was playing Saints row 2 the other day and from one of my homes I was able to view the city from the window (It was the airport suite) and thought how cool it would be for certain areas in FNV to have actual windows (where all you really saw was parts of the city and could watch the day/night cycle, couldnt see people etc.)
We'll probably have to wait until the modding scene gets bigger and alot of the big F3 modders move in before we even see hints of someone doing this though.

WINDOWS?? WINDOWS?? NO WAY!!! lol jk
Sounds good to me, I love the Washington Monument where you can see over the city.

that was my favorite place in Fallout 3 just for that one hole in the wall where you could look over the capital building and watch as the sky darkens into the night.

Same :foodndrink:

Saw my first flying Super Mutant from that location. Zoomed in with the scope and watched him flying skyward, until he disappeared.

I don't see why windows wouldn't be possible, it'd just take ages adding the section of the land outside to the indoor areas I guess. Wash Monument was a given, but doing it for every location would take forever, random house in the middle of nowhere, look out the window to see... Wasteland. Meh. Probably good for those locations where it'd have an impact, as with a good view of something spectacular, but for every location it'd be superfluous. :shrug:

thats what im wanting it for, not like the DC interiors mod where every house he hit that had a window could see outside, but for extremely awesome locations. I'd love to take the lucky 38 suite and look at the strip through a window, look at all the flashing lights and such.

The engine wont allow that. Interior spaces are completely removed from the exterior. In order to mimic that effect you would have to rebuild the exterior for each cell that had the windows in that cell. But then comes the problem of sunlight going trhough the walls, which would make the interior look like crap.

Windows as entry points are no problem, but viewports from interior cells to exterior have always been a problem. They have to be faked as the inside and outside are different maps. When you enter Megaton, you don't see the same outside wasteland through the holes in the outer wall. The way this could (maybe) work is for a place like Ten-Penny towers, where the top floor (or even just one room of it) could be put on the outside map and have a real window or door with an open view ~but this would still be considered the outside wastelands even inside the house. :shrug:

Isn't there a mod for that? I'm sure if you give it time somebody will make one for this game and you'll have your wish.

Unfortunately what Echonite said is spot-on, the engine does not support viewing one cell while inside another, whether that be via a window, portal or magic scrying mirror - the fundamental problem is that each "Cell" (area your in) is loaded into Memory when you enter it. Thus when you go inside a cell, the exterior area you may have just been in is no longer loaded into active memory where the game can access it per-frame, thus the game has no way of "knowing" what is in another cell from a viewing perspective. Its Very doable and has been done from within a cell (remember the Vault 101 scene where you run past a window that has a guy yelling at you, "Your the one that caused all this..." or something like that. Its a great example of how a window can be used from Wtihin the same cell (it would work outdoors too, if you were looking out the window of a pod for example). But viewing one cell from another is just not possible with this engine.

Maybe IdTech5 and the MegaTexture system will finally breach that gap, but not today.

They should make the Lucky 38 suite similar to the Wash. Monument in that you can see outside. Otherwise I don't really mind.

The only mods I have seen are the ones that give Windows Glow for nighttime and weather effects when you are indoors. While those mods are real nice and add some good flavor to the game, they don't let you see what is outside the window.

As stated before it is due to an interior cell vs exterior cell aspect of the game engine. The main problem is the Interior Cell does not have to have any spatial connection to the exterior cell that holds the portal or door that transitions you to the interior cell. Since this spatial relationship is not there, any exterior views would have to be either rendered in vacuum with little or nothing to do with what is really going on outside the window, or the exterior cell(s) would also have to be rendered for each interior cell. That may be actually feasible.

However where I see the biggest issue is looking the other way. If people can look out windows, then they are going to want to look in the window too. If someone entered say, Megaton, then every single Interior Cell would have to be rendered just to load the City. I can't imagine what the load on the CPU/GPU would be for that to happen, but it would probably bring the most powerful machines to their knees.

We may have to wait for a generation or two on game engines before this can elegantly implemented. In the meantime, a balcony or porch is about the best way to be part of an interior, but be in the exterior cell, such as Tenpenny Tower's Penthouse Balcony.

The top of the Washington Monument isn't an interior cell though. Once you go up the elevator, it loads you back into the exterior world. This is why we're able to see the wasteland and the sky so well. I could see it reasonable though that the Penthouse of the Lucky 38 has a balcony that we can go through and see the exterior world (plus it could be a great suicide spot like Tenpenny Tower).

Actually if you play on the pc.. once you get to the top of the monument you can use the toggle collision cheat and you'll realize it didn't really load you back into the world.. It's just a big area with nothing around it except what you can see through those two holes... I also learned that the position of the capitol in conjunction with the map is completely off.. you can see this when facing the capitol from Rivet City and then comparing to your map. Not that it really matters.. just certain things I figured out in my last play through.

Well there's Dinky the Dinosaur, which is supposed to have a pretty impressive view. I wouldn't be surprised if the Lucky 38 had an exterior view too. Loading back into the external would be nice for big set piece buildings and owned houses that you're definitely going to want to look out from. We'll just have to wait and see.