The bridge window is actually the only JJverse design feature that I like. It has no real downsides, you can still use holographic displays for ship to ship coms and all the stuff they used to use the viewscreen view, and it looks very cool.
Theres no upside to it either. its no mistake that only ships that are capable of routinely undergoing atmospheric re-entry, have large transparencies. Either by purpose or happy accident, Star Trek managed to correct a short-coming of science fiction ships with their view screen and lack of a giant bay window. The notion that a ship with highly sophisticated sensors and computers could ‘scan’ an area and render it into a visible image for the bridge crew was amazing because it handles the scientific and engineering problems that riddle a transparency. It’s an issue I hate in Star Wars and a visual/design choice they also chose for the Orville. It’s equally dumb for the Orville given their sophisticated sensors.
And personally I don’t think something looks cool when it’s literally useless and we know it’s useless because basic public school science education tells us so. In the 21st century our ships have to rely on optics primarily, because we have nothing better to replace it with. But our ships are also close range, low orbit, atmospheric re-entry, and intrasolar. If there’s a crew onboard, they will always be in the solar system and nearly always in the light of the sun or a planetary body which reflects the sunlight.
Being in a solar system and having starlight cast upon you, or reflected upon you will solve your largest technical problems with optics. Those of light to see and to a broader degree, line of sight. Where it gets a bit less tricky is when youre in a ship which is massive by contemporary standards, operates mostly in the black depths of outer space, and operates at great distance. Because of Trek ship’s ability to operate sensors and even weapons at thousands of kilometers from friend or foe; a ship can be at distances too far to see via optics. Mostly ships on screen are much closer than accurate portrayal would prescribe given their interactive distances in the scripts. This is for the entertainment benefit of the audience.
A transparency requires light, line of sight, and range in order to be practically useful. In Trek ships, stellar objects, and phenomena often negate all of these factors. The transparency would be there for the purpose of looking cool and providing a source of natural light, when it’s available. Neither are useful for a bridge crew. It’s pure aesthetic, which brings it into asinine territory.
If you took of your shoes and stood toe to glass with your face pressed to it and a sovereign class starship was in direct line of sight, with all running lights on, you wouldn’t see it as anything but a flicker of light until it were literally within a few thousand feet. And at that range it would be lethal should it’s intentions be hostile.
Most large, moving objects in space are pieces of meteor or other ferrous formations. They have no backlighting and you’d not see it before it smacked you in the hull. Many of the light waves emanating from nebulas are invisible so you’d need help there. And a hostile ship would attack you and in your windshield you’d see nothing but the occasional phaser beam or photon torpedo, striking you from the dark at like 500,000km. And all they’d have to do to stay invisible is stay off access from your windshield by say more than 15-20 degrees.
Not to mention that transparent aluminum, which is a real thing now, doesn’t protect from radiation anywhere as effectively as denser, opaque alloys, you’d be opening your crew up to another vector of danger. Plus a solid allow construction all around has greater hull integrity. Literally nothing about a transparency on the front of an interstellar craft is of benefit. It adds two layers of potential danger and doesn’t even surge a practical purpose. Knowing all of that an intelligence who would build a large transparency on such a craft when a much better alternative exists, would by its sheer stupidity, not look cool. A shuttle, runabout, courier, sure. A view screen doesn’t improve on real time line of sight for aerial maneuvers. But for a non-aerial starship it’s nonsense.