star wars cockpit display screens brands

A new 3D technology aims to give mobile devices the power to display holographic images and video. Partly inspired by a scene from Star Wars where a holographic image of Princess Leia pleads for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi, the appropriately named ‘Leia’ recently demonstrated a prototype of its display at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

A 3D projection like the one featured in Star Wars may be a step too far at the moment. But, unlike conventional 3D movies that can only be seen from one angle, Leia’s designers say it offers a real sense of depth and can be viewed from 64 different angles - all without the need for 3D glasses.

Leia CEO David Fattal says their technology is a first for mobile displays: “It’s a display that is able to project 64 different images, going in different directions of space. So that when you look at it, your left eye and your right eye will actually see a different image and you will see in 3D. And not only that, but when you move your head around the display - you can rotate or tilt or shift the display - your eyes will see a different pair every time and you will get the sense of parallax, which means you will be able to see around objects as well.”

Fattal hit upon the idea for the holographic display while he was a researcher at HP Labs. His work with optical interconnects, which let computers exchange information encoded in light, led him to realize the same principle could be used to display holographic images. Structures called diffraction gratings normally send light rays through cables to transmit data, but Fattal engineered the gratings to transmit light in prescribed directions in space.

The makers also developed a way to make the holograms come out of a conventional LCD screen, by simply incorporating their own technology. Conventional LCDs have a component called a backlight, consisting of a light source and a plastic light-guiding panel that directions the light toward the display’s pixels. Leia essentially replaces the standard light guide with their own more sophisticated panel.

“It’s a very simple LCD technology, which is the technology that equips most of the cell phones and most of the regular displays today. As we essentially change just one small chief component which is called the backlight and we introduce our nano technology on to it. It sounds very scary but actually it’s very benign and cheap to do. And out of this we’re able to send rays of light into space instead of disorganized light that would propagate in all directions,” said Fattal.

Fattal says their technology could be easily integrated with existing displays: “Anywhere you have a display you would be able to replace the display and augment it with this 3D imagery. So, for example, you start with a smart watch or eventually a smart phone or a tablet. But you could have (it) in any appliance; you could have a display on a fridge or any appliance at home, a remote control or your garage opener. You could have something in a car, for example, it might be a key fob or it might be a GPS display in a car where you would see, for example, building coming out slightly in 3D, like a Google map application.”

Later this year the company plans to release a small display module that can produce full-color 3D images and videos. It was the switch from a black-and-white to color display that proved most difficult for the developers, Fattal said.

“Probably the hardest part was to move from monochrome to color. The physics that this display is based on is called diffraction. Diffraction is basically a technology that behaves very differently with different colors of light. So if you don’t pay attention the red, green and blue component of your image should go in very different directions. And our core technology and our core invention was how to make these three colors work together to produce, for example, a white image that you saw or a full color image.”

It’s a 55-inch OLED display that feels like a TV and a monitor at the same time. Also — yes, it’s a curved screen that can rotate vertically. I had the chance to try out the display at CES 2022, and it’s as wild as Samsung makes it out to be.

There has been a struggle brewing between TVs and monitors over the past few years. TVs are getting better, with displays like the LG C1 offering up variable refresh rate and Samsung’s newly announced QD-OLED TV bringing 144Hz to the living room.

Your eyes don’t deceive you. That is a 55-inch curved OLED monitor positioned vertically. This is cockpit view, where the display stretches far above your head, and it’s remarkable to see in person.

It’s a crazy display on its own, but the control dial is what makes the monitor tick. It’s wireless and it allows you quickly swap between different windows. It’s not final, but from what Samsung showed me, the dial looked great. None of the settings were buried in complex menus. Everything was a button press or two away.

It’s a question you could ask of a lotof CES products. ARK doesn’t look immediately useful, but the vertical orientation could have legs for specific applications in the future. It’s cockpit view, and my mind immediately went to gaming.

Microsoft Flight Simulatoris an obvious application, but I could imagine it in games like Star Wars: Squadronsand indie darling Cloudpunk, too. You wouldn’t normally game in cockpit view like you would with an ultrawide monitor. But for specific titles, ARK could be great.

The vertical orientation is impressive, but it’s important to remember that this is still a 55-inch, 16:9 display. Unlike the DualUp, you can just use it in the horizontal orientation, and the ARK is a great that way.

Bandai, the giant Japanese toy and model company, have been steadily building up the largest catalogue of Star Wars model kits in history. And to near-universal acclaim – their products have been of very high quality and accuracy.

In 2015 and 2016 Bandai released aThe Force Awakens (TFA) Falcon in 1:144 scale, and aStar Wars: A New Hope (ANH) Falcon in 1:350 scale. They also teased the fan world in 2015 by displaying a one-off prototype model of a 1:72 Falcon at a Tokyo trade show. And then... silence.

Finally, in early summer 2017, came the explosive news. Bandai would be releasing a 1:72 Millennium Falcon under the“Perfect Grade” branding, and started taking pre-orders in Japan.

Official launch date in Japan was 28 August, 2017, and Japanese customers started posting photos of the kit the next day. Shipping to other countries was later in the year. The Standard Version was released in March 2018.Official price in Japan of the first version was ¥43,200 with 8% tax; ¥40,000 without tax. That"s about $390/$360 USD or £300/£280 GBP before shipping. The Standard Version is somewhat cheaper.Initially available only in Japan, with the USA, Canada, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia following. European distribution remained non-existent until October 2018, when Revell Germany announced it was importing and reselling the PG Falcon kit for EU sales.The plastic used to make this kit, like all Bandai kits, is not compatible with oil, lacquer, and solvent based paints. The plastic turns brittle and cracks. To play it safe, use only acrylic paints on an Bandai kit. Some people use oils or solvents after laying down a protective layer of primer on all surfaces, but it"s still a potentially risky move. This warning also applies for thinners used in oil paints for weathering. Odourless turpenoids should be safe as an oil thinner if required. But no matter what, test first on pieces of sprue.You don"t want to be the one to buy and assemble this kit, only to accidentally wreck it when you paint it!Cannot fly unassisted, cure cancer, or bring world peace.

So. The Bandai 1:72 Falcon kit is a mostly-faithful replica of the five-foot Star Wars effects miniature. Specifically the 1977-era model, which had three landing gear boxes with five feet and legs.

The five foot model from Star Wars (1977) is to the left; the 32" model from the Empire Strikes Back (1980) is to the right. The narrower undersaucer maintenance pits and additional two landing gear boxes can clearly be seen on the 1980 model.

Questionable engine. Here it gets complicated. The restored and altered Jabba footage in Docking Bay 94 affords a brief glimpse of the right edge of the back engine on the full size set. The Falcon"s engine seems to be a flat curved gridless panel, painted body colour, with some greeblies on it. However a full view of the engine area is never shown.Meanwhile ANH"s modified Mos Eisley liftoff sequence features a computer model mostly based on the 32" ship fromEmpire, with a handful of details taken from the five foot model used inStar Wars.The CGI craft also features a new engine grille design, which consists of a backlit grid with finer spacing than that seen later in TFA. So to be more screen accurate you"ll want to replace Bandai"s TFA grille with an SE grille. There"s a third-party opportunity, here!

If you want to be crazy completist, the small Entex greebly midway along the starboard mandible is missing the pair of struts from a Tiger I kit. You"ll have to cut that off the Bandai-supplied part, which is accurate to 1977.Engine issue above, as per the 1977 movie.

The missing lighting is easily solved by installing any LEDs and batteries. No big deal. You can easily wire up your own, or if LEDs make you uncomfortable I"m sure some third parties will be selling their own kits. Or check out my article on LED lighting.The blue plastic diffuser pieces are kind of annoying if you"re going for an ANH look, since the blue colour is more TFA than Original Trilogy. The pieces are not hard to replace, but a minor hassle. You could easily replace them with a curved strip of translucent plastic and be done with it.The lack of cockpit tunnel neck etching is a shame, but to be honest the plastic parts really aren"t too bad. They"re pretty detailed, simulate the weaving of the Koolshade which the etched parts don"t do, and include the holes. Or you could buy the Green Strawberry third-party set which includes the cockpit tunnel neck etching.The engine deck fans look kinda lousy as solid panels, rather than open grilles, since you can"t see the interior fan mechanisms. This can be fixed by buying the Green Strawberry third party engine grille set.Most people shelling out to buy this expensive thing as also going to the trouble of painting it, as that"s the only way to make it look good. The stickers might actually be useful in this regard - you could use the negatives of the stickers as paint masks to paint your panels!The biggest pain is that you"d be missing all the teeny tiny detail decals. There is a third party decal set or two, scaled to the 1/72 Fine Molds Falcon. This is a smaller model, but pretty close. JBOT is one maker. However, I don"t know if they include all the decals that Bandai do.So in short, if you want all the stuff that"s missing from the Standard Version, buy the initial release right away! It"ll cost you more in money and hassle to make up for the difference. However, if you don"t really care about any or all of the missing features then the Standard Version is a reasonable buy.

...the MPC/Ertl/AMT/Airfix Millennium Falcon?This one, produced in the USA in around 1979 and long discontinued, was the first commercially available Falcon model. And of course is based around the original 1977 Star Wars five foot design. Scale-wise it works out to maybe 1:78 or so? By today"s standards it"s pretty bad. It lacks proper details, and most importantly the proportions are totally out of whack – its sidewalls are notoriously thick, for one thing. But at the time, especially if you were a kid, it was pretty amazing. A number of cottage industry makers have produced more accurate replica parts for improving this kit, but it"s a ton of work and money to get it approaching accurate.

What"s wrong with this thing?To summarize, this kit is really really good. It’s the most accurate and detailed commercial model of the Millennium Falcon - or any Star Wars ship - ever produced. Quite possibly it’s the most elaborate model of any fantasy spacecraft ever sold. Well. Of any Western fantasy spaceship anyway – the Bandai Space Battleship Yamato is pretty crazy.

Should you buy it? Many fans have flocked to online stores already, credit cards in hand. But there are a handful of annoyances that come with the kit. They’re pretty minor on the whole, and I’ve already mentioned them in the body of this document. But to summarize:The kit is not cheap. There has been some online grumbling about this, as the high price does put it out of the reach of a lot of people. Since I have no idea what it actually cost Bandai to research, design, engineer, and produce the product, and have no clue what the sales and margins are, I can’t offer any fact-based views on whether the price is fair or not. But suffice to say that it’s not a budget kit, it"s extremely high-quality and researched to the n"th degree, and it basically has no competition. Whether it’s worth the cost or not is up to you!The Standard Version is a bit cheaper, but is also missing a lot of stuff that people will want – especially the decals.This isn"t a problem as such, but the landing gear bays and a handful of other exterior details (mainly the external light positions) were chosen by Bandai to be ANH-style, not ESB-style. Presumably Bandai may release an updated ESB kit in the future, but for now this is what they sell.That said, the cockpit interior is the era-incorrect Empire Strikes Back cockpit, not the Star Wars/A New Hope cockpit, which would have been more accurate.The cockpit tunnel is filled with plastic brackets to support the LEDs and attach to the saucer. If you want to open up the door and install corridor detailing (since the door was always open in ANH) you"ll need to cut them out.The cockpit cone window struts are slightly thicker than they were, proportionally speaking, on the five footer. You could sand or cut them down carefully, but doing so would lose the interior strut detail.The cockpit interior sidewalls are black plastic and cannot be illuminated easily. You could drill out holes and install SMD LEDs if you wanted.The seats don"t have proper backs. Admittedly you can"t see the backs once they"re installed, but it"s one of those things.The rear seats always face forward – you can"t rotate them to various angles like in the movies, at least not without surgery. They also have big square bases rather than posts.The seats also have slots for clipping the figures in. If you leave the figures out, you"ll need to fill in the slots.The five human/Wookiee/droid figures are detailed really nicely, but sit in bolt upright and unconvincing postures. C-3PO looks okay, though his arms are a bit splayed.The rear engine grille has TFA-era spacing, but the internal TFA grating is not included. Instead it has an OT SE-era internal design. So it’s kind of a hybrid TFA/OT SE grille, which is a bit weird for an Original Trilogy model.The boarding ramp is not movable. It’s either up or down, depending on which snap-in components you install.The ramp interior has detailed wedge-shaped sidewalls. But oddly the engraved panel lines are stepped double lines, rather than the correct single lines. Also, Bandai made the common error of mirroring the internal ramp details. It"s a little known fact that the Star Wars film set had different details on each side of the ramp.The ramp has interior ceiling lighting (not available in the Standard Version)  which only appeared in ESB. The ramp is lit by an LED at one end, rather than by the evenly spaced dual rows of ceiling lights that were featured in the actual ESB movie set. The ramp ceiling is also marred by a long seam.As described above, the short bit of interior corridor visible at the top of the ramp is not correct – it"s cylindrical and not a segment of a torus as it should be. I"ve made several 3D-printed replacement corridors to fix this problem.The landing gear rings are not perforated on the angled sides. This would have been a difficult thing to injection-mould unless the rings had been made of multiple parts or the moulds had side actions. The top surface is perforated correctly. I"ve made 3D printed replacement gear rings with movie-accurate perforations, if you want to fix this problem.Much of the saucer battle damage is moulded into the plastic. But the crushed and bent saucer edges, some of the underside saucer damage, and most notably the starboard docking ring hole, are not. The simulated damage isn"t bad, and definitely looks like the damage on the original model. But it"s also limited by what injection moulding technology can do – it still needs some work with a knife to get rid of soft edges, vertical walls in the plastic, etc.The optional etched metal fan grilles and cockpit collar grille (not available in the Standard Version)  are highly detailed, but only come as one metal piece per grille. They aren’t designed to be layered, which would have yielded increased realism. The Koolshade for the fan grilles is lacking its raised bars, for example.The fan mechanisms are molded as a single black plastic block. This means it’s not easy to remove them as individual components if you want to motorize the internal fans. Also, the fan mouldings are actually kind of flawed. The blades go all the way to the outer edge, where on the real model they didn"t touch. This makes them a little fiddly to paint correctly, since the discs and fan blades were dark grey or black, but the fan interior was a medium grey colour. Unfortunately the fan tops are also aligned to the horizon, rather than angled to the slope of the saucer, which means that each fan disc is oddly aligned. Finally, the rectangular hole/slot in the centre of each fan disc is longer than it should be, and on some of the fake fans is misaligned relative to the central disc. To address these problems I"ve designed 3D-printed replacements – both regular static fans and animated motorizable fans.The gunbays are moulded in two separate pieces. Unfortunately the seams run straight down the middle of the roof, which looks obvious and is a shame. I wish the circular backwall were a separate third component, so it wouldn"t be bisected by an obvious seam. Likewise, if the seams had been in the diagonally-situated corners of the gunbay they wouldn"t have been as obvious as they are - they run through the middle of the top and bottom panels. Still. It"s hard to see the gunbay once the ship is assembled, so I guess few people will notice.The thin pipes on the jaws are molded in place. If you"re the sort of person who wants to replace them with glued-on wires you"re in for a lot of work. The mandible pipes are mostly separate parts.A small few parts are molded as solid objects rather than having holes or openings. For example, the "Kettenkrad" perforated half-cylinder on the side of the right mandible has depressions rather than holes, and must be drilled and cut out for accuracy. Or you could buy a 3D print - I have made one available.Bandai faithfully reproduced the five foot ship as it appeared in the 1977 movie. However extensive research by some RPF model makers and others reveal that there are several tiny greeblies missing from the Bandai kit that were present in 1977, as noted above.The internal lighting (not available in the Standard Version) runs off three AAA cells, which has a shorter runtime than AAs would. The switches are underneath the rear quarter plate, which is fiddly.The included display stand is pretty bad, and quite a letdown compared to the overall high quality of the kit. It"s clunky, ugly, and rectangular, and the flat base has rows of sink marks in the plastic where the internal braces are located. As noted above it’s a part repurposed from a previous Bandai robot model kit.No stickers are included with the original release; just waterslide decals. The decals offer much higher quality, but it’s a shame since the stickers are perfect when repurposed as one-time masks for speeding up the painting process.The Standard Edition includes only stickers; no decals. Ugh.The decals are great and finely detailed where solid colours (black, white, etc) are involved. But areas that are meant to be shades of a colour, such as the cockpit door or one of the saucer panels, are printed using halftones rather than grey ink. When viewed close up, or in photos, you can see the dots.So...

Bandai blog article, 3. Information on the undersaucer pits. Japanese; machine-translation.Bandai blog article, 4. Information about the body proportions. Japanese; machine-translation.Some really useful PG Falcon building tips from Japanese model maker Seiji Takahashi. Includes a list of simple modifications and improvements to the kit, such as drilling out the parts which don"t have holes where they should, etc. Part I in Japanese and part I machine-translated to English. Part II in Japanese and part II machine-translated to English.Mobile phone footage of a display model of the Bandai 1:72 at a trade show. Interestingly this prototype has a minor error - a slightly scooped-out area on top of one of the four round mandible maintenance pits. That error does not appear on the production version.Some closeup shots of a few components. Note that the grey-white parts are Bandai 1:72 Falcon parts. The medium-grey parts are 32" Falcon details, and are not from Bandai - perhaps from the Fine Molds 1:72 model?A great collection of beautifully-lit photos of many of the components that make up the Bandai 1:72 kit.Bandai Falcon build log. By Jason Eaton, an expert model-maker turning his eye to the PG Falcon. Shows some of the original "donor" parts for some of the greeblies, along with the 1/3.6 scale Bandai representations.

In the meantime, I"ve discovered that these cockpits were not meant to be taken apart. The way they are constructed makes it incredibly difficult to actually remove pieces. Notice what Patonaud says here in an earlier thread post...

I asked him about this and basically, he had to destroy his cockpit because it got stuck when he was trying to install it. Basically, Atari didn"t want people deconstructing it and the way they assembled it makes it incredibly difficult to hack up. Unfortunately, I have no choice and need to get this thing a bit smaller and lighter because it"s going in my basement. If I don"t take the arches off, it will get stuck in my bulkhead just like Pat"s did. So off to work we go...

In order to get the top arches off, I had to break a piece. No worry, I can recreate this later and the plan is to put back the arches in such a way that they can actually be removed later, should the game need to come out of the basement someday. For now, take a look at my special edition drop-top Star Wars...

Probably the biggest update to share however is akin to the saying "when it rains, it pours." While doing this restoration, a fellow Pinsider reached out to me (vidgameseller) and informed me that he had another SW cockpit that he was looking to get rid of. After a 6 hour round-trip yesterday, well...then there were 2...

The 2nd cockpit is in a little worse shape than the original one I started with (Troy said as much when we first communicated). It"s ridonkulously dirty and needs a bit more cab work. That said, it"s complete just like mine and has incredible potential to be brought back to life.

When I"m done with my restore, I"m going to sell the 2nd SW cockpit as I refuse to hoard this incredible game. In the meantime, it"ll serve nicely as a template!

LCD displays in cars have been flat, rectangular and low resolution since the beginning. However, as the cockpit becomes a smart mobile digital assistant, there is increased need for bigger, higher-resolution, more immersive displays. Next-generation cockpit displays are curved and offer high resolution at much larger sizes than current displays. Visteon is one of the largest suppliers of automotive displays to the industry and has multiple years of experience in critical aspects of automotive use cases, such as head impact safety, long life, extreme temperatures, vibrations and reflectivity.

Six park guests at a time take a seat in the iconic "Star Wars" spaceship and use buttons and levers to control the ship"s movements as a video screen makes it seem as if you"re really flying.

Disneyland"s brand new Star Wars: Galaxy"s Edge land is packed with new shops, eateries, and interactive experiences. The most immersive of these is Millennium Falcon: Smuggler"s Run, a new attraction which allows guests to literally take the controls of the iconic "hunk of junk" spaceship and fly on a dangerous mission.

The story of Smuggler"s Run starts with Chewbacca bringing the Millennium Falcon to the Black Spire Outpost following the events of 2018"s Star Wars movie, "The Last Jedi." Chewy needs to get the ship fixed up, and so he makes a deal with Hondo Ohnaka — a smuggler you might recognize from "The Clone Wars" and "Star Wars Rebels" animated series.

While you"re waiting, look for "Star Wars" Easter eggs like Luke Skywalker"s training remote and helmet from the scene in "A New Hope" when he was first practicing with a lightsaber in the Millennium Falcon.

The gunners" job is to wait for the green lights to activate and then pummel away as fast as you can to fire the blasters. Before the ride starts, the gunners can choose whether they want their weapons to be automatic or manual. Automatic will make things much easier, while manually increases the number of buttons you"ll need to pay attention to.

Unlike Star Tours, this ride"s predecessor in Tomorrowland, Smuggler"s Run, doesn"t require any 3-D glasses. But that doesn"t mean the flight simulation won"t feel incredibly visceral and almost overwhelming in the moment.

The cockpit moves and shakes in uncanny relation to the way your team uses the controls, and the detailed screen visible through the Millennium Falcon"s windows really makes you feel as if you"re looking out of a spaceship into the galaxy.

In recent years, the LEGO Group has been releasing more and more sets for older fans. From the staggering Ultimate Collector Series (UCS) to new forms like LEGO Art, the legendary toy maker has created products designed specifically for those who once loved the iconic LEGO brick — or might want to give building a try. (I was a bit of both.) For a toy commonly associated with being just for kids, it’s a surprising strategy that has met with real success, particularly throughStar Wars. And it shows no signs of slowing down, especially with the reveal of the new LEGOStar WarsUCS AT-AT: a downright huge model of the iconic vehicle, designed for display, and coming November 26. The set clocks in at an astonishing6,785 pieces — measuring 24.5 x 27 x 9.5 inches — and features a movable head, spinning guns, adjustable legs, and side panels that can be opened and closed; on the inside, fans will find a cargo bay, seating for Snowtroopers, and classic Imperial design elements, like vertical lights. The UCS AT-AT also comes with nine minifigures and accessories, including Luke Skywalker (complete with grappling wire to scale up the walker and slice at its underbelly), General Veers, four Snowtroopers, a Snowtrooper Commander, and two AT-AT Drivers, along with two speeder bikes and an E-web cannon. Soprepare to target the main generator…and make some space on your LEGO shelf.

StarWars.com recently spoke at length withMike Ilacqua (global head of product, LEGOStar Wars, at the LEGO Group), Jens Kronvold Frederiksen (creative lead of LEGOStar Warsat the LEGO Group), and Chris Gollaher (director of product design at Lucasfilm) about developing products geared toward AFOLs, what differentiates sets made for kids and adults, and how they dreamed up the UCS AT-AT.

Mike Ilacqua:First and foremost, adults have been an important part of our fanbase for a long time, but it’s really been in the last few years where we’ve definitely seen an opportunity with adults who are hyperconnected and overstimulated with screens. LEGO building just provides them an amazing outlet to be able to disconnect, recharge, regain their balance. You can really achieve that flow with LEGO building.

One thing that has really provided a bit of that emotional hook has been passion points. There’s been a concerted effort the last few years to actually design products that are centered around passion points. Of course,Star Warsis a huge passion point with adults and we’ve had a really strong AFOL audience for some time.

And to Mike’s point, what has really changed in the last few years is that shift of focus of why people are building with LEGO. A lot of them were coming in because, as the passion point brings up, they were Star Wars fans or LEGO fans, but now we’re kind of expanding it where people are looking for an experience that the LEGO sets can bring in a very unique way.

Jens Kronvold Frederiksen:We’ve been working with LEGOStar Warssince the beginning, Chris and I, and we acknowledged right away that there was a huge [adult audience]. We just saw it in the office when we started with LEGOStar Wars— how many of my colleagues were super interested and into that.

It was already, in the year 2000, the second year ofLEGO Star Wars, that we introduced the Ultimate Collector Series models. At that time, I think they were marked 16+, but we knew that these were something that were definitely more complex and targeted to an older audience. And because of that we had a special packaging. Do you remember, Chris? It was black and white.

With the expansion of the adult LEGO program, we’re bringing in different levels of experience and engagement. It’s still a complex build, it’s still designed for older fans, but it allows you to get in at different points, which I think has been really well-received by our fans, both Star Wars and LEGO fans.

StarWars.com: I became a LEGO fan in my 30s during the early 2010s, and it was through sets that were targeted to adults. There were things like the DeLorean fromBack to the Future, the ECTO-1, and the biggerStar Warssets. When was there a clear shift toward “We are making sets for AFOLs or for people who could become AFOLs” from “We’re making LEGOStar Warssets for kids, but adults are buying them, as well?” These were products that were clearly made for people my age and my cultural touchpoints.

Jens Kronvold Frederiksen:It’s also a different kind of product. I just remember it had always been, when we created LEGO models, it was about giving a great play experience. But here, it’s a display experience, you can say. [Laughs] It’s about having a great building experience, of course, then the products are purely made — for instance, the helmets — for display. That’s really different from our standard products, of course.

The adult-targeted set tends to have less of those features built in, and more of the display details. The amount of small detail that goes into it really comes out in those adult sets, I think, in a fantastic way. That’s where the focus is. That’s where the number of bricks, the way we use it, the way we do the build is really designed to be as accurate as possible to that vehicle or that helmet or that moment. Whereas in the kid [set], it’s play first. Obviously, we still want to be accurate. Jens and his team do a fantastic job — interpreting the physical thing into a brick form. But there are play factors built in there.

StarWars.com: Jens, can you talk about, from your perspective, what it was like when you did have to take those first steps into switching from something that was more toy-based in terms of LEGO design, versus something that was going to be a collector’s piece?

And then we tried to create it from more standard LEGO elements with more visible knobs, and that was exactly what people wanted. They want, when it’s displayed, it should be visible that this is something that consists of a lot of pieces. In other words, that it’s actually a challenge to build it. But also it should clearly distance from any other display piece by showing that it’s the LEGO brand. So there were a lot of learnings.

StarWars.com: I have the new R2 that’s about a foot tall, and my six-year-old quickly took over the build from me. [Laughs] It says 18+ on the box. I quickly became his assistant.

Mike Ilacqua:What’s really cool about that example, and we see this all the time, is that it can move the parent or the older sibling out of the role of assistant and into the role of building for themselves. You can be sitting at the table building your Boba Fett helmet while your child is building Boba Fett’s Starship. Those are very different expressions, but an experience you can share together because you have the unifying factor of the character and theStar WarsIP, as well. It just makes a really fun complement for the family.

StarWars.com: On that note, speaking from a parent’s perspective, building together was one thing I did not anticipate. I got into LEGO building, a couple of years after that my kids were born. They got into LEGO building. But part of the appeal of it to me now is that it’s something we can all appreciate and do together.

Chris Gollaher: That’s one of the things that makes this such a fantastic relationship between the LEGO Group and Star Wars. Both of them have that cross-generational appeal. The parents and the kids share it in the storytelling of Star Wars, and then the experience of the LEGO brand. And that’s why it’s so great. It works so well and hits on all levels for that.

Jens Kronvold Frederiksen:It’s something we’re aware of. And specifically, if you look at a product like our Mos Eisley cantina — this huge set that’s actually 18+ because it’s a pretty big build — that model has play features and functions. And a lot of minifigures. It’s this crossover thing [that] really gets the whole family building it together and has hours and hours of role-play in it. You have role-play or display, so that’s a little bit in-between, you could say.

StarWars.com: After I got into LEGO building, I was really surprised once I started to explore everything around it. I love that you welcome fan designs and will even put them into production with LEGO Ideas. The community is very welcoming, the VIP program is really well put-together. The overall tone is very positive. As an adult fan, both on my own and as a parent, that was very appealing. I’m curious how you developed this and fostered it.

StarWars.com: I think the LEGO brand is doing an amazing job with it. One thing that impresses me about LEGO’s strategy for AFOLs is that it seems like the product goes beyond just a nostalgic play. Meaning, you’re not just re-releasing sets that people grew up with. To use LEGO Star Wars as an example, you have the helmet series, you have the art series, and items that are more display pieces, like the new Ultimate Collector Series AT-AT. Can you talk about how this approach evolved?

Mike Ilacqua: I think Chris hit on it a little bit earlier. It does come down to thinking about the various audiences out there and how do you design the portfolio in a way that brings more people in to LEGO building. I think what we recognized is there was an entry point that we can create, that made building that much more accessible to some of those adult fans who maybe have gone many years without a LEGO building experience. If we could drive awareness of these new models that have that nostalgic emotional hook to them that obviously brings them in, if we can pay that off with a really awesome model that’s highly detailed but it’s accessible and something that they could feel confident that they could build, then that was a way to start building a broader tent of LEGO builders.

We still want to make sure that we are addressing and delighting those adult fans of the LEGO brand who are looking for the bigger challenge time and time again. They’re the ones who, if you have the Venn diagram, Star Wars isn’t their only passion. Actually, LEGO building is their passion, too. So you want to make sure that you’re also surprising and delighting them with even more detailed sets, complicated building, more functionality, and just ensuring that we continue to surprise and delight them with every big launch.

StarWars.com: Have you found that any of the new kinds of products are gateways into more traditional LEGO building? Like the art portraits, for example? I could see getting that for my dad, and then that opening a door to, “Oh, I want to build this TIE Fighter.”

StarWars.com: For LEGOStar Wars, which is obviously huge with kids — and that is a really important audience for both Lucasfilm and the LEGO Group — how have you worked to balance that audience with the AFOL audience in terms of making sure you’re catering to both in the appropriate way?

Our LEGOStar Warsfranchise plays an important role because it has such a wide reach and a fandom out there that we can tap into and continue to foster for years to come.

Chris Gollaher: I think, as Mike said, kids remain at the core, and that’s throughout the year. But we work closely together, the Lucasfilm team and the LEGO team, to look at that release calendar over the year and make sure we’re pulling the right levers, if you will, on timing and content. Which are really kid directed, and which are the times and moments where we can do something that’s going to appeal to older fans, as well. May the 4th is obviously a good example where we sometimes lean more into that older fan, because it’s such an ingrained part of that Star Wars fan experience.

Chris Gollaher: It’s an interesting question. I don’t know if “surprised” is the right word; I mean, it is amazing. We’re all really happy and grateful that it’s resonated. As Jens said, when we started working together, the LEGO Group and Star Wars, the potential was clear right from the start.

It’s really amazing seeing how it’s grown, year on year. It’s got its own expression of Star Wars in a lot of ways, through the product and the games. There’s publishing. It’s really an amazing experience to watch it grow and expand and how much it means to so many people now. It’s been gratifying, I think, is the word I’d use.

Jens Kronvold Frederiksen:I think it’s very easy to answer. It’s just the LEGO Group and Star Wars were the perfect match. We saw that right away, to be honest. It was clear when we started working on it that this could become really good.

Mike Ilacqua: Just to build on what Chris said, we spent a lot of this time together talking about the models themselves and the differences between kids and adults, but there are so many other expressions of the LEGO Star Wars brand out there.

Whether it’s through video games or entertainment content — we have been able to craft a very unique tone of voice for LEGO Star Wars and really dialed up the humor that’s just such a natural fit with the LEGO brand. It also provides a totally different take on the Star Wars IP, and the two of them together have carved out a unique place, not just in the culture but in the living rooms of families all over.

StarWars.com: So today, in a celebration of AFOLs, we’re revealing the LEGO Star WarsUCS AT-AT, which looks incredible. There have been other LEGOStar Wars AT-ATs in the past, but this one looks like it’s on a completely different level. What can you tell me about designing it, and bringing the AT-AT to a much grander scale?

But the model still has some features and functions. You can adjust the legs. Simply because the model is so heavy, you have a little tool that you’re using to position the legs. It’s not easy to move around and play with. It’s more meant for display.

We have a model that’s in minifigure scale, so we decided we wanted to include the full interior, as well. You can actually lift off the panels so you can display the model with either one side or both sides exposed, so you can see how it looks like inside.

StarWars.com: What is the process for that? Does that come from Jens? You and your team saying, “With this bigger scale we have this wishlist of what we’d like to do,” and then you go to Lucasfilm? Or is it Lucasfilm saying, “Here’s what we think we can do with this one that maybe we couldn’t do in the others?” Or is it a bit of both?

StarWars.com: From a design perspective, Jens, is it especially exciting to get to work on this scale and go into detail that maybe you can’t on the more kids-oriented sets?

Chris Gollaher: One thing I want to follow up on, because I think it’s really kind of fun about this, it’s actually not only the set itself which is a different canvas we can work on, but even the packaging! The level of detail that we get into with the packaging, because of the scope of this thing and the number of pieces. You’ve got four different boxes within the big box. So how the team designs that packaging, even the experience of opening it up, is a unique thing to this, different than other LEGOStar Wars sets. So all the way around I think everything’s amped up a little bit on this.

StarWars.com: Is that a goal for all of you? In terms of year-in and year-out, do you want to keep improving or amping it up for yourselves and for consumers?

Mike Ilacqua: You can see that, and I’ll just use one example, in publishing. There are volumes  of books that showcase the history of LEGOStar Wars and the number of sets that we’ve created. It’s quite astonishing when you look over the 20-plus year history of LEGOStar Wars. Just the evolution and the detailing that gets amped up year after year after year. When there are models that are reinvented and redesigned, it’s just a total step change in the detailing that Jens and his team is able to deliver.

Jens Kronvold Frederiksen:An excellent example of that, Mike, was back in 2019 when we had the 20thanniversary of LEGOStar Wars. We got the idea, “Hey, we want to launch some products from the beginning.”

Dan Brooks is a writer and the editor of StarWars.com. He lovesStar Wars, ELO, and the New York Rangers, Jets, Yankees, and Knicks. Follow him on Twitter@dan_brooks.

Although you"re welcome to base your build on an intellectual property (IP) (such as Star Wars, Ferrari, etc) and use LEGO elements that only exist in IP sets (i.e. a printed cockpit only found in a LEGO Star Wars set), using IP related references or elements items in your build would limit The LEGO Group in potentially sharing your work on LEGO Social Media. Therefore, if you wish to potentially have your design featured then make sure to keep it fully original and using generic LEGO elements only.

You"ll find no touch screens in Star Wars: The Last Jedi—not even when you can watch it at home next month (March 13 for digital, two weeks later for physical). Same goes for mice and keyboards. They"re all too familiar, too of-this-world, to appear in a galaxy so far, far away. What you’ll find instead are interface displays, and lots of them. Whether in an X-wing"s cockpit or the bridge of a Star Destroyer, every display in The Last Jedi exists to support the story—to provide a graphical complement to the film"s action and dialogue.

And it started with the film’s director. “Whenever possible, Rian [Johnson] wanted us to use practical graphics to enforce the narrative,” says creative director Andrew Booth, who oversaw the creation of TLJ’s assorted instrument clusters, targeting systems, medical readouts, and tactical displays. “It would actually appear in the script that you look at a screen and gain a deeper understanding of what’s happening. The challenge was always, what can we do in-camera to create something that feels real and believable?”

What"s impressive about the interfaces in The Last Jedi is that they feel believable not just to the audience, but to the film"s dramatis personae. In the real world, designers design for one person: the user. But creatives like Booth—whose design agency, BLIND LTD, has been behind the look and feel of some of this century’s biggest blockbusters, including every Star Wars film from TFA onward—designed the practical displays in The Last Jedi with at least three groups of people in mind: the characters, the actors depicting those characters, and the folks watching along in theaters.

Consider the film’s opening scene, in which (fair warning: plot points and spoilers from here on out) Commander Poe Dameron calls General Hux. The point of Poe"s call is to buy time; he"s charging the engines on his X-wing so he can stage a surprise attack on the First Order Dreadnought that’s poised to obliterate his Resistance buddies planetside. It’s a plan the audience comes to understand when the camera cuts to a display inside Poe’s starfighter that shows the status of his boosters.

The inside of Poe"s X-wing. The top display depicts the Dreadnaught tower Poe attacks at the beginning of the film; the middle one shows the status bar for his X-wing’s engines; and the bottom one, which is all wonky, visualizes his spaceship’s damaged targeting system.LUCASFILM LTD./BLIND LTD.

“For us, that’s a perfect piece of storytelling,” Booth says. “Now you’ve got exposition, drama, and tension all wrapped up in this close-up of a progress bar.” And because it’s a practical effect, that tension is experienced by audience, actor, and character alike. In fact, every single display in Poe’s cockpit pulls triple duty: The top one depicts the tower Poe is attacking; the middle one shows the status bar for his X-wing’s engines; and the bottom one, which is all wonky, visualizes his spaceship’s damaged targeting system, which BB-8 spends much of the sequence trying to repair.

Similar details abound inside the spacecraft from Canto Bight, the opulent casino city. The graphics aboard the ship that DJ and BB-8 steal are shiny. Slinky. Sumptuous. A striking contrast to the First Order"s stark, militaristic vibes and the ragtag aesthetics of the Resistance. "This was us trying to evoke a different world," Booth says.

But look closely, and you’ll see that the screens inside the shuttle are loaded with details. Crait’s topography, the blast door separating the Resistance from the First Order, the line of AT-ATs—they"re all depicted on screens, often for the briefest of moments. "It gives you an idea of the level of detail that we put into these interfaces," Booth says. "It"s one of the things we pride ourselves on: You don’t necessarily always see it, but you sure as hell feel it.”

If you’re distracted while driving, it is difficult to shoot your enemy. During World War II — a notoriously distracting period in human history — this profound observation provoked the development of a variety of largely mechanical user aids that we now categorize as “head-up displays” (HUDs): effectively transparent information displays that allowed fighter and bomber pilots to keep their attention on the actual horizon, not the gauges or handheld maps inside the cockpit, the better to put bullets into enemies or bombs on top of their war stuff.

Despite what you might think based on Iron Man or Star Wars, layering information is only “futuristic” if you ignore the incremental practical progression from gun sights (raised tabs of metal that, when aligned, show that a straight barrel sits more or less on a ray from the bullet to the target) to reticles (crosshairs or sights) to simulated horizon lines or projected radar displays, which, during the multinational innovation laboratory of a global conflict, progressed pretty dang quickly. (Am I saying that gun sights were the first augmented-reality technology? Well, I’m not notsaying it.)

At the beginning of World War II, airplane armament was aimed using reflector sights and gyroscopically stabilized reticles that could “lead” a target — clever stuff, but not hugely advanced over technology used during the previous World War. By the end of WWII, some bombers had onboard microwave radar systems with television-based displays, although only a select number of specialized night flyers, like the zippy wooden-framed de Havilland Mosquito, were equipped with what we would consider to be a true HUD, which reflected the radar information, including an artificial horizon, onto a piece of glass just in front of the pilot controls.

So that’s the head-up display, completely sorted in the early ’40s: Take some hopefully useful information from some electronics, project it onto some glass, keep your hands on ten and two, try not to put your machine where any bullets are, and hopefully get your airframe safely back home. And while postwar engineers continued to develop the HUD for the burgeoning commercial aircraft market, it didn’t take too long before automakers — staffed by many veterans themselves — began to see the utility of a HUD in a car, albeit at an abbreviated pace.

It would take over 20 years before a regular car buyer could actually purchase a car with a head-up display. After the acquisition of Hughes Aircraft by General Motors in 1985, and a subsequent merger with GM’s in-house electronics division Delco, the faintly phosphorescent stars aligned: Fifty 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Convertibles (Indy Pace Car Edition) were equipped with a Hughes-derived head-up display that projected a digital speedometer and turn-signal indicators onto the windshield. (Full disclosure: I’ve done freelance work with General Motors in the past.) General Motors hired legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager to drive the drop-top Cutlass around the track to really tie together the whole aircraft lineage story during the car’s launch, and soon began to offer a HUD as an option in cars across the company’s various car brands (including Corvettes), although technically Nissan beat them to market for first mass-market car HUD, with the 1989 model 240SX and Maxima.

These days, almost every luxury car brand offers at least an optional head-up display that does pretty much the same thing: reflect some information from a small TFT panel onto the windshield, usually something similar to what is shown on the instrument cluster display — speed, GPS-guided turn-by-turn directions, maybe what song is streaming through Spotify. (This rebooted Lincoln Navigator’s head-up display is a good example — large, elegantly kerned, art directed with restraint.)

Even the best automotive HUDs are limited by a simple technical limitation: They can only project a two-dimensional image into the field of view of a driver. You may be able to fiddle with a dial or change exactly where the ghostly pane floats in your view, but a two-dimensional display can only ever look like a translucent tablet screen superimposed over the real world.

“I cannot emphasize this variable enough,” says Juliana Clegg, CEO of Falcon AR, one of several companies designing what they hope will be the car head-up display of the future. “Depth, depth, depth.”

Volumetric HUDs, like those from Falcon AR or competitors like WayRay, will allow something like true augmented reality to not just project flat information in front of a driver’s face, but can position little overlays — lane markers, or GPS arrows — such that they appear to be floating in the real world. A tiny, flat arrow that indicates a left turn is handy, but your phone or touchscreen center-stack display can already do that, if you glance down or askance. A 3-D arrow that curves in front of you to show exactly where the next intersection is in real life is much more handy.

If any of the augmented-reality HUDs can be made to practically work, that is. Falcon AR has more modest ambitions: a relatively inexpensive technology that adds depth to a head-up display for just the driver. WayRay, by comparison, aims to create a holographic display that can project across the entire front windshield — think navigation information for the driver, Netflix for the passengers — but requires specially bonded layers of windshield glass that add more cost to the overall expense of the car.

Star Wars fans let out a collective gasp when Electronic Arts announced Star Wars: Squadrons in June. It looks every inch like the first-person, in-cockpit space combat game that fans have been waiting for since the original Star Wars:X-Wing and Star Wars: TIE Fighter classics. Even more exciting is the fact that it will be compatible with modern flight sticks, throttles, and virtual reality headsets — including PlayStation VR. Squadronsis scheduled to be released Oct. 2 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. That means the clock is ticking for you to build the dedicated cockpit you’ve always wanted.

I’ve spent part of the last few months of quarantine tinkering in my garage, refining my own flight simulation setup for use primarily with Elite: Dangerous. As designed, this same rig is also fully compatible with DCS World, MechWarrior 5:Mercenaries, Star Citizen, and War Thunder. I’ve also built it with an eye on MicrosoftFlight Simulator, which is expected to arrive later this year.

Here are a few creative solutions I found for making a video game cockpit — also called a “simpit” — without breaking the bank, as well as a couple of must-have items to take your build to the next level. I’ll finish things off with a complete shopping list of everything I’ve included in my rig as pictured. Even if you’re not going whole hog with a VR headset, there’s still plenty of great information below.

My recommendation if you’re starting from scratch is to build your cockpit around the PC. That’s because there are already plenty of games that you can play on PC right now that can make use of a quality simpit, so even if Squadronscomes up short when it finally gets released you’ll still have some excellent games to play.

For my PC setup, I’ve opted for the HTC Vive Pro, mainly because that’s what was sitting around in the Polygon library when I started the build. There are plenty of excellent options right now for VR, and we’ve detailed all of the leading devices in our Half-Life: Alyxbuying guide.

First, start with a desktop. You can get the Ikea Linnmon, like I have, for just $8.99. Alternately, you could get a nice big solid piece from your local hardware store, or slap something together with scraps you’ve got lying around the house. Next, I recommend adjustable-height legs. Again, Ikea offers an affordable solution in the Olov at $15.99 each. That’s a whole adjustable-height work surface for less than $75.

I can’t fly outside of VR without the TrackIR 5 and the Track Clip Pro. They translate minuscule head movements into dramatic changes in your field of view, letting you look up, down, and all around while seated in the cockpit. I first learned to love them playing DayZand Arma 3, where they give your character a neck that allows you to look in one direction and shoot in another. Now, whether I’m lining up my final approach in War Thunder or landing inside a space station in Elite: Dangerous, I consider them to be essential.

The newest PC compatible flight stick from Thrustmaster is a replica of the stick used to fly the Airbus A320. It’s also fully ambidextrous, including hot-swappable buttons on the left and right side of the stick. If you plan to build a two-stick setup — perfect for Star Citizen orMechWarrior 5: Mercenaries — they’re just the thing.