UnnamedCharacterhas achieved another very cool technological milestone in the digital exploration of Wing Commander 1. Kilrathi Saga introduced invisible cockpits to the original games, but they were not particularly smooth implementations. Unnamed's advancements allow for properly overlays so that indicator labels are retained and the radar isn't transparent to the background. Compare the KS versions up top to the enhanced versions below! Along the way, he encountered some targeting issues due to where the game wanted to put the reticle, but those have already been
resolvedas well.
The Kilrathi Saga version of the game provides the option to remove the cockpit. This is done by simply not displaying the cockpit image, but it does have some negative side effects: all labels are missing, the radar is transparent, and there is no location highlighting on the radar sections when taking a hit.
We can replicate the effect in the DOS version by "erasing" the cockpit and adjusting the mask as well. But it does have an unexpected side effect: the crosshair is shifted down. It turns out the crosshair position is not hardcoded, but centered in the view (mask) area. We can improve the situation if we lower some of the cockpit instruments. We can also "cheat" by reducing the height of the mask with little noticeable impact since the bottom of the screen is filled with instruments.
