ChronoReverse

I wouldn't say it's so much homage as a logical continuation. Since BDI is out, the wraparound view is the best they can do. It does look like the interface and computer in the VF25 is more advanced now. They were able to pinpoint, target, or zoom seamlessly. How large is the VF25? The 22 and 19 were quite large (compared to the 11) and the cockpits had tons of space even in fighter mode. The 25's cockpit in comparison seems rather small.

Hmm, AiA mp4 version there's an encoding artifact at 19:08.

Except the Gattai version plays smooth on my system. So I'm thinking it's probably CPU power it needs more of (than usual).

Animation is a bit dodgy at times (Ozma and Ranka's faces in the hospital (?)) but very enjoyable episode. The whole scene with Alto in the beginning was pure joy. I thought the GERWALK mode was supposed to be hard to manage? Alto sure seemed to have it down pat.

The Battroid mode seems to have the wrap-around view (ep2 8:27 Ozma) but it doesn't seem to be there for the other modes. The whole xgear thing does seem to take up more space (or perhaps the cockpit is smaller?). Perhaps it's one of compromises they had to make for the 25's versatility (with the addons).

How about you RESEARCH my comment before you make a comment like that. I said that fighter tactics have been developed in real life enabled American fighters which has lower performance than the Zeroes to win. Tactics that are still applicable today (assuming the air battle even goes into dogfight range). My point was that this tactic was devised by an aviator (which is obvious, you need real flight experience to know how a plane handles) but outside of a battle and even outside of personal battle experience (he hadn't flown against the Zero yet). It was developed using thought exercises on the premise the enemy fighter had greater maneuverability and climbing ability. And it worked. You then decided to take the comment completely to its overblown "conclusion" that a military pilot would CERTAINLY be outperformed by a civilian one whereas I meant that a pilot with lots of real experience and great skill might still be matched by one with less experience simply because nobody can possibly have covered all the bases in an arena where the wily rule. Clearly Guld was an inferior pilot to Isamu. I think it's pretty certain that Guld was no ordinary pilot either and would certainly be elite even in the military. No, this was a separate issue where I was saying, as you did, that it played fast and loose with physics. Besides, chemical imbalances coupled with high emotions was enough to completely disable the BCS earlier, amazing how subjecting the brain to massive deforming pressure didn't do anything. In any case, Guld collided with the Ghost, which also doesn't make much sense for two fighters with similar performance if one fighter was actively trying to avoid the other (both fighters pushed so hard that they were self-destructing from the air) so that scene doesn't make too much sense in other ways as well. I personally think that the Ghost's performance in Plus was higher than it normally would be. The AI that took it over seemed to be on a higher order than even the normal bioneural chip. Furthermore, both AVF pilots were tired and had depleted most of their ordnance. Guld was called out from the middle of the night and Isamu certainly didn't get to sleep either. And as for the comments about grafting, that's hardly like the BDS where you use it for a few hours and then take it off. This all still doesn't bring it back to the crux of the matter. The one time BCS/BDI was used to exceed what was possible with the standard systems, it killed the pilot. As mentioned really early on, the limitation is still the physical body's endurance rather than the senses. Anyway, you're right about BDI/BCS providing an advantage in the Macross Universe.

If you're going to be so glib and deliberately take and reduce my comment to a farce point, then it's clear you're not prepared to discuss. So I'll only address one point which is tangent to the whole issue. This was a stickler point of Plus that I didn't fully agree with. Even if you had BCS, it still wouldn't increase your reaction times to even come close to the level of a computer. So even if you're able to continue piloting despite g-forces crushing your body (which is another problem... if the g-forces were strong enough to crush your eyes and sink your fists into your abdomen, surely your brain would also be mush already), reaction time still won't match the Ghost. The high maneuver mode made sense I guess since otherwise it wouldn't be plausible that the 21 matched the Ghost's agility. But it still wouldn't exceed the Ghost's. In the end this was a dramatic scene that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, BDI/BCS or not.

Argh, I hate it when I lose a typed up post. But even you said that it's not intuitive, that you have to learn how to process the information. Sure, it can become intuitive with enough repetitions, but so does a wrap-around screen. In any case, a good pilot is one that filters out what isn't necessary at the moment to concentrate on what is important. If even simple things like a 60Hz hum in the background or merely being worried about something can hurt productivity, increasing the amount of incoming information isn't good regardless of how much processing the brain can do. That said, it's true that much of the processing the brain does on inputs is "hardwired" that way from the growth processes of childhood and thus doesn't really use the normal pool of processing power. I suppose it's possible to link child's brain to BDI and have them hardwired to use BDI intuitively. The way they see better isn't that much different as BDI is (which is introducing a whole new sense). A wolf sees better in low light than we can; that doesn't mean we don't see better if we have full light and the wolf had low light... brightening and increasing contrast is something a computer can do easily. An eagle has better visual acuity at range; a limitation of the physical sensor, but that's just as if it were closer/larger... which magnification can handily take care of. In fact, since the onboard sensors have to be able to detect the object to present it, there's no reason a small dot can't be highlighted in some way by a computer. Sonar, humans have a form of this too (humans can learn to avoid objects simply by the sound reflections from steps) but it's much much lower resolution... however we already have radar systems that are able to analyse and return valid objects the size of marbles from several kilometers out making them points on a screen. Without processing, the return look pretty much like white noise. All that processing can already easily be done with modern systems and reduced to a form that shows ONLY what is necessary for the pilot. Again, you want to reduce the processing burden of the pilot, not increase it by multiple magnitudes of order. In real life I'd say yes. WW2 demonstrate clearly that fighter tactics could be devised that are still effective to this day. It's entirely possible for a non-military pilot to have intimate knowledge of the flight mechanics of a plane. Especially in an experimental setting where the said limits must be FOUND. In the Macross world, I'd not only say yes, but HELL YEAH. Paramilitary groups like S.M.S. aside, we also have the stunts being pulled by people like Basara, Hikaru or even Max. Long discussions usually muddy up the original point so I'll re-iterate what I really wanted to say. Primary Points: (1) The benefits of BDS/BDI isn't so great that it makes/breaks (2) BDS does improve the latency of controls (3) BDS does NOT make flying "easy" or even "intuitive" Ancilliary points: (1) BDI can provide more information at once but doing that would consequently make it harder to comprehend (2) You want to reduce processing load on pilots not increase it (3) Latency isn't the limiting factor of pilots; it's flight control skill, combat awareness (knowing what to do and when) and pilot physical limits (e.g., g-forces)

So you agree your brain does have to remap itself first. Then you have to learn how to interpret the data consciously. That's really not much different from learning to interpret visual data. Not to mention most of our senses don't have the same acuity as vision. Even then we already have to use a tremendous computing power to reduce the set of data so that our brains can consciously digest the information in REAL LIFE (see radar). And you propose that we flood the brain with even more information? When it's shown that simply talking on a hands-free phone while driving already dramatically increases the risk of an accident? When simply placing a specific image in a clutter, not even camouflaging, is enough to hide it (Where's Waldo)? It's not that the system isn't useful or even beneficial. It's that the marginal utility isn't so great that it would be gamebreaking. Do you really think that Guld isn't a very good pilot already? The first prototype had only manual controls you know.

True. You brain would still have to keep track of all the "switches" as well since a lot of the incoming information isn't intuitive to your mind. You still have to learn to interpret it. BDI doesn't change that. You don't magically gain new senses, your brain still needs to learn to interpret the data. And people already have enough trouble simply taking full advantage of the basic 5 senses. BDS also doesn't change how you control the plane that much. You still need to understand how the flying works. You still need to learn how to control each function and eventually map it so that it becomes natural, just like with normal flight controls. It certainly won't make a poor pilot a good one. It would give an edge, but it's a sharp edge that's razor thin. Arguably you can provide finer control mechanics, but really, there's nothing preventing that with physical controls except it's get complicated... it'd still be complicate with a BDS system; it just doesn't take up space that's all. And again, that degree of fine control isn't the limiting factor in a dogfight.

BDI and BDS does not make one a pilot. Just because you can map your limbs to functions doesn't mean you'll know how to use them since flying is entirely different from our normal movements. Sure it might reduce reaction time, but frankly that's not really the limiting factor in a dogfight.

Piloting AWACS takes a lot of guts. You're basically announcing to the world "HERE I AM! SHOOT ME!" by pumping out large amounts of energy in the form of scans. You'd better hope your escorts are competent and will keep the bogeys away. Of course, you and your RIO (or whatever they're called in an AWACS) better be competent enough to direct your forces and said escorts into effective positions.

EMP can exist in space. It's just that a NUKE won't produce an EMP if explode in space. It just so happens the easiest way for us to produce a massive EMP is using a nuke (in our terrestrial plane). Not that it was likely to be an EMP anyways. It seemed to be just plain jamming used by the bugs.

I was thinking more in line of the performance of the Ghost. If you didn't have a pilot inside a smaller fighter than the rather large 19/21/22, presumably (and apparently from Plus) it would be more maneuverable. In which case, whether you had a more simplistic AI or fly-by-wireless, there'd be advantages (cheaper to manufacture, smaller so you can store more, don't have to worry about pilot lives, etc.). Jamming was a perfect way to completely get rid of all the advantages.

The Ghost in Plus took on two damage VF's which have mostly expended their ammunition piloted by two tired pilots plus it had the advantage of first strike. It still took a long time for it to defeat just the YF-21 (and arguably Guld simply realized he would eventually lose and thus let the Ghost smash up his plane earlier so that he'd the first strike advantage). It definitely OUGHT to be a VF in a dogfight, but we don't know the win rate. In any case, jamming is the perfect excuse to mitigate the Ghost and I was glad for it.

When the VF-171's were being prepped for launch, you hear a voice talking about the heavy interference and setting the protection level (to 7 or something). I'd presume that they have a special mode that makes the hardware much harder to interfere with (perhaps with some sort of detriment that would make them not always use it).

It's only logical though. Drones can pull higher G's so in a dogfight they'd work out better anyways. When you need to do something that requires a pilot THEN you send them in. Why waste expensive hardware and people right?

So the "wrinkling" ability is separate from the wing folding eh? Makes sense since it'd be difficult to control the wing to that degree with just standard controls.

Did they really remove the deformable wings in the VF-22? I remember Max folding in the wings against the laser turrets (the way Guld did against the high maneuver missiles) in M7