I’ve always been very dissatisfied by all the flight simulators available today ever since Microsoft killed its franchise and Laminar Research favored [put something here not related to flight dynamics] over improving realism. I decided that was time to make my own.
Virtual Cockpit
In this video you can see the cockpit plus g-forces applied to the player camera. The cockpit is 50% complete, instruments and single/movable props are missing (working on that). The triangle count as of right now is 7k, the last 3k triangles will be spent on the stuff that is missing.
A more detailed look at it
Getting the flight dynamics right!
I’ve been working on getting the flight dynamics right, now after several days of trial and error i’ve come up with something very close to the real thing. So here’s a takeoff, flap retraction and stall test video.
Note that there’s no hardcoded stall curves or any stuff like that, it’s pure aerodynamics, the wing stalls by a steep angle of attack just like the real thing.
The HUD it’s just merely for testing i really want to get the virtual cockpit done, for better immersion.
Thanks, Yeah im planning to release it, but first i wanna get the dynamic wind done to increase difficulty (turbulence, crosswind landing, tail wind etc, etc) as well as some menus and HUD to display IAS, Thotle, falps, etc, etc as a minimum playable version.
This runs at 45 - 60 fps on ultra, tho the map is not so detailed bare that in mind. Also this was recorded at 30 fps
Im runninng it at i7 sandy + HD5750
Just an small update (updated post), im getting it ready for an alpha release (for feedback purposes) and put it somewhere like Vatsim or other FlightSim enthusiast forums/sites.
Kind of, it’s a port from a flight sim engine that i was working on in 2013 , due some projects and need to work (daily job) i had to put it in the backburner… At that time there was no C++ game engines to use so i had to write everything from scratch. The reason i considered using Unreal4 was obviously C++ and source code access, the ability to access the PhysX internals sold me right away (now i can even modify physx, how convenient!)
The assets are a combination of Marketplace, turbosquid assets, and some minor stuff that i made.
i’ve been playing around with sound, so far so good, glad that i don’t need to deal with FMOD, particle editor is a little bit overwhelming but getting a grip of it.
I like this, I was wondering if it were possible to create a flight sim with this gorgeous engine. I am also playing around with the idea of creating a sim myself but a combat flightsim in the style of EF2000, F22 TAW, JSF, or Janes Fighters Anthology you know from the good late 90’s era.
Have you tried how big the terrain can be? Just flying in a 20x20km patch would get boring soon I think.
If you release your work would it be possible for others to use your aerodynamics framework for their own work?
Yep, a combat flight sim would be cool in unreal4.
About the terrain size, im actually working on that right now using world composition, short answer, Yes, you can import tiles of terrain (from worldmachine for example) and put each of them on a level that gets streamed in and world-shifted depending on the player position.
Gonna open source the wind tunnel as a standalone C library once i get the chance, so that should be a good starting point, in the meanwhile you can have a look at JSBSim.
I’ve been learning modeling for games in parallel i made this Cessna Yoke, is my first normal mapped model (800 triangles), i already knew how to model and unwrap (programmer art) but this is the first time im attempting to make high quality / final art…
There’s also a highpoly Cessna Cockpit, i guess you know now where im heading and some level design work on the background
Also i just ordered the Oculus DK2, once it arrives i’ll work on the cockpit instruments, wanna do some experiments to check with approach is better (2d textured planes or actual geometry)
and some level design work on the background
