[RELEASED] Aircraft Toolkit

Now at $45 for a limited time only! (until we end the development of some toolkit parts; buy now and enjoy free lifetime upgrades).

Try it online here: http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo
Buy it here (released 0.80 version): https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/9409
Now with support for mobile and touch interfaces by using the virtual device library https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/15470

New features:
- weapon system (guns and rockets, missiles pending yet).
- new model: warbird airplane (based on the P-51 mustang, including weapons)
- new model: attack helicopter! (based on the apache, we have uploaded a webdemo to http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo.0.78.2.php).
- improved model: jet fighter airplane (based on the F-4 phantom II, now with better handling and weapons).

Aircraft Flight Physics Toolkit features realistic flight simulator for airplanes and helicopters, examples and
aeronautical construction tools. Easy to include in your games: only drag&drop a prefab and it will fly.

Full realistic simulation with aerodynamic effects:
- coefficient surface analysis based on Bernoulli and Newton equations.
- wings of any profile and shape, body lift air-resistance and aerodinamics are simulated.
- script automatically calculates the flight model derived from your creation.
- ground effect makes takeoff and landing more realistic.
- propwash simulation allows low speed aerobatics like in youtube real videos.
- high-g turns air-resistance are simulated.
- different types of engines are simulated, including thrust vectorial engines.
- pivot system arithmetics.
- filters to remove sampled physics aliasing.
- helicopter engines: rotors and tail-rotor included.
- and of course many other effects like stall, speed vectored inertia, weight load, lift ratio, takeoff speed...

More info resources: http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/

 

This is realy cool project. I am waiting for the helicopter enhancements.

 

Next release will include helicopers We will upload it in a few days.

 

Is it mobile friendly?

 

Will you be implementing weapon systems and instruments for cockpits.
Even as is, will be looking to get this soon.

 

@Mementos: Yes, it is mobile friendly. It is scheduled to implement a multitouch control for a mobile demo in a few weeks. We tested already without that and runs without problem, but it is not fully playable without multitouch.

@John G.: Instruments for cockpits are already implemented using pivots (you can see it in youtube videos, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=v0zQRUzApcg&t=92 or in the live demo pressing C for change to internal camera at http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo.php. Weapon system is not yet implemented, but we are currently making misiles for stratosferic flights (soon we will upload a video to youtube) and we test early implementations of guns http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6BD79V3mq8g&t=37

 

New video: atmosphere rendering and ultra-low pressure flight.

You can watch other videos at http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/media.php

 

Solved

 

Hello pudd1nG,

We just tested again all included test scenes and prefabs included in the uploaded .unitypackage in a new empty project and everything seems to work ok.

Maybe we can schedule a skype call for check with you the problem. Could you contact us by email at uas@gargore.com?

Thanks.

 

Simply amazing! Bookmarked and put on my shopping list!

 

I want to know, how easy it would be to scale it up for multiplayer? And by what time support for Helicopter and weapon system can we expect. i know its lot to ask but my project needs all these things to be implemented.
Really great toolkit you have developed.

 

Hello Entrepreneur,

The simpler way for extend the toolkit to multiplayer is to simulate only the local player aircraft attaching to it gAircraft component and the remote players aircraft can be managed with Unity networking components like Network View and rigidbodies without the gAircraft controller.

About helicopters, the 0.75 release currently published does include already helicopter's rotor and tail rotor drive types and a helicopter example. Next releases will include light, medium and heavy helicopters examples and a hook component to carry objects.

Thank you for your compliments.

 

We just checked that the description text on the package didn't include any mention to helicopters, we forget to change it and helicopters was still mentioned only as a future feature. We revised the descriptions text and uploaded so when updated by asset store staff it will be correct.

Anyway if you check the package contents you can see a helicopter prefab in there so if you download the 0.75 release you will have helicopters

About the weapons: we are working in avionic controllers: guns and rockets does not need them but missiles cannot be simulated without them (until you pilot them manually like we did in the Stratosphere video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU-gYW5ic9M).

We are now working into avionic controllers to make fly-by-wire stabilizers, autopilots and NPCs and after that we can include air-to-air, ground-to-air and air-to-ground missiles finally

 

News: we are working on Unity 3.5 compatibility. The most probable is that we split the project into two forks because there are features of Unity 4 that cannot be used in Unity 3.5.

Also, we added a small poll in the thread. We want to know which planned features are more important to you... please vote!

 

Fantastic - that'll massively increase the appeal of the project I think. Until now, flight packages like this one haven't been on my radar because I always expect the planes to fly like in Kerbal Space Program - without the stability control parts. If you update the package so I can press play, and have a gun/missile dogfight against another, NPC plane, you'd probably get a fair few sales...

Is there any (current/planned) support for 'non-standard' wing elements? Delta wings using vortex lift, center of lift per wing/element?

 

Hi Jesus,

Yes, we are working very hard we hope soon we can release a new version! avionics controller is almost complete, we are making also an autopilot which flies to waypoints or targets.

Delta wings can be modelled in the toolkit, and indeed flight characteristics change a lot, I think vortex lift effect can be modelled by increasing the lift factors of the affected wing parts (but maybe we need to add a new set of lift coefficients to improve this simulation). In future releases we have plans to compute the sections in forward-rear order while initialization mainly for transonic and supersonic dynamics including volume computations, but also vortex lift and other effects can be more accurately simulated.

 

Updated manual published @ http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/manual.0.75.php

 

Avionics controller is almost working now for controlling airplanes.

(the airplane is piloting itself, heading to the red sphere: nobody is touching the keys

 

Really impressive, I will buy it the second you implement the weapons.

 

Release 0.76 has been published. Includes minor fixes and compatibility with Unity 4.0.0.

 

New webplayer demo @ http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo.0.75.php
New version 0.76c @ https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/9409
And a $10 off in the price.

 

Demo updated with new trimming settings and center of mass @ http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo.0.75.php

 

New video:

 

Still planned?

 

Yes, still planned, but before we must finish avionics controller.

 

New version, 0.77 published now in the asset store!

Includes several new features:
- alpha version of the avionics controller: autopilot and autoleveling modes for airplanes and helicopters.
- new coefficients to simulate high-G turns resistance.
- improved ground effect for airplanes, allowing more realistic takeoff and landing simulations.

To use our toolkit is as easy as drag and drop one the prefab aircrafts in your scene and fly... and for those who like to design its own aircrafts, several people told us that so many coefficients are hard to understand, but do not desespere... we are working on a solution

 

New demo available here: http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo.0.75.1.php

 

Hi everybody,

We published two new demos:

http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo.0.76.php
http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo.0.76.1.php

And a new video:

Hope you like it! If you have a minute, remember to left reviews if you buy the toolkit

 

Hi, I like the package, however with the helicopter demo I'm curious as to the relationship the tail rotor has on the physical modelling. If I remove the tailrotor completely i expected the main body to be influenced by the torque of the main rotor but I still was able to maintain torque control as if it was a contrarotating system. This begs the question, is the tail rotor actually doing anything in this case?

My second question relates to the approach for creating your own airframe, does the modelling have o be done inside unity or can the plane geometry used for the physical modelling be done in a more suitable 3d program and then imported?

thanks

 

The helicopter needs the stabilizer. We didn't added the torque effect yet to avoid making the helicopter more uncontrollable... so we paused the helicopter development until stabilizers are available.

About the second question: with "airframe" do you refer to the model mesh or to the physic analyzers?

- If you refer the model mesh, you indeed should model it outside. You should make submeshes if you want to rig the parts with the toolkit pivots.

- If you refer the set of aerodynamic analyzers, our experience is that the importing process usually destroy the individual scales of each element, so we recommend to use basic body shapes provided by Unity, like cubes, spheres or cylinders. We use the size to calculate the surface areas and imported elements may report wrong sizes. Anyway, you can make a test but probably won't work: we will add the reported surfaces in the next version for you.

 

Yes, you can pause the simulation in three ways:
- pause both physics and simulation calculations (aircraft will freeze in the air).
- pause only the simulation calculations (aircraft will fall like a stone, this is the best option for "disabling" an helicopter into flight).
- disable the engines and control surfaces movement (aircraft will still flying but without control, this is the best option to "disabling" an airplane into flight).

About the mobile question: we tested the aircraft toolkit in private, with basic mouse input and everything worked ok. On a Samsung Galaxy S2 the framerate is fluid even without using low-poly meshes (we used the same meshes than in the webplayer demos), so yes: the toolkit is fully compatible with mobile and tablets.

 

great, thanks for the reply. yes I was referring to the aerodynamic analyzers, so thanks for addressing both in your reply.

going back to the first question, can you please describe the role of the tail rotor in terms of it as an aerodynamic analyzer. Maybe i didn't look close enough, but in the current package, is it actually a areodynamic component?

thanks again

 

The tail rotor component generates the force performed by a tail rotor. The main role is provide the force for perform yaw rotation. When completed the tail rotor will provide also torque balancing (for neutralize the main rotor) and wind balancing.

 

ok great. I noticed that if I disable the tail rotor branch completely, i still have yaw rotation control. On that basis, it seems to me both control and the tail rotor effects are independent of one another at this stage...

 

Hi Gargore! Thank you so much for this awesome kit! I was pretty impressed by the demos and videos on your site and bought the kit. So now I have to solve some things and I hope you can help me out:

1. How can you control the plane externaly (via code)? Will the changing of input{elevator,ailerons,etc}_output properties of the GAircraft class is a legit way to do it?

2. What will be the best way to limit some of the properties of the plane, like yaw values for more "casual" plane control?

3. I went on and created my own plane as shown in your videos. The problem I have is that when it starts to take off suddenly I experience a great sideways force which pushes it off the takeoff lane. The same issue can be observed with one of your jet aircrafts included in the package. So how to debug this, and what might be the cause?

Once again, thank you for your cool kit! Keep up the good work!

 

Hi dvscode! about your questions:

1) Yes, you can change the input{elevator,ailerons,etc}_output but you must change the source of the channels that you write to user mode instead of unityaxis, mix or key modes. In that mode GAircraft will not interfere with your values. The values must be between 0.0f and 1.0f.

2) We are working on some arcade-like avionic controllers to use between the surface controls and the user. We are also working in a touch control input modes.

3) Probably the GLandingGear settings are not as fine as required for high speeds. Could you contact us in uas@gargore.com for more feedback? maybe you can send us some screenshots too Thanks for your report!

 

Thank you for getting back to me

The arcade-like controls is the most anticipated (at least for my current project), I was going to write something like this myself, but it will require a full in-depth system review. So I will look forward to your next update!

As for the GLandingGear problem, I will try to prepare a Unity project demo for you at the earliest convenience.

Thanks once again for the support!

 

Hi!

We are glad to announce the inminent publication of Aircraft Toolkit 0.78 with several improvements on:
- guns and rockets are ready! including gun turret that aims to the cursor. Fully configurable and easy to attach and replace with your own projectiles and explosion effects. Also with instantiating and wakeup-sleep object function. Missles are not yet ready (needs autopilot components) but would be ready on following releases.
- new additional helicopter model, much more stable, even without stabilizers.
- new airflow analyzer with laminar and turbulent flow detection that improves several effects, including stalls.
- stall warning and detector with % of stall.
- HUD elements including horizont lines and speed vector.

 

Hi again dvscode,

If you need it earlier, for the arcade-like controls maybe you can start with the alpha and beta stabilizers and autopilots included. The arcade-like controls that we will include had many factors in common with those. Indeed an arcade-like controller is like an autopilot that "listens" the key pressed by the user.

About the GLandingGear, we will wait for your demo.

In the before's response I forgot to mention that we had got a lot of trouble with the unity wheel colliders (the GLandingGear is a way to limit those troubles). For some reason at very high speeds the friction is too high and if the wheels get off from the ground and then it touches it again, when wheels starts to touch the ground it brakes suddenly a lot. Because the most common is that one wheel touches the ground before the other the effect is that the airplane feels crazy for a instant before the speed, the flow and surfaces compensate it, or not...

We made the GLandingGear to control this: the solution is to decrease the friction for high speeds as much as needed to avoid strange friction issues. That's why I said that settings are not as fine as required: maybe GLandingGear does not reduce the friction as required for remove side-effects. Select as you takeoff or land the wheel component and see how friction changes: in the moment when you see the problem please pause the simulation and tell us the weight of the airplane, the speed when problem occurs, the friction values and your GLandingGear coefficients and we will tell you new coefficients for testing.

 

Hi Gargore!

The helicopter demo looks awesome! Can't wait to land my hands on it

As for the GLandingGear, I have tried to replicate my own behavior and magically it works fine now I guess I messed up with my custom controller.

I will try the stabilizers you mentioned, maybe they will work. As for the autopilot feature, I've tried the aircraft_autolevel and fast_autolevel settings. The former appears not to do anything, the later won't let me roll the plane in the desired direction. So I will have to dig into that further

 

We are happy to announce that 0.78 is now live on asset store!!! you can update it and get weapon system (if you already bought it, for free).

We are also working on update video, demos and manual to the new version.

 

Demo with helicopter | Demo with light aircraft | Demo with acrobatic aircraft

 

Very nice! The helicopter simulation is outstanding, definitely adding it to my game! Keep up the good work!

 

Hi Gargore!

I hope you're doing well. One quick question for you: what is a legit way to make an air start? Here is what I am doing:

1. Place the plane at the desired air point
2. Assign speed attribute (seems to do nothing)
3. Set input throttle to max (1.0f)
4. Set linear velocity for rigid body ("brakes" the plane, e.g. sets is isCrashed property to true)

Looks like I need to modify the RPM of the drives to max also, but I don't know what will be a legit way to do it.

I hope you can help me

 

Hi!

GAircraft has a public method called placeAt with various sinatures, the most complete:

I think that method makes everything you want including ignore the displacement airforce generated on the body (otherwise the simulator will think that your plane have moved at gigantic speed applying drag forces that probably will set you into the outer space xDDD).

You should also remove the isCrashed flag.

Finally if the airplane gets break while recovering it is probable because the displacement exceeded the structural resistance tester. You should disable it while recovering by executing:

After placeAt. You have an example of recovering/replacement in the GSCameraAux::recoverVehicle method.

Hope that helps!

 

That was fast and it works! This is exacty what I needed, thank you!

 

I am really excited about this toolkit. I would like to know if it is possible to create a ufo/flying saucer type flight with this kit?

 

Depends on the type of flight that you want.

You can choose between several type of control-types for creating your aircraft:
- VTOL thrust.
- vectorial engines.
- ailerons.

Maybe you will need also an antigravitational script to make the ufo can hover or you can use the helicopter basicrotor component as well.

Please, contact us at uas@gargore.com and we can send you further information or components.

 

Hello,

We added new subtitles to the introduction tutorials. Hope you like it! Here they are:

 

Hi, I have a few pre purchase questions that I hope you can help me with. I emailed you from your site a few days ago but not got a reply as of yet so thought I would try on here.

I'm moving to unity from another engine where I developed a flight simulator and I am now wanting to re develop this using unity. I like the way it appears using this plugin that I can add aero foils as I want to create the wings so I was first wondering if i would be able to simulator a using this plugin? By creating a wing and having the center of mass low below the wing?

If you think it would be possible my other few questions are:

Would the current wind implementation be able to simulate lift?

Also is there a crash detection hard programmed in as obviously In the simulator I would be taking off and landing from high terrains and not a "run way" as such so don't want to keep detecting a crash?


The plugin looks great and I'm ready to buy as soon as I know it's good for my use.

Hope you can help
Thanks