Thon717-AltControl

Hobbyist flying simulators are very different to pilot training simulators, as realistic pilot training consists of being in a virtual or realistic cockpit with every switch that a plane can have, whereas a traditional flying simulator game will usually be played on keyboard and mouse, or a flight stick based on how the player want to fly.

There are ways that these flight simulators can offer more realistic flight controls but at a cost usually with expensive equipment that you would need to buy to make it more realistic, vr games can also provide a somewhat realistic flight simulator and augmented realist too.

Most Flight simulators that pilots will use fall into 2 categories

Fixed Base Training Devices

These are the most common type of flight training simulator, with you being in a realistic cockpit with visuals displayed on a screen. these focus on procedure training and training with the various switches and dials on a real plane. This method is good because it has less of an environmental impact as traditional training, that being in a real plane learning as you go, or by the books and some people find it hard to learn that way.

Full Motion Simulators

These advanced simulators are usually a lot more expensive but offer a very realistic flying simulator, with a realistic cockpit environment like the fixed base simulators, but these simulators have motion platforms that offer a motion platform that realistically simulates the experience of being in a real plane. These simulators are really good at practicing emergency moves and procedures

Companies that train pilots have started to look intro virtual reality tools and augmented reality tools to also assist with training. These tools will make pilot training a whole lot more efficient and effective.

Flight simulator games are very quickly evolving, While some keep a deliberately not realism to their games, these flight simulators are used by hobbyists and aspiring pilots alike to enjoy, while more detailed content is usually saved for real flight training simulators.

Hobbyist type flight simulation games tend to be fun rather than realistic styles. While basic flight physics may be included, the lack of real control and, in general, real-life experience shows. Rather, entertainment and ease of learning are the focus of hobby simulators, and these will hardly cut it when there is any real accuracy. They aren't very authentic when it comes to fully realistic flight though.

A well known game called Microsoft flight simulator is a very good example of a flight simulator that is used by both hobbyists and pilots to train their flying skills, not used as a real flying simulator for pilots, this game is a fun way to practice a pilots skills. You can attach several different physical controllers like flight sticks and boards for a more realistic flight experience

Attending events like these really helps to gather outside opinions on how your game works, playtesting with classmates is a good way to gather information, but getting an outsiders opinion is the best, unbiased way to get the information that you need.

these events are perfect for networking too, allowing us to connect with well known game developers for future aspects, such as getting jobs or helping with game developing.

I was able to show off the game that i made here, the games Anglia group project.

I changed the floor texture to grass, after looking at others i could either use water or grass to fly around, the decaying and accelerating speed works perfectly and the gameplay is smooth and works perfectly.

To make the speed decay its super simple, all you need to do is make a delay based on how fast you want the speed to decay, set the speed variable and minus from the set, you can change the value of the set to be whatever you want, so you can make your plane slow down really fast or pretty slow, depending on the pace of your game

To get the speed in miles per hour you need to multiply the current speed by 0.02237, as unreal uses a different measurement you need a little bit of maths.

Here is a video of the basic premise of my game, you have a plane and you can fly around. i will change the textures of the floor and i will probably add some mountains but for now this is what i have. Sorry about the music i was listening to music while i was working

I have altered the rolling code slightly so when you turn the plane will rotate, slightly faster than the actual turning, this will end up with the plane being all out of shape, so i need to set the value of the bottom multiply node to be the same as the top one.

My plane model wasn't working correctly when i imported it into the game, so i decided to use a free asset of a plane on sketch fab But that now leaves the planes model and code completed.

The movement for spinning and moving up and down is all pretty similar, so i will compile it into one post. all you need to do is get the correct vector for the type of movement, multiply the value, to make you turn faster or slower, and add it to a 'add torque in degrees' node. this will affect its acceleration.

The rolling wont be used in my final game, the video tutorial i was using just added it and i cant in my game.

This code below will slowly increase thrust when you hold the thrust key, i added thrust so you can speed up and slow down, this will use the trigger on the flight stick.

Its just a lot of math nodes, like lerps and adds and divides to make sure you dont go above the max speed, and so when you hold the thrust, it will gradually increase.

This code will affect how fast i am going, based on a lot of adding and stuff

For my Completed game, or my minimum viable product, i will have a free flight game using a flight stick, to fly through some hoops or just to fly around, and do whatever you want, i should also add some kind of boost and plane flight physics instead of just free flight, as that would look really bad in a flying game.

I planned on adding These flying based physics throughout the whole games development, however i have had trouble adding this to my game, i have found a tutorial on this and i hope to have the planes flight fully completed by tomorrow, if i am unable to complete this i will find an alternative method to completing this. I am currently looking at this video to find out how planes actually fly in real life and how that is replicated in games.

Today we playtested on virtual reality software, i think this type of games console is really clever, how it tracks your eyes and puts you in a first person perspective, although some people including me get really bad motion sickness from playing, so there is some refining but at the moment vr headsets are in a good place for games.

these tools are accessible because it uses your eyes and some controllers wrap around your wrists, like the vive knuckles, these specific controllers track your movement in your hands so you don't even need to click buttons on a controller to play, if you want to grab something you grab it and you can let go as you would with real objects. watching people play vr is quite fun too.

Today I've focused on main developing, including the gameplay loops and the game overall.

I made a quick and simple ring to fly into, i will use a sideways cylinder collision component to make a ring that you pass through to get points

i also made a simple ocean texture that will repeat, i will put a collision box on all of these to just kill the player when you fly too close to it.

with only 2 weeks left, i wont be able to create a working ai plane model, so I'm going to pivot a little bit, I am going to make a free flight game, with different 'game modes' using a lot of different UI features, showing off the different planes you could play as, with a coming soon text greying out the selection, because I've been thinking about the future of this project a lot, adding multiple characters down the line would change the experience from player to player, some people would like to play as a smaller character with a lighter gun where as some people would probably want to play as a large bulky flying fortress.

So, with the time that i have left, i decided to go with a more simple flying game with the stick, all you have to do is guide your plane around a course filled with various different hoops, i can add checkpoints if you crash too.

I chose to make one propeller for ease of access, you will mostly see the spinning blades, so those matter, i can size up and down the propeller anyway, so size isnt a concern

here is another angle

Here is the model for my enemy fighter plane, the German made Messerschmitt Bf-109, this plane was light and cheap to produce.

as this was a German plane used in world war 2, the plane i based this one of had a lot of commonly known German symbols, which i have not put on this plane.

this is the original that i used as reference material.