry about it before hand. It'll have an impact sure, but I don't know if it'll be anything compared to, say, controller vs Keyboard and Joystick.
I think it’s fair to say that those with VR would be at an advantage with the increased visibility I’d want. And sure the radar will help mitigate that somewhat but I’ve never seen a display that was both intuitive and displayed all the data I need. Elite’s in particular is downright awful, even compared to the 1970’s radar display I grew up with.
I think you and others are right though that a lot of players wouldn’t exercise their ability to visually look outside the cockpit even with VR. We have to teach that skill to young pilots in real life.
Yes I would not want this in a space game based around scrappy WW2 dogfighting which is going to a decent length to model the cock pit as a physical thing and as the primary UI.
Agree to disagree on that. I posted that video to show that the technology exists, and personally I think the wire overlay fits in with the Star Wars aesthetic. I feel like there's a cognitive disconnect though in wanting "scrappy WW2 dogfighting" and being ok with claustrophobic low-visibility cockpits. I can't remember a moment in Star Wars when rebel fighters glance down at a radar to look for where the TIE fighters are coming from. It's always "TIE Fighters, coming in hot!" and then a cut to showing which direction they're coming from, which to me indicates that they're picking them up visually: because that's what would have happened in WWII.
I'll just say I hope there is...some way to let me actually look around the cockpit to see targets? Like not full 360 degrees of course, but yes the benefits of VR would be heavily limited if the only "window" is a very narrow view right in front of you.
I would rather they make it a practical experience than being 100% dogmatically committed to a cockpit that just sucks for actual use as a pilot. Given that it has VR at launch that would be sort of missing the point, but hey we'll see!
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
I'm with you! And with what Synthesis said in response to my post last page -- I didn't buy VR for a competitive advantage, and that's not the point! But if you translate the design of a TIE Fighter 1:1, and it turns out that the cockpit for the TIE fighter is actually completely stupid and weirdly enough was just designed to look good in a movie without much thought for what future VR society would care about it (the nerve!) then that 100% affects my immersion. Spaceship cockpits are designed to be....used? I would want the developers to be like "Ok yes, this cockpit practically is terrible for warfare, we need to make practical improvements because at the end of the day we are trying to make a videogame where all you do is sit inside this cockpit."
If you're designing a spaceship in a world where humans are using their sight to detect things in the cockpit, you would design that cockpit to not have a 70 degree field of view. That's insane, and would be a dramatic hindrance to the ship's fighting ability. I'm not saying "They had better give me an open 360 cockpit so I have an advantage in VR!" (I actually specifically mentioned that I don't want that) -- I'm saying I want the spaceship cockpits to be reasonably practical and usable for humans to see out of. I want verisimilitude, not dogmatically sticking to cockpit designs even if they are clearly terrible when put to use.
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
I'm with you! And with what Synthesis said in response to my post last page -- I didn't buy VR for a competitive advantage, and that's not the point! But if you translate the design of a TIE Fighter 1:1, and it turns out that the cockpit for the TIE fighter is actually completely stupid and weirdly enough was just designed to look good in a movie without much thought for what future VR society would care about it (the nerve!) then that 100% affects my immersion. Spaceship cockpits are designed to be....used? I would want the developers to be like "Ok yes, this cockpit practically is terrible for warfare, we need to make practical improvements because at the end of the day we are trying to make a videogame where all you do is sit inside this cockpit."
If you're designing a spaceship in a world where humans are using their sight to detect things in the cockpit, you would design that cockpit to not have a 70 degree field of view. That's insane, and would be a dramatic hindrance to the ship's fighting ability. I'm not saying "They had better give me an open 360 cockpit so I have an advantage in VR!" (I actually specifically mentioned that I don't want that) -- I'm saying I want the spaceship cockpits to be reasonably practical and usable for humans to see out of. I want verisimilitude, not dogmatically sticking to cockpit designs even if they are clearly terrible when put to use.
Oh I'm 100% for sticking to the cockpit design even if it ends up being impractical. Some sort of radar-like display that gives you, like, a digital wireframe approximation of what's around you, or something, I can definitely jive with that. But changing the structure of the machine to give VR pilots a better view, or giving them digital x-ray vision, or whatever, those are hard passes for me. Particularly when, presumably, pancake-mode players would not see those benefits.
And by "hard pass" I guess I mean whatever lets me still buy the game but whine like a baby about it.
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
Personally, I can't wait to find out I'm too tall to fly an A-Wing and wind up feeling like my legs are poking out the bottom like a Flintstone space ship.
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
Personally, I can't wait to find out I'm too tall to fly an A-Wing and wind up feeling like my legs are poking out the bottom like a Flintstone space ship.
When I first hopped into a P40 in War Thunder VR, I instinctively scrunched down because I felt like I was going to bonk my head on the canopy.
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
I'm with you! And with what Synthesis said in response to my post last page -- I didn't buy VR for a competitive advantage, and that's not the point! But if you translate the design of a TIE Fighter 1:1, and it turns out that the cockpit for the TIE fighter is actually completely stupid and weirdly enough was just designed to look good in a movie without much thought for what future VR society would care about it (the nerve!) then that 100% affects my immersion. Spaceship cockpits are designed to be....used? I would want the developers to be like "Ok yes, this cockpit practically is terrible for warfare, we need to make practical improvements because at the end of the day we are trying to make a videogame where all you do is sit inside this cockpit."
If you're designing a spaceship in a world where humans are using their sight to detect things in the cockpit, you would design that cockpit to not have a 70 degree field of view. That's insane, and would be a dramatic hindrance to the ship's fighting ability. I'm not saying "They had better give me an open 360 cockpit so I have an advantage in VR!" (I actually specifically mentioned that I don't want that) -- I'm saying I want the spaceship cockpits to be reasonably practical and usable for humans to see out of. I want verisimilitude, not dogmatically sticking to cockpit designs even if they are clearly terrible when put to use.
Oh I'm 100% for sticking to the cockpit design even if it ends up being impractical. Some sort of radar-like display that gives you, like, a digital wireframe approximation of what's around you, or something, I can definitely jive with that. But changing the structure of the machine to give VR pilots a better view, or giving them digital x-ray vision, or whatever, those are hard passes for me. Particularly when, presumably, pancake-mode players would not see those benefits.
And by "hard pass" I guess I mean whatever lets me still buy the game but whine like a baby about it.
Yeah, it's really not a "performance enhancement" for most people. It's "totally fucking bonkers" is what it is.
Being able to see through the canopy was just a suggestion for keeping the iconic cockpit intact: I’m not married to the idea. Additional screens and viewports would be preferred for me, but that seems like a bigger change than an HMD overlay. Regardless, anything to make the cockpit view more functional and less claustrophobic: verisimilitude as Faitil wrote.
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
I don’t see a distinction between being able to use VR to have a 360 degree field of view and using it for total immersion: if you’re designing a functional canopy you’re designing it for visibility. This is what makes the ship design of Elite Dangerous so frustrating for me.
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
Personally, I can't wait to find out I'm too tall to fly an A-Wing and wind up feeling like my legs are poking out the bottom like a Flintstone space ship.
When I first hopped into a P40 in War Thunder VR, I instinctively scrunched down because I felt like I was going to bonk my head on the canopy.
I sat in an F4 cockpit and discovered that my pelvis and femur are the exact length of the distance from the back of the seat to the console. I'm pretty sure I would have lost my legs if I ever had to eject from one of those things, assuming I could adjust myself around to reach the handle.
I imagine the A-Wing kind of like that, and if I had a welding torch and infinite free time, I would enjoy constraining myself accordingly for the full Tycho Celchu VR experience.
Because he ignores stress!
This is a perfectly cromulent joke, you're niche and inaccessible!
Track IR ruined most games with cockpits for me after I tried it in Elite. Head tracking is transformative. That surreal feeling of nothing being quite right just goes poof. Now you're driving your space truck as if it is an actual truck, circling a landmark as you scan for your assigned docking pad and you're cursing the designer who refused to screw any mirrors to the side of your canopy.
It also becomes more clear that the cockpits and interior scale are completely fucked by the standards of a being that occupies physical space. Have you seen what they did with the Imperial Courier? Looks fine until you have a banana for scale.
I dunno, for me the "benefit" of VR is feeling like I'm in the space. I don't want it for the tactical advantage of being able to look in 360 while folks playing in flat mode can't. It's totally an immersion thing, and I understand that there exists the chance that I'm playing at a skill disadvantage because of that.
Personally, I can't wait to find out I'm too tall to fly an A-Wing and wind up feeling like my legs are poking out the bottom like a Flintstone space ship.
Reminds me of this one time playing Pavlov, a game that takes your actual height in VR to scale your model, and there was this one Norweigan dude who was so tall he had to physically duck to get through some doorways on the maps.
Track IR ruined most games with cockpits for me after I tried it in Elite. Head tracking is transformative. That surreal feeling of nothing being quite right just goes poof. Now you're driving your space truck as if it is an actual truck, circling a landmark as you scan for your assigned docking pad and you're cursing the designer who refused to screw any mirrors to the side of your canopy.
It also becomes more clear that the cockpits and interior scale are completely fucked by the standards of a being that occupies physical space. Have you seen what they did with the Imperial Courier? Looks fine until you have a banana for scale.
Yeah, the cockpits in Elite are huge. Sitting in a Vulture in VR feels like you're piloting an angry cathedral.
Track IR ruined most games with cockpits for me after I tried it in Elite. Head tracking is transformative. That surreal feeling of nothing being quite right just goes poof. Now you're driving your space truck as if it is an actual truck, circling a landmark as you scan for your assigned docking pad and you're cursing the designer who refused to screw any mirrors to the side of your canopy.
It also becomes more clear that the cockpits and interior scale are completely fucked by the standards of a being that occupies physical space. Have you seen what they did with the Imperial Courier? Looks fine until you have a banana for scale.
Yeah, the cockpits in Elite are huge. Sitting in a Vulture in VR feels like you're piloting an angry cathedral.
To be fair many of them are more bridges than a cockpit. But even some of the single seaters are yuge. Like why waste the space and/or mass on empty space and unused decking.
Bigity on
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ApogeeLancks In Every Game EverRegistered Userregular
Track IR ruined most games with cockpits for me after I tried it in Elite. Head tracking is transformative. That surreal feeling of nothing being quite right just goes poof. Now you're driving your space truck as if it is an actual truck, circling a landmark as you scan for your assigned docking pad and you're cursing the designer who refused to screw any mirrors to the side of your canopy.
It also becomes more clear that the cockpits and interior scale are completely fucked by the standards of a being that occupies physical space. Have you seen what they did with the Imperial Courier? Looks fine until you have a banana for scale.
Yeah, the cockpits in Elite are huge. Sitting in a Vulture in VR feels like you're piloting an angry cathedral.
To be fair many of them are more bridges than a cockpit. But even some of the single seaters are yuge. Like why waste the space and/or mass on empty space and unused decking.
You know you've got it made when you have an espresso maker built into your space ship.
I wouldn't be surprised if you could just turn off the cockpit in Squadrons. You could in TIE Fighter, they just smashed the radar and readouts to the edges of the screen.
Track IR ruined most games with cockpits for me after I tried it in Elite. Head tracking is transformative. That surreal feeling of nothing being quite right just goes poof. Now you're driving your space truck as if it is an actual truck, circling a landmark as you scan for your assigned docking pad and you're cursing the designer who refused to screw any mirrors to the side of your canopy.
It also becomes more clear that the cockpits and interior scale are completely fucked by the standards of a being that occupies physical space. Have you seen what they did with the Imperial Courier? Looks fine until you have a banana for scale.
Yeah, the cockpits in Elite are huge. Sitting in a Vulture in VR feels like you're piloting an angry cathedral.
To be fair many of them are more bridges than a cockpit. But even some of the single seaters are yuge. Like why waste the space and/or mass on empty space and unused decking.
The empty space is what bugs me about a lot of them. IIRC there's no artificial gravity in Elite, so what happens if there's an accident and you're left floating in the middle of the bridge?
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
That's not a cockpit, that's a bridge to a damned starship
Track IR ruined most games with cockpits for me after I tried it in Elite. Head tracking is transformative. That surreal feeling of nothing being quite right just goes poof. Now you're driving your space truck as if it is an actual truck, circling a landmark as you scan for your assigned docking pad and you're cursing the designer who refused to screw any mirrors to the side of your canopy.
It also becomes more clear that the cockpits and interior scale are completely fucked by the standards of a being that occupies physical space. Have you seen what they did with the Imperial Courier? Looks fine until you have a banana for scale.
Yeah, the cockpits in Elite are huge. Sitting in a Vulture in VR feels like you're piloting an angry cathedral.
To be fair many of them are more bridges than a cockpit. But even some of the single seaters are yuge. Like why waste the space and/or mass on empty space and unused decking.
The empty space is what bugs me about a lot of them. IIRC there's no artificial gravity in Elite, so what happens if there's an accident and you're left floating in the middle of the bridge?
Get naked and throw your clothes as reaction mass?
Track IR ruined most games with cockpits for me after I tried it in Elite. Head tracking is transformative. That surreal feeling of nothing being quite right just goes poof. Now you're driving your space truck as if it is an actual truck, circling a landmark as you scan for your assigned docking pad and you're cursing the designer who refused to screw any mirrors to the side of your canopy.
It also becomes more clear that the cockpits and interior scale are completely fucked by the standards of a being that occupies physical space. Have you seen what they did with the Imperial Courier? Looks fine until you have a banana for scale.
Yeah, the cockpits in Elite are huge. Sitting in a Vulture in VR feels like you're piloting an angry cathedral.
How are you going to get to Sagittarius A* if you don't have your coffee?
I keep hearing this in the the schoolmaster from The Wall's voice
"You! Yes, you in silent running! Stand still, laddie!
You. I like you.
On the topic of Elite's bridges, I maintain that their entire hardware base is unaltered Zentradi design with human-size furniture bolted in. All they've got is standard templates. The funky standardized UI and operating system? They hooked a MacBook to the network.
How are you going to get to Sagittarius A* if you don't have your coffee?
I keep hearing this in the the schoolmaster from The Wall's voice
"You! Yes, you in silent running! Stand still, laddie!
You. I like you.
On the topic of Elite's bridges, I maintain that their entire hardware base is unaltered Zentradi design with human-size furniture bolted in. All they've got is standard templates. The funky standardized UI and operating system? They hooked a MacBook to the network.
I quit ED cold turkey a couple years back, so the only word I understood in the above was "Zentradi."
Synthesis on
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
How are you going to get to Sagittarius A* if you don't have your coffee?
I keep hearing this in the the schoolmaster from The Wall's voice
"You! Yes, you in silent running! Stand still, laddie!
You. I like you.
On the topic of Elite's bridges, I maintain that their entire hardware base is unaltered Zentradi design with human-size furniture bolted in. All they've got is standard templates. The funky standardized UI and operating system? They hooked a MacBook to the network.
I quit ED cold turkey a couple years back, so the only word I understood in the above was "Zentradi."
It's simple. If I see a Robotech/Macross reference, I agree or awesome that post.
Y'all are crazy. A single Tie Defender was all I needed to absolutely obliterate an entire fleet. Missile Boats at least run out of missiles eventually and then they only have a single pew pew laser to fight with.
X-Wing Alliance had an even more OP ship though. Both the YT-2000 and the Millennium Falcon were obscene. You could drain all power from your lasers to boost the hell out of your engines and shields...yet magically your turrets still worked. So you could fly around like a coked out wookiee and let your turrets auto kill everything.
Essentially it's a program for programming sticks. The neat thing is it uses vjoy to make a virtual stick and programs that. Stick and throttle from different places? Game won't recognize multiple devices? No problem.
Given the general fiction and stylings of Elite ships as middle class business vehicles rather than cool starfighters the extra big cockpit areas make sense as something you'd have like, an office and stuff in.
Except they don't really do that and just leave the space empty.
Y'all are crazy. A single Tie Defender was all I needed to absolutely obliterate an entire fleet. Missile Boats at least run out of missiles eventually and then they only have a single pew pew laser to fight with.
X-Wing Alliance had an even more OP ship though. Both the YT-2000 and the Millennium Falcon were obscene. You could drain all power from your lasers to boost the hell out of your engines and shields...yet magically your turrets still worked. So you could fly around like a coked out wookiee and let your turrets auto kill everything.
Including Star Destroyers which couldn't actually hit you back. I'm really looking forward to the Empire Strikes Back version where Han and Chewie destroy the entire Imperial fleet at Hoth. "Don't worry we got this"
How are you going to get to Sagittarius A* if you don't have your coffee?
I keep hearing this in the the schoolmaster from The Wall's voice
"You! Yes, you in silent running! Stand still, laddie!
You. I like you.
On the topic of Elite's bridges, I maintain that their entire hardware base is unaltered Zentradi design with human-size furniture bolted in. All they've got is standard templates. The funky standardized UI and operating system? They hooked a MacBook to the network.
ED ships are designed to be capable of supporting you on long voyages. That’s why they’re big.
Sure, but that doesn't really have anything to do with huge cockpits. All the ships (IIRC) are intended to have living/sleeping quarters (closets in some cases) outside of the pilot's chair/bridge.
Posts
https://youtu.be/Ay6g66FbkmQ
I think it’s fair to say that those with VR would be at an advantage with the increased visibility I’d want. And sure the radar will help mitigate that somewhat but I’ve never seen a display that was both intuitive and displayed all the data I need. Elite’s in particular is downright awful, even compared to the 1970’s radar display I grew up with.
I think you and others are right though that a lot of players wouldn’t exercise their ability to visually look outside the cockpit even with VR. We have to teach that skill to young pilots in real life.
Yes I would not want this in a space game based around scrappy WW2 dogfighting which is going to a decent length to model the cock pit as a physical thing and as the primary UI.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
I would rather they make it a practical experience than being 100% dogmatically committed to a cockpit that just sucks for actual use as a pilot. Given that it has VR at launch that would be sort of missing the point, but hey we'll see!
I'm with you! And with what Synthesis said in response to my post last page -- I didn't buy VR for a competitive advantage, and that's not the point! But if you translate the design of a TIE Fighter 1:1, and it turns out that the cockpit for the TIE fighter is actually completely stupid and weirdly enough was just designed to look good in a movie without much thought for what future VR society would care about it (the nerve!) then that 100% affects my immersion. Spaceship cockpits are designed to be....used? I would want the developers to be like "Ok yes, this cockpit practically is terrible for warfare, we need to make practical improvements because at the end of the day we are trying to make a videogame where all you do is sit inside this cockpit."
If you're designing a spaceship in a world where humans are using their sight to detect things in the cockpit, you would design that cockpit to not have a 70 degree field of view. That's insane, and would be a dramatic hindrance to the ship's fighting ability. I'm not saying "They had better give me an open 360 cockpit so I have an advantage in VR!" (I actually specifically mentioned that I don't want that) -- I'm saying I want the spaceship cockpits to be reasonably practical and usable for humans to see out of. I want verisimilitude, not dogmatically sticking to cockpit designs even if they are clearly terrible when put to use.
Oh I'm 100% for sticking to the cockpit design even if it ends up being impractical. Some sort of radar-like display that gives you, like, a digital wireframe approximation of what's around you, or something, I can definitely jive with that. But changing the structure of the machine to give VR pilots a better view, or giving them digital x-ray vision, or whatever, those are hard passes for me. Particularly when, presumably, pancake-mode players would not see those benefits.
And by "hard pass" I guess I mean whatever lets me still buy the game but whine like a baby about it.
Personally, I can't wait to find out I'm too tall to fly an A-Wing and wind up feeling like my legs are poking out the bottom like a Flintstone space ship.
When I first hopped into a P40 in War Thunder VR, I instinctively scrunched down because I felt like I was going to bonk my head on the canopy.
Yeah, it's really not a "performance enhancement" for most people. It's "totally fucking bonkers" is what it is.
I don’t see a distinction between being able to use VR to have a 360 degree field of view and using it for total immersion: if you’re designing a functional canopy you’re designing it for visibility. This is what makes the ship design of Elite Dangerous so frustrating for me.
I sat in an F4 cockpit and discovered that my pelvis and femur are the exact length of the distance from the back of the seat to the console. I'm pretty sure I would have lost my legs if I ever had to eject from one of those things, assuming I could adjust myself around to reach the handle.
I imagine the A-Wing kind of like that, and if I had a welding torch and infinite free time, I would enjoy constraining myself accordingly for the full Tycho Celchu VR experience.
Because he ignores stress!
It also becomes more clear that the cockpits and interior scale are completely fucked by the standards of a being that occupies physical space. Have you seen what they did with the Imperial Courier? Looks fine until you have a banana for scale.
Reminds me of this one time playing Pavlov, a game that takes your actual height in VR to scale your model, and there was this one Norweigan dude who was so tall he had to physically duck to get through some doorways on the maps.
Yeah, the cockpits in Elite are huge. Sitting in a Vulture in VR feels like you're piloting an angry cathedral.
To be fair many of them are more bridges than a cockpit. But even some of the single seaters are yuge. Like why waste the space and/or mass on empty space and unused decking.
You know you've got it made when you have an espresso maker built into your space ship.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
The empty space is what bugs me about a lot of them. IIRC there's no artificial gravity in Elite, so what happens if there's an accident and you're left floating in the middle of the bridge?
Get naked and throw your clothes as reaction mass?
No, that's Battlefleet Gothic.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I keep hearing this in the the schoolmaster from The Wall's voice
"You! Yes, you in silent running! Stand still, laddie!
You. I like you.
On the topic of Elite's bridges, I maintain that their entire hardware base is unaltered Zentradi design with human-size furniture bolted in. All they've got is standard templates. The funky standardized UI and operating system? They hooked a MacBook to the network.
I quit ED cold turkey a couple years back, so the only word I understood in the above was "Zentradi."
It's simple. If I see a Robotech/Macross reference, I agree or awesome that post.
X-Wing Alliance had an even more OP ship though. Both the YT-2000 and the Millennium Falcon were obscene. You could drain all power from your lasers to boost the hell out of your engines and shields...yet magically your turrets still worked. So you could fly around like a coked out wookiee and let your turrets auto kill everything.
Gladiator-K
Has a throttle slider(dial?) on the side, so you don't need a separate standalone throttle.
https://whitemagic.github.io/JoystickGremlin/interface/
Essentially it's a program for programming sticks. The neat thing is it uses vjoy to make a virtual stick and programs that. Stick and throttle from different places? Game won't recognize multiple devices? No problem.
Except they don't really do that and just leave the space empty.
Including Star Destroyers which couldn't actually hit you back. I'm really looking forward to the Empire Strikes Back version where Han and Chewie destroy the entire Imperial fleet at Hoth. "Don't worry we got this"
Sure, but that doesn't really have anything to do with huge cockpits. All the ships (IIRC) are intended to have living/sleeping quarters (closets in some cases) outside of the pilot's chair/bridge.