AWE - Unnamed Unity flight simulation
prototype
What I've worked on:
prototype
What I've worked on:
•Managed dev/design
•Physics scripting
•Physics scripting
This
prototype was a low-overhead experiment to test the viability of
creating a semi-realistic flight simulator in a set of tools that would
make it easy to distributed web-based content. Most of our (flight
simulation) content is delivered through various applications of the
ESP engine (Microsoft FSX, Prepar3D), which is a robust tool but not
easily distributable through a web portal. This test was an effort to
see what kind of work it might take to distribute one-off experiences,
instead of the comprehensive experience that FSX is.
The experiment was just that - a one-off prototype. Despite the relative success of the test, we didn't move forward in making this a more in-depth project. Where this becomes worth writing about is some of what I learned in making this, and how I keep coming back to these particular pieces of information.
Outside of defining the project and managing the resources for it, all I did was dig in to the physics portion of the script, to see if I could come up with a simplified set of equations for modeling flight in a 3D environment. I started with modeling the basic forces of flight - thrust, drag, weight, lift - and, as the situation demanded (usually, single instances of error in the basic equations), expanded the equations.
The big takeaway from this was the reaffirmation of the notion that the best way to learn something is to try to teach it to someone else (in this case, to a script). Not only did this provide me with a chance to relearn some basic physics concepts, it gave me some specific knowledge regarding flight force equations that I would tap again and again - I used these when I created a two-dimensional flight model in the Island Escape game, and I've used these several times in ESP to simulate various states of flight in XML/Lua script.
The experiment was just that - a one-off prototype. Despite the relative success of the test, we didn't move forward in making this a more in-depth project. Where this becomes worth writing about is some of what I learned in making this, and how I keep coming back to these particular pieces of information.
Outside of defining the project and managing the resources for it, all I did was dig in to the physics portion of the script, to see if I could come up with a simplified set of equations for modeling flight in a 3D environment. I started with modeling the basic forces of flight - thrust, drag, weight, lift - and, as the situation demanded (usually, single instances of error in the basic equations), expanded the equations.
The big takeaway from this was the reaffirmation of the notion that the best way to learn something is to try to teach it to someone else (in this case, to a script). Not only did this provide me with a chance to relearn some basic physics concepts, it gave me some specific knowledge regarding flight force equations that I would tap again and again - I used these when I created a two-dimensional flight model in the Island Escape game, and I've used these several times in ESP to simulate various states of flight in XML/Lua script.