star wars cockpit display screens factory

After watching Star Wars while it was on a TBS Marathon this weekend, that same "shiny star symbol" can be seen on several terminals in the Rebel Base on Yavin as well. I am sure that it was used several times as "technological filler" and one could spot it in the original trilogy - maybe add it to the drinking game list.

Ask any fan of Golden Age classic arcade machines what their fondest recollection of the era is, and it is likely that Atari’s seminal Star Wars game is going to be mentioned by most. Released in 1983, the game is indeed a true classic and is arguably one of the best uses of a licence ever in a video game. Based on the action seen in the film, this full colour vector game drops the player into the Star Wars Universe. And despite being ultimately not much more than an on-rails shooter, it is a great game, that puts the player inside an X-Wing Fighter craft as Luke Skywalker travelling through space to shoot down enemy Tie-Fighters.

Once the enemies are cleared the player arrives at the Death Star to shoot down Towers and turrets, all the while being encouraged to “use the force” by a digitized Alec Guinness. But it is perhaps the game’s final sequence that captures the imagination the most; the player is able to barrel down the Death Star’s “trench” to the game’s ultimate spectacular grand finale:

The actual game started life as something else entirely – Warp Speed. This was the game that engineer Jed Margolin had in his head to develop from his very first day at Atari:

The Star Wars game came about because I wanted to do a 3D space war game. I mean, I really wanted to do a 3D space war game. It is why I went to work for Atari.

I think that was the most excited I’ve ever been in my life! They could have picked people like Ed Logg or Ed Rotberg, who had superiority over me. I’d just come off the Gravitar and Akka Arrh games, but for some reason they choose me to run the project and design the game. I didn’t know how much work it was going to be but I wanted to make sure I got the best team and made the best game. Star Wars was such an important title. I just wanted to make sure it was top-notch.

….If the player hits it, he is treated to a colourful display or explosion and gets one free turn (free life) then continues to the next wave of normal game play….

At some point during the development of Warp Speed, Atari agreed a partnership with Lucasfilm, picking up the rights to develop new games under the Star Wars franchise. Sensing an opportunity to attach his game to this high-profile IP, Jed suggested to the powers that be at Atari that his vision for Warp Speed would be a sound platform on which to build a Star Wars themed game. Management duly agreed, perhaps with some relief that someone had proactively suggested a solution to a tricky project.

Like most games, several elements were considered and then dropped or adapted to improve the player experience during the development of Star Wars. Here are a couple of story boards developed by Atari when putting the game mechanics together. You can click each image for a larger version:

But it is the cockpit cabinet itself that defined Atari’s Star Wars arcade game. Subject matter and game play elements aside, it is this iconic looking cabinet that drew the quarters and secured its place in the arcade history books. In writing this article, I was able to track down and talk with Mike Jang, who was an industrial designer at Atari. Mike would work with his colleagues in mocking up and designing the physical and ergonomic side of Atari’s arcade machines.

Here, Jang’s colleague Barney Huang sits inside a very early cockpit prototype (made largely of cardboard pieces!). you can make out some similarities to the final Star Wars cockpit from these images:

I started the concepts for the Star Wars cabinet and later another designer did more detailed work on the plastic part in front of the monitor. One of the main elements I sketched up were the hydraulic ram shapes on the plastic parts. Those rams were often seen in the movie, especially the ramp to the Millennium Falcon.Also I wanted to continue the mechanical theme by adding that truss style design to the sides of the roof. I was concerned because that was a particle board part that was cut with an angled router bit.  Then the bare particle board was just painted black.  I was worried about the wood texture appearance but nobody noticed after everything else was put in place.

We knew it would be perfect for a sitdown cab as well as a standup. That’s why we made such cool mouldings around the monitor and used this see-through dark Perspex, so people could see what was going on. And we spent a long time working on the controller so [the whole cockpit experience] felt just right.

With the cabinet design approved by Lucasfilm, it was time to start sharing the actual game with them for approval and feedback. Memos went back and forth between Atari and Lucasfilm with ideas and questions about the proposed game. I’ve found an interesting document which details actual feedback from the Lucasfilm team on some of the suggested game play elements proposed by Atari. (I’m guessing the handwriting top right is from Mike Hally himself)

The key difference between the upright and sitdown cockpit cabinets aside from the seating position, was the larger monitor used in the cockpit version of the game. A 25″ Amplifone (vs a 19″ Wells Gardner in the upright) really does add to the impact of the visuals.

So with a thumbs up from the creator of Star Wars himself, the game was put into production and released in 1983. Here is a Projected Materials Cost Estimate document prepped by Mike Hally for the upright cabinet. Makes for interesting reading:

Getting the game out to market was arguably pretty easy – with the attachment of the Star Wars franchise to the game, and housing it inside Mike Jang’s glorious cockpit cabinet, players armed with coins ready to play were drawn in.

Atari sold just over 12,000 Star Wars cabinets in total, consisting of 10,245 uprights and 2,450 cockpits. With an assumed margin of around $1,000 per cabinet, this was a multi-million dollar earner for Atari’s coin-op division, and I would suggest was one of its greatest arcade games ever, despite being released during Atari’s arcade twilight years.

Atari’s Star Wars remains a classic slice of arcade history. It has everything going for it – great vector visuals, the Star Wars IP, fabulous artwork and an iconic design that holds up to this day. You can find cockpits out there in the wild still. Do try to seek one out and experience the ride.

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.”

The cockpit or control podPilots operated their vessels from cockpits, managing a variety of instruments that controlled the vehicle"s speed, direction, and other operations. Anakin Skywalker was once ordered to stay in the cockpit of an N-1 starfighter during the Battle of Naboo in order to stay out of harm"s way. Skywalker inadvertently flew the craft into battle, however. Although cockpits were normally a part of a vessel"s main body, Podracer cockpits were tethered to the engines they controlled via cables. Some ground vehicles had an open cockpit, such as the All Terrain Reconnaissance Transport (AT-RT) walker.

Star Wars Screen Entertainment was a product of LucasArts Entertainment Company and Presage Software Development, Inc.,1994.A New Hope–themed screen savers. It was was available for Windows operating system 3.0 or higher, as well as for Macintosh system 7.0 and above.

Screen Entertainment does not include any interactive game. However, the user can customize some aspects of the screen savers (number of stars, speed, etc.). The icon to execute the program was R2-D2, which was also used in the Jawas option.

Death Star Trench: An animation of the trench, at high speed. Users can choose if they want only an X-wing, only a TIE fighter, or both (in this case, the X-wing will be chasing the TIE).

Hyperspace: A semi-static picture of the Millennium Falcon cockpit, with moving stars outside. Suddenly, Han Solo moves his arm and the stars become lines as if entering the hyperspace. After a while, Han moves again and the lines become stars. Chewbacca periodically howls.

Rebel Clock: Similar to Imperial clock, with Dodonna"s display of the Battle of Yavin. It is analog. The Death Star marks minutes and Yavin 4 marks hours. The Death Star might be over Yavin.

Space Battles: As seen from some window in a cruiser, small dots move against each other and shoot beams. Mon Calamari cruisers, Nebulon-B frigates and Star Destroyers drift slowly across the screen while fighters occasionally fly by.

My kids love Star Wars, and pretty much every day they end up walking around the house with blasters and lightsabers as they fight off the bad guys. Since I was ready for a new project and because the new Star Wars movie is getting closer every day, I decided it would be fun to build the kids a Millennium Falcon Playhouse. What you see here I managed to build in ten days, working on it until very late at night and over the weekends.

Right off the bat, I knew that I needed to cut off the bottom part of the cockpit to keep the thing from getting too large and my wife calling off the project. :) I also knew that because of scale, there would be some things on the instrument panel that I would leave out and simplify.

Then I used Bondo to fill in the gaps. I sanded this off with a disc sander and then, to the horror of my children, I cut off the bottom of the window where I planned the bottom of the cockpit to be.

Have you ever notices that Star Wars ships are covered with weird little shapes on the inside and outside? These little shapes build interest and a sense of realness to the objects. These little pieces of junk have been given the made-up word, greeble.

There are times when you have everything you need on hand, and there are times when you have to improvise. This was one of the second situations. Since I didn"t have enough wood to create a nice brace for the shape of the cockpit, I cut out several pieces and glued them together to form a skeleton. Then, I installed the inner piece of the cockpit.

I decided to create and outer and inner layer for the cockpit so that I could run lights in between the two. Nothing fancy - I just picked up a strand of LED Christmas lights.

It was around this time that my wife mentioned that I"d better build the thing in two pieces or it would be too large to ever leave the garage. It was certainly good advice and helped me to avoid a bit of heartache, but it was hard to picture how to make the front and back of the cockpit fit snugly together without using glue. As I worked on this part and started into the next, that was the main thing that I had on my mind.

Now that the outside was mostly done, I decided to focus on the interior. I started with spray painting the inside and then collecting the greebles for the inside windows.

Wow. This is fantastic! My family and I play Star Wars, but never had an actual ship. This"ll be great. Especially when one of my brothers pretends to be Chewie.0

I picked up a very nice star wars cockpit back in 2006 or so. It happened to be a factory converted ROTJ and I got it for a fair price. Soon it would be converted back to star wars. Cosmetically I didn’t have much to do with the game, other than replacing the broken canopy plexi. I couldn’t find any reproductions available, so I did some research and bought pre-cut plexi from a local vendor along with plexi drill bits and the heating strip needed to bend my own. Since I had a nice cockpit, my Star Wars upright was quickly traded away. Mongo came to pick it up and dropped off a working Tron along with a nice new set of canopy plexi. Of course. Needless to say the plexi project got shelved.

The B-29 bomber’s Plexiglas nose was the obvious inspiration for the space freighter Millennium Falcon. Special effects artists replaced the blue screen with stars only in post-production; on set, the actors had to imagine them.

In early 1977, director George Lucas invited some of his friends and associates to view a rough cut of his latest project. It was a kids’ movie that in one early draft had sagged under the title Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode One: The Star Wars. The crowd he’d summoned to his Bay Area home were at least outwardly just like him: Filmmakers with major successes under their belts though not one of them was yet 35 years old. They included screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who’d worked with Lucas on his 1973 smash American Graffiti, and directors John Milius, Brian De Palma, and Steven Spielberg.

When the lights came up, there was embarrassed silence. The movie was long, poorly acted, and staggeringly weird. Lucas was stung by his peers’ feedback. De Palma, who’d just had his first big hit with the 1975 Stephen King adaptation Carrie and would go on to make blockbusters like The Untouchables and the first Mission: Impossible, was particularly brutal, poking fun at Princess Leia’s hair and the frequent references to “The Force.” He also mocked the muffled voice of Darth Vader, whose dialogue had not yet been menacingly dubbed by James Earl Jones (to the chagrin of actor David Prowse, who played the towering villain on camera), and howled at the movie’s tedious six-paragraph opening crawl (later slimmed down, with De Palma’s help, to three). While no one else was as acerbic as De Palma or as optimistic as Spielberg, there was a clear consensus that Star Wars needed a lot of work before its Memorial Day weekend 1977 release date.

Over a group lunch after the screening, De Palma scoffed that Star Wars was good for only eight to 10 million dollars, but Spielberg predicted the film would gross 100 million. “And I’ll tell you why,” he said to the gathering. “It has a marvelous innocence and naiveté to it, which is George, and people will love it.”

We know now that Spielberg was right. In fact, he underestimated. To date the movie, now retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, has grossed more than $775 million worldwide. And that sum leaves out the additional billions generated by sequels, spin-offs, and merchandise over the four decades following its initial release.

Imagery of U.S. fighters during Stateside training exercises, lifted from a jittery newsreel, showed aircraft peeling out of formation and dropping from sight. The clip was used as a model for the memorable shot of Rebel craft diving to attack the Death Star. One at a time, the fictional spaceships elegantly “aileron roll” across the screen, mimicking the movements of the 1940s aircraft almost exactly.

Some 45 shots later—about 75 seconds of screen time—Jek Porkins’ X-wing fighter becomes the first casualty of the desperate raid. The visual cues that inspired the starfighter’s demise came from a panning shot taken by a nervy U.S. Navy cameraman in the midst of a harrowing kamikaze attack in the Pacific more than 30 years earlier. The sailor captured the final moments of a Japanese Zero as it burnt up over the deck of an American aircraft carrier. As VFX artist Paul Huston described the shot in the book Star Wars Storyboards: The Original Trilogy, “[An artist] would show me a shot of a Japanese Zero flying left to right in front of a conning tower of an aircraft carrier and say, ‘The aircraft carrier is the Death Star, the Zero is an X-wing. Do a board like that.’ ” The art became storyboard 168, shot 245, which was entitled, “PORKINS’ X WING COMES APART IN FLAMING PIECES.”

The climactic bombing raid from 1955’s The Dam Busters was the primary inspiration for Star Wars’ memorable rebel attack on the Death Star, the Empire’s planet-destroying battle station.

War movies and hot rod automobiles had shaped George Lucas’ young life in Modesto, California in the 1950s. Both interests can be seen in the genesis of the space fighters in Star Wars. In the movie’s climactic sequence, the Rebels’ X-wing and Y-wing squadrons operate as a complimentary set. Their pairing recalls the immortal Battle of Britain team: Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes had gallantly fought over England in 1940 and again on the silver screen in 1969’s Battle of Britain, a Lucas favorite.

The X-wing was the racy, handsome star of the show. When Lucas discussed the ship with California model maker and concept artist Colin Cantwell, he said he wanted it to look sleek and fast. The X-wing conceptual model’s nose was stolen from a 1960s Revell 1/16 scale dragster model kit. The far aft position of its cockpit turned the ship into a cosmic Corsair fighter. Its strange split wings, which open up from two wings into four as the fighter goes into combat, came from Cantwell.

The underdog starship was older, slower, and bigger than its stablemate. Like the earthbound T-bucket hot rods Lucas admired in his youth, the Y-wing had been heavily modified in an effort to keep up with the times. With discarded hull plates, skeletal cowlings, and reduced weaponry, the old machine could possibly pass as a fighter-bomber. The efforts to lighten the ship echo the conversion of 1940s fighters into speedier reconnaissance aircraft by stripping them of armor and guns.

The Y-wing’s distinctive twin booms and centrally placed cockpit echo the hometown hero of its creators. Industrial Light & Magic—the Lucas-founded VFX house that built the models—was located in a warehouse just a few miles down Vanowen Street in Burbank, where Lockheed had assembled P-38 Lightnings 30 years earlier.

The nearly full-scale exterior mock-up of the Falcon cockpit and boarding ramp towers over production crew at a soundstage in England’s Pinewood Studios in 1976. Pinewood was also used for the filming of the 1960 war classic Sink the Bismarck!

The fighters were key to Lucas’ lived-in aesthetic. Unlike the ships in 2001 or Star Trek, the Rebel spacecraft were battered and scorched, resembling the ground-attack P-47s in France, which quickly became patched, bleached, and caked with mud. The Y-wings managed to look at once futuristic and obsolete, more like a teenager’s lovingly patched-together muscle car at Venice Beach than lightspeed-capable starships from a distant galaxy.

By contrast, the Imperial ships were clean, dark, and angular. The cold aesthetic of their Twin Ion Engine (TIE) fighters owes something to the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt Bf 109, a design that Germany found relatively easy to build quickly and in great numbers. A character in one Star Warsspin-off novel notes the basic TIE fighter is “a commodity which, after hydrogen and stupidity, was the most plentiful in the galaxy.” Nevertheless, they come screaming in from above on our startled heroes in much the same way the real German interceptors ambushed Royal Air Force pilots Douglas Bader and “Sailor” Malan over the English Channel.

The Death Star attack is all about combat in the face of desperate odds. It’s a clear homage to the epic air battles seen in movies from the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1954 Korean War film The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Navy pilots attack a group of strategically critical bridges in North Korea, defended by murderous anti-aircraft fire. In the World War II film The Dam Busters,released the following year, RAF Lancaster pilots raid a strategically critical dam, also heavily defended by anti-aircraft fire. In 1964’s 633 Squadron (based on the 1956 book) RAF Mosquito pilots take on a German rocket fuel plant in Norway which is, you guessed it, heavily defended by anti-aircraft fire. But 633 Squadron adds a twist: The aircraft must navigate a high-walled fjord at high speed, braving storms of gunfire. This memorable scene was one of Lucas’ main inspirations for the trench run in Star Wars.

While 633 Squadron provided much of the physical environment for the Death Star raid, The Dam Busters supplied the fliers’ tactics and radio communications. As the Rebel ships assemble, Luke Skywalker becomes one of a chorus of voices checking in with, “Red Five standing by.” In The Dam Busters, the Lancaster pilots chime “Here leader,” over the radio. Then, in both movies, someone breaks in to marvel at the size of the target.

In Star Wars, Red Leader asks a Y-wing pilot, “How many guns do you think, Gold Five?” The reply: “Say about 20 guns, some on the surface, some on the towers.”

The Rebels suffer heavy losses and the raid teeters on the brink of failure, until a pivotal moment when Millennium Falcon comes diving out of the “sun,” a trick as old as military aviation itself. The Falcon is a hefty machine compared to the starfighters. And everyone besides Han Solo knows it’s not as fast as they are. Industrial Light & Magic put the sub-light cruising speed of this storied YT-1300 Corellian light freighter at roughly three quarters that of an X-wing—more like a bomber than a fighter. The Falcon’s cockpit was strikingly similar to the glass greenhouse nose of a Boeing B-29. And like the Superfortress, the Falconsports defensive gun turrets.

A Japanese “Jill” torpedo bomber disintegrates after being struck by anti-aircraft fire during the Gilbert Islands assault in December 1943. George Lucas borrowed the image for the fiery ends various X-wing pilots meet during the climactic Death Star raid.

Star Wars’$11 million budget was thrifty relative to the film’s scale. In 2020 dollars, that’s about $47 million. By contrast, the most recent Star Wars sequel, 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, had a reported budget of $275 million. To pinch pennies back in 1976, ILM model-makers used parts of rejected kits from the Monogram model company in Hawthorne, California to texture their Millennium Falcon prop. A close observer can see hatches, mantelets, and rear decks from World War II Panther and Tiger tanks worked into the Falcon’s skin, along with fragments of airplanes, trucks, and artillery pieces.

This scene from the 1934 Nazi Congress at Nuremberg, as captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 propaganda film Triumph of the Will, was perhaps Star Wars’ most troubling lift.

Rebel pilots Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and Han Solo receive honors for their heroism during the successful Death Star raid in Star Wars’ final scene, which closely replicates compositions from Triumph of the Will.

That attention to fantasy-burnishing detail paid off. In his just-published memoir, film editor Paul Hirsch, who won an Academy Award for his work on the movie, calls Star Wars’ first test screening for a public audience—months after that private screening for his pals had left Lucas so discouraged—“the most exciting screening I have ever been to in my life.”

Hirsch recalls that the famous shot of the stars stretching out beyond the Falcon’s canopy as the ship jumps to light speed “had people jumping out of their seats, something I had never seen before and have never seen since. It was as if they were rooting for a baseball team that had just won the seventh game of the World Series with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth.”

Hirsch speculates, as many other writers have over the last 40 years, that a collective yearning for the moral certainties of the 1940s was a big part of what made Star Wars such a phenomenon in the fractured and uncertain ’70s. In fantasy as in history, we like to see the good guys win.

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.

TIE fighters are fictional starfighters existing in the Twin Ion Engines, TIE fighters are fast, agile, yet fragile starfighters produced by Sienar Fleet Systems for the Galactic Empire and by Sienar-Jaemus Fleet Systems for the First Order and the Sith Eternal. TIE fighters and other TIE craft appear in Star Wars films, television shows, and throughout the Star Wars expanded universe. Several TIE fighter replicas and toys, as well as a TIE flight simulator, have been produced and sold by many companies.

Colin Cantwell created the concept model that established the TIE fighter"s ball-cockpit and hexagonal panels design for Star Wars creator George Lucas liked the basic design consisting of two panels connected by a stick with a ball-shaped cockpit, but Cantwell"s concept had few details.Joe Johnston created additional details, such as the cockpit window and the attachment points between the solar panels and the hull.

Initially given a blue color scheme, the TIE fighter models for the first film were grey to better film against a bluescreen; TIE fighters in Ben Burtt created the distinctive TIE fighter sound effect by combining an elephant call with a car driving on wet pavement.The Sounds of Star Wars, the engine roar is likened to German Junker Ju 87 "Stuka" bombers, who used sirens to frighten civilians on raids. This could have been a possible inspiration for the sound. Combat scenes between TIE fighters and the Rebel Alliance X-wing fighters in Star Wars were meant to be reminiscent of World War II dogfight footage; editors used World War II air combat clips as placeholders while Industrial Light & Magic completed the movie"s special effects.Darth Vader"s distinct TIE Advanced x1 in Star Wars was designed to make it instantly recognizable,Jedi were designed to look fast, deadly, sleek and frightening.

The Jedi starfighter, created for , was designed to bridge the appearance of the Jedi starfighter in Revenge of the Sith, also makes the distinctive TIE fighter sound when flying by a Star Destroyer. Dark Horse Comics" Sean Cooke designed the TIE predator for Star Wars, to appear both reminiscent of and more advanced than the original TIE fighter.

Star Wars literature states that Grand Moff Tarkin commissioned Sienar Fleet Systems to design and manufacture the Twin Ion Engine line edition (TIE/ln) space superiority starfighter and most TIE variants. Tarkin specified that the TIE had to be fast, maneuverable, energy-efficient, and inexpensive; simply put they are meant to be easily mass-produced and engage in swarm tactics, with the expectation of being expendable assets that would be lost in combat. To meet these requirements, Sienar incorporated aspects of the V-wing and Jedi interceptor into the new starfighter.

TIE fighters have two hexagonal wings fitted with solar panels which power a twin ion engine (TIE) system that accelerates ionized gases at a substantial fraction of lightspeed along almost any vector, affording the ships tremendous speed and maneuverability albeit with limited fuel reserves.repulsorlifts for take-off and landing, though TIE fighters are designed to be launched and recovered by cycling storage racks used by Imperial starships and garrisons.deflector shields, and while its light armoring is proof against small arms and glancing micrometeoroids a direct hit from a laser cannon will destroy it, encouraging pilots to shoot first and make their shots count. The TIE fighter also lacks a hyperdrive, not only to save on weight and cost but to discourage defection. Although the TIE fighter"s cockpit is pressurized and equipped with oxygen scrubbers to prevent corrosion, it doesn"t contain any life-support systems, requiring pilots to wear special flight suits.Legends sources there was disagreement on this issue.

Star Wars literature also holds that TIE fighter pilots are considered an elite group within the Imperial Navy, relying on their quick reflexes and fearlessness to survive multiple tours of duty. Training involves hundreds of flight hours learning to coordinate as a team and intense psychological conditioning to put the accomplishment of their mission above other considerations.displays.

TIE Advanced x1: Darth Vader flies a TIE Advanced x1 (or just "TIE/x1") in many media, most notably in the original Star Wars during the climatic Death Star battle. According to background material, the limited-run TIE Advanced x1 was designed to Vader"s personal specifications and was only flown by himself and select Imperial pilots. Compared to the TIE fighter it is faster and more maneuverable with greater structural integrity, equipped with a deflector shield, hyperdrive, reinforced armor-plated hull and improved SFS L-s9.3 laser cannons. The "bent-wing" configuration was intended to improve energy collection while maintaining the same speed and maneuverability.

TIE/sh shuttle: Also featured in The Empire Strikes Back, a TIE/sh shuttle is seen ferrying Captain Needa (Michael Culver) to Darth Vader"s Super Star Destroyer. Like the TIE/sa bomber, this shuttle design stems from an unused "TIE boarding craft" concept developed for A New Hope.

TIE interceptor: TIE interceptors – faster TIE fighters with dagger-shaped wings in the forward profile of those of the TIE Advanced and four laser cannons – appear at various points in Return of the Jedi.X-wing and Y-wing fleet when it was determined a full production run of the TIE Advanced x1 would be too expensive. Faster and more maneuverable than a standard TIE fighter, these interceptors are also better armed with wingtip-mounted L-s9.3 laser cannons with the option to carry two more under the cockpit.

TIE Advanced v1: Meant to appear as the prototype precursor to Vader"s TIE Advanced x1, the TIE Advanced v1 featured in Inquisitors. The v1"s variable-geometry wings, like Darth Maul"s shuttle Scimitar"s, were inspired by Ralph McQuarrie"s original sketches for the x1. The fighters" fictional origin is inspired by the Jedi interceptor flown during the Clone Wars, as seen by its heavily-armored wings that fold inward. With laser cannons and ion engines more powerful than the TIE fighter, the TIE Advanced v1 also features a projectile launcher with a 20 missile magazine, deflector shields and pressurized cockpit.Rebels Season 1 episode "Empire Day", which featured its maiden flight, but a very similar spacecraft (most likely intended to be the same) was described in the 2014 book Star Wars: Imperial Handbook: A Commander"s Guide, which has been confirmed to fall into the

TIE/d Defender: The TIE/d Defender made its television debut in Star Wars Rebels, although it first appeared in the 1994 space flight simulator Star Wars Legends continuity, the TIE Defender was originally designed by Admiral Zaarin, who in the 1994 game would betray the Empire and have to be defeated by the player character.Star Wars Rebels to being designed personally by Grand Admiral Thrawn. Classified as a fighter-bomber, its unique tri-wing design gives it better visibility than a TIE interceptor while making it faster than all previous TIE models. Each wing is equipped with maneuvering jets and a pair of L-s9.3 laser cannons, with another pair and twin projectile launchers fitted on the cockpit pod. The TIE/d Defender also carries deflector shields and a hyperdrive.

TIE/sk x1 Striker: The TIE/sk x1 experimental air superiority fighter, also known as the TIE Striker, made its first appearance in Scarif.X-wing in an atmosphere and is heavily armed with four L-s9.3 laser cannons, two H-s1 heavy laser cannons, and a bomb bay. Its spacious cockpit can hold a pilot and an optional gunner/bombardier.

TIE/rp Reaper: The TIE/rp Reaper Attack Lander also made its first appearance in Rogue One as support craft with a larger, more angular design that replaces the spherical cockpit found on most TIE fighters.electronic countermeasures to ensure it can survive hostile airspace to deliver its cargo. It also carries a hyperdrive for faster-than-light travel and a pair of L-s9.3 laser cannons.

TIE Boarding Craft: The TIE Boarding Craft made its theatrical appearance in Rogue One. The design was originally set to appear in the original Star Wars but was cut from the film and used as inspiration for the TIE bomber and TIE shuttle. Background literature states that the TIE Boarding Craft shared many of the same features as the TIE bomber but with seating for twelve passengers and a boarding hatch equipped with laser cutters. Other equipment included deflector shields, twin L-s1 laser cannons, twin H-s1 heavy laser cannons and missile launcher.

TIE reinforcement battery heavy starfighter: The TIE/rb, known also as the TIE Brute, first appeared in Millennium Falcon during the Kessel Run scene. Star Wars literature states that the TIE/rb was commissioned to help deal with pirates, smugglers and other outlaws operating in the Outer Rim. Larger than a standard TIE fighter, the TIE/rb features heavier armor plating and carries a pair of H-s9.3 laser cannons – nearly twice as powerful as a TIE fighter"s cannons – on a separate artillery pod. Because it was sluggish to fly, the TIE Brute features an integrated droid intelligence to assist the pilot.

A number of different TIE designs made their appearance in what is now considered Star Wars Legends, a separate continuity that was split off after Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise. The TIE/sa was the inspiration for the triple-hulled TIE lander, featured in Star Wars: Complete Locations. Red-modified TIE interceptors are also used by the Emperor"s Royal Guards, as featured in Rage of the Wookiees, another expansion of Star Wars Galaxies.

Additionally, LucasArts Star Wars video games introduce several TIE variants, such as the TIE Hunter starfighter in Star Wars universe — first appear in TIE Fighter as player-pilotable craft.cloaking TIE Phantom starfighter, and a campaign in

Star Wars literature also introduces TIE varieties. TIE raptors attack Rogue Squadron in Y-wing hybrids – appear both in I, Jedi and West End Games" roleplaying sourcebooks introduce varieties that include the TIE/fc fire-control support ship, the TIE/gt ground-attack fighter, the TIE/rc reconnaissance vessel, and the TIE scout.

A TIE fighter model used in filming the climax of Star Wars sold at auction for $350,000,Star Wars" thirtieth anniversary as part of the 2007 Gala Parade in Crystal Lake, Illinois.Starbucks cups and stirrers prompted the magazine to create a contest for its readers to submit their own art out of similar Starbucks material.io9 mocked the variety of TIE fighters in the franchise, listing four TIE models on its list of the eleven "silliest" Star Wars ships.

Kenner released TIE fighter and TIE interceptor toys during the original Star Wars trilogy"s theatrical release, and Kenner"s die-cast TIE bomber is a rare collector"s item.Hasbro also released TIE fighter, TIE bomber, and TIE interceptor toys.Lego manufactured TIE fighter, TIE bomber, TIE interceptor, TIE defender, and TIE advanced models.Decipher and Wizards of the Coast published various TIE starfighter and TIE-related cards for the Fantasy Flight Games released miniatures game with pre-painted and to scale miniature X-wings and TIE fighters. In 1994, LucasArts released the Star Wars titles.

In 2018, a number of Star Wars starfighters had their aerodynamic abilities tested using the Autodesk Flow Design virtual wind tunnel program. Of those studied, the TIE Fighter scored the worst with a drag coefficient of .98, which is only slightly better than a brick. Of the other TIE variants tested, the TIE interceptor was slightly better with a coefficient of .78, while the TIE Striker had the best at .48, though this did not compare favorably to the .02 drag coefficient of an F-4E Phantom. These poor results were rationalized with the in-universe explanations that drag coefficient plays no role in space travel, and that Star Wars fighters can use repulsorlifts and deflector shields to give themselves better flight profiles.

"TIE Advanced X1 Starfighter (Behind the Scenes)". Star Wars Databank. Lucasfilm. Archived from the original on April 2, 2005. Retrieved July 20, 2007.

Barr, Patricia; Bray, Adam; Jones, Matt; Horton, Cole; Wallace, Daniel; Windham, Ryder (2019). Ultimate Star Wars New Edition. United States: DK Publishing. p. 103. ISBN 978-1-4654-7900-6.

Luceno, James; Reynolds, David West; Windham, Ryder; Fry, Jason; Hidalgo, Pablo (2018). Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary. United States: DK Publishing. p. 192. ISBN 978-1-4654-7547-3.

"Rogue One: A Star Wars Story "Binding the Galaxy, Pt 2"". YouTube. April 3, 2017. Archived from the original on November 16, 2021. Retrieved August 15, 2020.

"Hasbro TIE Bomber and Snowspeeder Exclusives". Star Wars Collecting. Lucasfilm. May 24, 2001. Archived from the original on April 15, 2006. Retrieved July 20, 2007.

"Episode III Goes Full Throttle at StarWarsShop.com". Star Wars Collecting. Lucasfilm. February 1, 2005. Archived from the original on May 23, 2006. Retrieved July 20, 2007.

"LEGO "03: Vehicles and Jabba"s". Star Wars Collecting. Lucasfilm. December 19, 2002. Archived from the original on December 30, 2006. Retrieved July 20, 2007.

"Star Wars Customizable Card Game Complete Card List" (PDF). Decipher, Inc. August 23, 2001. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 28, 2007. Retrieved August 23, 2007.

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.”

Disneyland’s new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge area is heaven for Star Wars fans looking for unique collectibles from a galaxy far, far away. They range in price from the affordable to the absurdly unaffordable. The highest ticket item for sale is a custom, life-size R2-D2 droid. Actual retail price: $25,000. (And no returns or refunds!)

...three of the pricey remote controlled R-units were sold at the Droid Depot shop during the new Star Wars land’s first week of operation at the Anaheim theme park, according to Disneyland employees.

Your 25 smackeroos gets you a variety of custom options. You can select the design and colors of your R2 and, per the Register, you “even get to decide if your own personal starship mechanic and fighter pilot’s assistant is grimy and battle-worn or has a factory-fresh shine.” For $25,000 ... I feel like I would want mine to look clean? It seems like a lot of money to spend on something dirty.

If you’re curious in this outrageously expensive item, keep your eyes out at Droid Depot in Galaxy’s Edge; the display model is often seen roaming around the store, trying to entice customers with its friendly bleeps and blorps. But just keep in mind: That sucker is like $5,000 per blorp!