Years ago, I reading about how dangerous and pointless portholes are on a spaceship, especially a warship, on <i>Atomic Rockets</i>. Basically, they are a structural weak points on the hull; ship weapons, like lasers and nukes, can blind the crew; view ports are irrelevant to ship's navigation and gunnery (everything is too far apart); and there is nothing really to see but perpetual nighttime (all those colorful imagery of are just UV/IR filters) that could cause the crew to become distressed over time.<br /><br />I then had the idea I got from casinos: Casinos like to mess with their costumer's perception of time by darkening the windows and using a lot of artificial lighting so that costumers would loose all sense of time, thus spend more time gambling. More recently — over a decade now — casinos have been using high-def screens to display videos on exotic locals, to give the illusion of of daytime... Day and night. It was something featured in <i>Back to the Future part II</i>, but was so minor and seen as goofy, that most people forgot about it as a one-off joke (you pay to watch outdoor scenery).<br /><br />My idea is to have have holovid screens all over a ship, displaying life-like outdoor scenery that give the feel that you are on a planet, while not being used for video intercoms or TV screens. Much like the lighting on a submarine, the imagery can transition between day and night to help keep the crew on a day/night schedule. The ship's life-support can adjust the lighting and temperature, slightly, to reflect day and night conditions. And soft ambient sounds can be used to feed the immersion. Naturally, in emergency and combat situations, the outdoor stuff gets shut-off as an unessential elements.<br /><br />So, what do you guy's think? Do you have your own ideas on living in a spaceship?
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