Notice that the ceiling skylight is not in the room...does it fit in the corridor just outside the room? Another area to look into from the outside?
Yes, they are always watching. Although how they ever signed off on the bridge rail that is roughly knee height to those on the upper level, I'll never know... Good catch! Yes, the "skylight" was the major factor limiting the depth of this room. Whatever it is, it is beyond the inner wall of the lounge. I do not believe they are skylights. They wouldn't seem to serve much purpose. I like to think of them as some kind of sensor platform. Perhaps the ship turns it's upper side to a planet while mapping it from orbit. If they are some kind of equipment, I imagine they would need support machinery beneath them. It may well interrupt the corridor at that point. In any case, I purposely avoided the area. Here are some new renders from the outside looking in. The whole original point of this exercise is to have a realistic interior visible though the windows. One issue that I was curious about was to judge the relative brightness of the interior compared with the starlit darkness of space. My pet theory has always been that the Enterprise looks so evenly lit because we are seeing it with a futuristic, highly light sensitive "camera." The hull is mainly lit by the diffuse glow of the surrounding stars, with key lights provided by whichever passing stars are particularly bright or close. The interiors usually look featureless and bright because they are overexposed. I picture a shifting pattern of brighter lighting playing across the ship as it travels through space passing various bright stars. The model I am building will be able to test these ideas and give us a look at how that might appear. It should be a richer visual experience than they could have pulled off in '66; and more ambitious than anything the remastered version attempted. i will also "turn down the exposure" so that we can judge how the hull would look under those conditions when the interiors are not overexposed. These renders are using an untextured exterior hull surface. This is still all a WIP. These first two views are a little overexposed so we get the impression that the light inside the windows is a little dazzling. And in this one, we are closer to the window and our eyes have adjusted. This will look more realistic with the recessed, double window panes installed. Baby steps... M.
This would be perfect for a remastered DAY OF THE DOVE, where the “camera” could go from deck to deck…with TOS fight footage seen in each window…
I can just imagine the camera gliding past the portholes where the audience sees the 400 trapped Enterprise crew, faces and bodies pressed up against the transparent aluminum, packed into the segregated sections like sardines. Think about all of those tribbles visible through the windows in that Short Trek episode “The Trouble With Harvey”, but with red, gold, and blue Starfleet uniforms on. The only problem is, if they did something like this, it would settle once and for all the exact location of the Engine Room. Why would you want to rob legions of nerds the pleasure of endlessly arguing over that subject — a debate that’s been running for almost sixty years now?!