That and no cockpits with big windows. Lots of windows is just a design flaw waiting for a catastrophe. I think it depends on how fast these craft are actually moving and how safe it is for them to do so. Time lag is a thing, and I can't imagine humans could ever solve that idea of the time lag between transmissions. I think for high sensitivity and reactivity where you can't just send time delay/distance delay instructions ala programming robots with BASIC ala Microworlds, you're going to need an A.I. or human.evilthecat said:
I mean, humans requires life support, and seats, and accessible controls, and so on.... so preferably A.I.?
They have droids in-universe, so why not use them?
But that being said, why would you be making space fighters ala basically 'fighter jet, but in space' to begin with? That seems like the biggest waste of time to me, personally. I can understand shuttle craft, but not X-Wings. Putting it bluntly, the X-Wings weren't even that great in the movies. I think they realized that ala the Prequel-Trilogy and made starfighters seem pointful ... but X-wing in the original trilogy is near useless. They need to fabricate what is a blatant design flaw just to give them a point to exist.
The other thing that breaks the immersion for me is specifically the fact that there are rebel specific spacecraft. Seems less 'rebel-y' and more warlord-y...? I mean if it gets to the point where you can just flat out build naval fleets not out of stolen ships or repurposed civilian vessels, but rather fund a completely new breed of arms industry that maintains both combat effectiveness and power parity that matches or exceeds the capabilities of an empire, it kind of sounds like you're also an empire.
That being as per the immersion thing .... I'm actually kind of glad it did so? Because the thing is I don't just want to watch something that immerses a person...
One of my favourite films of all time is The Life Aquatic, and that was postmodernism with obviously jarring moments that purposefully were there to remind you that you were watching a film, breaking the 4th Wall in a clever, fantastic, whimsical way.
That these were jarring mental moments where the fantastic uncomfortably make themselves known. Like panning over the different rooms of the Belfonte before zooming out with the actors performing their daily routines, or quizzically hanging out, or being your average neurotic human beings we all are on a weird arse job, realising full well; "Hold on a tick, this is a scene of a movie, portraying a scene of a documentary, that is obviously a longways cross-section of an impossible ship."
I think it's kind of awful that a movie tries intentionally to engross people rather than make them occasionally uncomfortable, or jolt them out of mindless consumption of the media.
It's very fey-like,and I adore that. The environment, the story, the characters, the drama ... which ultimately makes it more human and allows you to analyze the human relationship rather than simply be swallowed up in the story of which is incredibly simple but highly impractical. It's stylish, whimsical, strange, lacking substance, and that's what makes that fantastic unreality almost acceptable in its own way.
I like escapism and immersion as much as the next person, but I really don't think media should merely engross but rather confront our sense of reality in clever ways that force our brain to recognize we are watching a piece of fiction.
Planetes broke my sense of immersion in just the right ways, because the story does touch upon the loneliness of the character in so many ways. And the story itself is about humanity's intepid steps into the rest of the Solar system, and that ultimately for the people that need to be out there ... there is that sense of foreboding and being removed from everything that is normal, that is safe, that is comforting.
