Astro Cross: Flashback 1942 (was naming alien ships)

[classicdrogn]

Well, that would be true in any battroid mode, I expect - the 190 left the cockpit exposed (though still with an armor/display plate to the front) because the head doesn't have enough range of motion to look backwards under any circumstances and the engine assembly blocks up as well, but really given the soda-can-size cameras I'm assuming as available due to technological advancement over OTL mounting enough of them for a full-coverage virtual environment good enough to notice "something is there" and train the higher quality head sensors on it is surely the way to go - the Schwalbe and the two Lightnings both have this, more or less, as part of their design. LCD and even TFT flat displays are not a huge technical challenge once the techniques involved are actually known, nor are the backlights for them, it's miniaturization where semiconductor tech gets hard and 70's level is where I've pegged it for that, using the volume requirements of much simpler mechanical or tube-type equipment to scrape through with the bare minimum of computational capacity. There's no target recognition or tracking etc. beyond the pilot him or herself, though, and automation is limited to translating complex interactions (like the unavoidable fly-by-wire control connections, or moving and balancing a humanoid robot) into simple inputs and outputs.

I did have a different name on the VP-38 for a bit, but then figured it would just make things more confusing (as happened above) and dropped it. fixed-config versions of the units certainly existed for the prototype stages, but for practical purposes the Lightning is the Lightning and the Wildcat is the Wildcat.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows