This post is meant as an addition to the post made by u/Apart_Pumpkin_4551, where he used pixel measurements to determine the size of the recently revealed M80 heavy fighter. The post in question can be found here.
One thing that irked me about his calculations was the discrepancy between the ship's size, role, and its armament. He calculated that the M80 would be around 50 metres long if the weapons in the preview image were CF-557s, and around 38 metres long if they were CF-447s.
The issue with these numbers is, that the M80 would be far larger than any other heavy fighter currently ingame, if its armament actually consisted of CF-557's. For reference, the Venguard series with their really long engines are only 48 meters in length.
But if the ship was only armed with CF-447's, it would be way too underarmed to be reasonably considered a heavy fighter, even if the size would then fit in with the other ships in its class.
That made me wonder if there may be some mistake in the size of the weapons that were taken as reference for the pixel measuring. The CF-557 was assumed to be 8.84m long, while the CF-447 was assumed to be 6.63m in length. Both of these values were taken from the Star Citizen Wiki. To check if these numbers are accurate I went and created a little comparison to objects with confirmed dimensions.
Size comparison between CF-557, CF-447 and SCU containers.
A one SCU container has a height, length and width of 1.25 meters. This leads to the following measurements:
CF-557: 6 * 1.25 = 7.5 meters
CF-447: 4.5 * 1.25 = 5.625 meters
Of course these are not exact measurements but they clearly show that the numbers from the wiki are inaccurate, as the CF-557 would need to be over 1 SCU longer in order to reach 8.84 meters in length.
Taking these new values we can calculate the corrected length of the M80 using my pixel measurements based on the preview image provided by CIG.
M80 with CF-557's: 5.78 * 7.5 = 43.35 meters
M80 with CF-447's: 5.78 * 5.625 = 32.513 meters
To me these 43.35 meters are much more in line with the other heavy fighters in the game, placing the M80 right between the Vanguards and the Guardian in terms of size, while maintaining a competitive armament of 2 size 5 hardpoints.
Of course, this doesn't rule out the possibility that the M80 might be armed with size 4s. However, I find it hard to believe that a heavy fighter made by Origin is only 32 metres long. In fact, Origin already has a track record of making ships with a similar role and armament that are significantly larger than those of its competitors, as its focus lies much more on comfort, amenities, and luxury. Just look at the size difference between the 325a and the Avenger Titan, for example. They have the same role and hardpoints, but the Origin ship is significantly larger in all aspects.
Anyway, I'm sorry for this wall of text, but I wanted to share my thoughts on this topic. Hopefully it will help some of you make a more informed purchasing decision ahead of the ship's release ;D
Edit: u/two_thousand_pirates has made me aware of the fact that there is already a stand at the DefenseCon expo hall for the M80, so I expand my post with some more measurements.
M80 stand at the DefenseCon expo hall. Screenshot by u/JGun-SC
The M80 stand is roughly 11.89 times as wide as the player character is tall. Based on measuring the height of my own character next to some containers, I assume the character in the screenshot to be 1.85 meters tall. Unfortunately the perspective makes precice measurements a bit tricky but for our purposes I doubt it's making that much of a difference.
Diameter of the stand: 11.89 * 1.85 = 21.00 meters
Based on the preview image from CIG we can determine the distance between the front and back landing gears by using our known dimensions for the CF-557 and CF-447.
M80 landing gear measurements.
Distance between gears if M80 is equipped with CF-557: 3.425 * 7.5 = 25.688 meters
Distance between gears if M80 is equipped with CF-447: 3.425 * 5.625 = 19.266 meters
This seems to indicate that the actual loadout of the M80 consists of CF-447's, as the CF-557 loadout won't fit the stand at the expo hall.
However, please take these numbers with a grain of salt, as the perspective of the screenshot may distort the resulting data somewhat. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how to account for that atm, but given the difference of 4.688 meters between the CF-557 loadout and the stands diameter, I doubt it makes much of a difference.