I al I already have it to where if you interact with the seat restraint on any of the bridge chairs, they are labeled as "Emergency Restraint". Upon interacting with it in-game, the restraints retract I'm not going to get super deep with all the interactions, but here's a list of little interactions I want to program: 1) Retract seat restraints 2) Retract auxiliary science consoles 3) Change main viewer by interacting with button on helm 4) Raise shield by interacting with a panel on the weapons/defense console 5) Possibly load torpedos and subsequently fire them as well (stretch goal) 6) Enable/disable red alert by interacting with captain's chair panels
I thought the firing mechanism in TWOK was a manual one to be used if computer target lock was non-functional (which it was in the Mutara Nebula).
Donny, is your Grissom bridge going to be the conjectural oval design due to the odd placement of the conn location or are you going to lay it out a little differently?
As discussed a few pages back, doing the conjectured oval design (or even a bridge of a smaller diameter) would require rebuilding all the bridge stations (or a portion of them) at a different radius, which would be far too much work. Therefore, I'm just going to do a bridge of the same size and shape as the rest. Due to the absence of the rails, it currently feels far too open compared to the others, so I've just run with that idea and even created a larger, expansive viewscreen for that particular bridge. My thought is that it's a science vessel, and a larger viewscreen would aid in better scientific observations from the command crew. I've also ripped out the dedicated weapons & defense console. If people hate the design, so what? I'll let them [EDIT] Here's a sneak peak of what I've got working so far for the Grissom. I want to completely redo the center command pit still, but I'm digging the expanded viewscreen. What do you guys think? (imagine the horizon of the Genesis planet from high orbit filling the bottom portion of the screen, with the stars beyond above it) The dedication plaque would go in that empty space on the wall right behind the captain's chair next to the Artificial Gravity station.
Is it weird the my first thought at seeing this was that Steven Segal’s Letterbox 2000 bit on MadTV? Seriously thiugh, I really love the look of that super wide view screen. Really great job Donny!
Interesting... As always your modeling is perfect, but I'm not much of a fan of that long viewscreen. It's weird that such a small and badly equipped ship would have the same basic bridge module than a heavy cruiser, but upgraded with an ultrawide screen. If anything that's something I would imagine the NX Excelsior having. Taking the aforementioned oval graphic as inspiration, wouldn't you be able to reuse 9 stations from the Enterprise (4 on port, 4 on starboard, and the viewscreen), and just have to work on three connecting bits (one directly behind the captain, and the other two flanking the viewscreen)? It is still work creating those bits, granted, but all the stations walls could be 100% untouched from the Enterprise that way.
Okay, okay. I did some tests and yes...you're right @Rekkert. I'd originally assumed I'd have to remodel each bridge station, but after messing around with the modules in 3D for a minute, I was able to mock up the oval shape, and I gotta tell you. It feels so much better. It's cramped, and with the way the captain's chair and helm now sit feels much more akin to what we see in TSFS . But will require only making a new aft module and a new viewscreen module (where the two halves of the oval meet) and doing some modifications of a few of the adjacent upper ceiling modules. This will then also require building a smaller viewscreen than is used on the Constitution/Miranda. Which, I gotta admit, seems more in line with the Oberth being a much smaller vessel. I'll also have to make an entirely new floor piece, but I was planning on doing this anyway for my previous thoughts for the Grissom. This all will, however, take some more time, adding to my still long list of to-dos to complete. Good thing I love doing this! Now...what to do with that extra long viewer? A re-imagined NX Excelsior bridge perhaps? Thanks for the honest feedback everyone!
Hey, real quick...thank you for pointing out that the weapons console top has a straight edge in TMP. In TWOK, I noticed that it appears to be curved, the way I had always thought it was (probably explaining why I thought it was curved to match the outer ceiling): Optical illusion or reality?
It looks like they cut out the light that was present in the TMP version and lowered the height on it. Maybe it was damaged when they were doing the conversions over for WoK and that was their solution?
The wide viewer might fit better for the non-canon Odysseus-class Ingram variant (which is even bigger than an Excelsior). You could try to integrate TVH okudagrams with that variant and the helm/nav from the Excelsior in TUC and you'd be in business there.
I've drawn some lines in Photoshop, and it does appear that the top edge dips ever so slightly below the straight edge I've drawn. But the edge below it appears to be rather straight? I don't think it's curved to match the ceiling module above it, as this would result in a much more dramatic curve, would it not? Also, consider this view from a different angle: The edge appears far more straight here, and definitely does not conform to the curvature of the ceiling module above it. (Also note that mysterious black rounded rectangle where the upper portion of the console meets the wall. This rectangle is not present during the Kobayashi scenario. Hmmm...) Also consider that there are no official set blueprints/schematics that would suggest that that edge of the weapon's console is curved in any way. Take the TWOK set layout blueprint, for example: . So what I think we're seeing in that first screenshot above is either an optical illusion due to camera lenses, or an actual dip downward in that top surface, perhaps due to the flimsy material that this console is reportedly made of or an error resulting from when they modified this console from it's TMP appearance. I dunno. I could be completely wrong and just wanting to NOT believe it's curved so I don't have to adjust my model . The fact that the top edge dips below that straight edge does suggest something is amiss, and the console's upper edge could in fact be curved slightly.
So THAT'S how were were supposed to know it was a simulator, and not the real Enterprise! ... The evidence was hiding in plain sight all along! On a more serious note... I love this thread, and your eye for details.
You may just be correct as the bottom line does appear to be pretty straight. Perhaps I've always just imagined it to be curved because of the greebles. Knowing that they're curved and them sitting on top of the weapons console canopy, I guess I'm transferring the curvature to the edge of the canopy, itself. While I love lens distortion, I also hate how difficult it can make figuring out the topology in captured images. On that wide, wide viewscreen...sorry, not feelin' it, but you've already addressed it.