Making a Flight Simulator...what Game Mechanic would really make it Amazing.

We have made a flight simulator and are going to be showcasing it at GamesCom 2017.
Everything fly's well, and it looks good. We have added some simple game mechanics such as pickups that unlock various challenging portals to fly though....

But what game mechanic would make it really amazing and unique for the player?
Curious to hear your thoughts. Thanks

 

Thank you they actually are...but soon to be resolved.

 

Um...the purpose of a "flight simulator" is to accurately simulate flight.

If you have pickups and other game-y things, you probably have a flying game, not a flight simulator. Reference: racing sim, racing game >> Assetto Corsa, Need for Speed.

It's possible that you used the word "simulator" mistakenly, and if so I apologize, but if you're making a simulator then the goal of the game should be the accurately simulate flight, hopefully in multiple different-handling aircraft. If you're making a simulator, some type of mission system would be really interesting--but it needs to be based in reality, not zooming around collecting orbs in the sky.

 

My thoughts are and why I asked the question that flight simulators, are fine once you learn the flight controls and can operate the device correctly. But with the same controls would it not be interesting/fun to have different experiences using the same flight controls.

 

The racing sim is when you have unlocked certain simulator skill objectives.

 

Not really. A simulator is a "game" (often not even a game) where the purpose is to simulate the experience of doing something--driving a race car, driving a semi truck, flying a plane, running a train, etc. That is the basis for a simulator.

You can add more things on top of it, but for it to remain a simulator you can't sacrifice the...mechanical fidelity that's common to simulators.

For a plane it might be thrust, drag, lift, and weight, all of these based on components of the plane's design. These cannot be sacrificed for fun controls for it to be a "simulator."

And like JamesArndt says, you probably want to drop that term, because it has very specific meanings which aren't related to "fun" gameplay itself.

 

Yea, it sounds like you are making a flying/flight game, which is different than a flight simulator.

 

...for example, Microsoft Flight Simulator incorporated real world weather into the game and you cold fly across countries in real time. Real time means - > a lot of staring at the landscape without anything fun happening, for hours.

 

I agree with the first part, disagree with the last clause.

Though I've got 17.8 (online--so it's more with offline) hours in American Truck Simulator since I bought it about two months ago, so I may not be the most...normal person to compare against.

 

NOt sure what's there to disagree with. A new york-paris flight will be mostly staring at the ocean.
The idea of flight sim is emulating control devices and the process of a real flight. Meaning the flight panel should have all the buttons, knobs and switches, they should all work like a real thing, and you'll need to chat with traffic control towers, etc.

Flight simmer occasionally also create those kind of setups:

 

make it so you pilot amazon drones and people try to shoot em down and take the packages
LOL

or hillbillys with shotguns sitting in the back of their pickup with a buncha beer cans trying to shoot the drones down

and pilot the drone to spy on chicks at the beach or in the shower or whatever

 

I disagreed with the "no fun happening" part.

Though perhaps that's accurate, but "not fun" doesn't necessarily mean something's bad or unenjoyable.

 

So here is my thoughts. Once you complete the basic learning mechanics of a flight simulator the experience becomes quite boring. Would it not seem to make a good extension of the newly learned mechanics to try within a racing scenario or a quest or time trial situation. If anything you are improving the players muscle memory in a fun and unique way and extending the players experience.

 

You should make a clear choice whether you want your drone game to be a simulator or not. People fly real drones without any kinds of warp gates or collectables in the real world. They enjoy the interaction in and of itself and set their own goals (like not crashing your expensive drone and challenging yourself to make difficult landings on tight spots while countersteering against wind or stuff like that.

If you want it to be an arcade game, the flight mechanics are secondary and you can concentrate on gamedesign. If you want it to be a simulator, then the flight mechanics and environment are everything and people will make up their own challenges. You must have an environment that is interesting and pretty enough to want to explore. And the flight mechanics must offer sufficently high skill ceiling to provide an interesting challenge. I'd consider a sort of optional "permadeath" mode, where you get fancier drones over time, but when you crash, you go back to square one. The chance of failure is probably one of the key elements that makes flying real drones "exciting". Add some stakes for people who enjoy that.
You could put your challenges scattered into the environment and make finding those challenges part of the exploration aspect. Make it a sort of treasure hunt, unlocking new challenges being the reward for your exploration. If you go for a simulator, I'd make the challenges things like time-trials where you need to get through hard/risky to navigate courses in a predetermined amount of time, to create risk/reward choices between flying safe and pushing hard to make it in time and risk a crash. That would be something you can do in real-life too. Or land on moving targets, do things in extreme wind conditions, fly tricks, etc.. Adding a hook of some kind to a drone to transport tiny things from A to B could also be interesting.

 

Thank you Martin, I am on the right path because that is how I have it setup now. Appreciate the help.

 

I dont see why you cant have it all. A true simulation with accurate controls aiming to be as realistic as possible AND fun gameplay. Just because the control schemes and physics of flight aim at realism you can't include races, obstacles, goals or other fun gameplay? I dont see how the 2 exclude each other. Microsoft flight sim could ad a redbull race event that might be entertaining. Maybe you could let users set red disposable cups around a backyard course and race their realistic simulated drones through them. Think about what you would like to do with your drone if you weren't worried about crashing and breaking it, make those things reality. There are tons of ways to have fun with a drone especially if you didn't have to spend time and money fixing them after you had this fun. Maybe sprinkler traps, hawks or other birds of prey, sneaky thunderstorms, office raids with angry workers swatting at you with file folders, anything you would want to experience in real life minus the hassle afterward.

 

Yes, this would work.

But floating portals wouldn't, so much. Unless they're some real-life object.

It just shouldn't have "fake" things, that's the main issue (after the accuracy of the simulation).

 

I agree completely. Now talking about it I actually really like the idea of realism based simulation with fun goals,tests of skill, silly objectives and the like mixed in. I want to see what comes from this and am hoping for accurate simulation plus fun to play. I would actually download and play that.

 

Thank you guys. I believe I am on the right path. Here are a couple of new images and ideas. Throw in a bit of weather drama and Pirate Adventures too...

 

I don't think anyone mentioned this, but I think that adding in VR support would make it much more exciting as a simulator.

 

Latest Microsoft Flight Simulator actually gneerates cities procedurally even with no real life building data present. Now, I think it requires highest visual settings. The generated cities are often qutie odd (because normal buildings do not usually form ngons with N > 4), but it looks decent enough.

 

I had gone down that road with Mantle asset, and trying to get any sort of texturing pipeline that worked was pretty much impossible.

 

Yeah, will look at it dependent on success. I hate being constrained by the hardware and framerate requirements.

 

The level of details on screenshots is confusing. In flight sims I played quite a lot of time was spent staring at clouds from the above, Meaning things like nice rocks or pirate ships are pretty much invisible - they would be pixel sized.

Unless you're doing something like a Drone Flight Sim, of course.

 

The project is called DroneTopolis....