(Released) Airplane Flight Physics Toolkit

Hi everybody!

We have just released Airplane Flight Physics Toolkit to the Unity Asset Store: http://u3d.as/content/gargore/airplane-flight-physics-toolkit

While developing a space's game and at some point we needed realistic atmospheric behaviour, but we didn't found any package able of perform this in the way that we wanted it, and in a way that a mobile or tablet hw do not get flamed as it starts to run :!:

So... here it is the result:

You can model anything, bind surfaces and see how it flies. Anecdote: as you can see in the video, the extra 330 have two small little wings attached at the bottom to the ailerons... as soon as you put there two small surfaces the acrobatic capacities are greatly improved. Another anecdote: we are making a C-130 Hercules model... it was really difficult to liftoff and flight control with more than 80 tons onboard: we had to adjust the wings angles with special care so flight was stable.

The 0.62 package includes just now:

• airplane main controller (drag&drop script, with detailed setup panel),
• surface subsonic simulation (drag&drop script or binded to a gameobject),
• windzones with variable winds (drag&drop script),
• mass center controllers (drag&drop script or binded to a empty gameobject),
• thrust engines (drag&drop or binded), and,
• pivots! (drag&drop or binded) you can bind it to make everything without one line of code: ailerons, rudders, elevators, brakes, flaps, gears... gauges: altimeter, vertical acceleration, airspeed... you can set the enabled and disabled angles or the turns-by-unit for gauges.
• axis controllers (part of the airplane controller setup panel): you can use the unity axes, but also we implemented lineal and exponential filtered controllers because we want implement touch gestures nearby in the future, and this is a middle-step.
• a camera controller (drag&drop script, made only for the demo, if requested we can improve it).
• a windsock for seeing the winds (drag&drop script, made also for the demo...).
• and all the code scripts.

Features under development just now:

• windtrails and smoke (it is almost done, so spected to be included in 0.63 at some point the next week): drag&drop or binded component: one per trail, you'll can adjust the force and speed values which makes visible the trail).
• improved landing behaviour because unity wheels have a little strange bouncing behaviours with default physics materials, and if needed totally new physic controller script).
• maybe it is interesant to make propeller engine model?
• VTOL, including hovering.
• angular momentum behaviours.
• turbulences.
• supersonic and hypersonic flight model.
• ... and the list continues.

Indeed, your suggestions will be greatly appreciated! As you can see the package is functional but the development is not yet completely done.

Note: we also published this web: http://gargore.com/uas/airplane-flight-physics-toolkit/

 

Wow! That looks amazing! Without a doubt the best flight sim I have seen in unity. It seems as though you are suggesting one can build his own model and your script will determine how it would fly? Is this the case? Can I model any plane I want and have an approximate simulation of how the plane would actually fly?

 

Indeed, you place the surfaces and the script calculates all the forces, so placing surfaces in a different manner (translate, rotate or scale), makes a different plane. It is recommended to split the surfaces in parts, so the model is more accurate, but not too much as each surface needs to be processed every frame. You can configure also coefficients for each/some surface/s: this allows to get different wing sections and lifting results.

 

Any chance of a web player export so I can have a try ?

 

Of course: there is a demo in the microsite: http://gargore.com/uas/airplane-flight-physics-toolkit/demo.php althought it is a bit outdated.

 

Could you may provide an android demo?

 

Sorry, but by now (as we said before) we do not have touch controls implemented yet, so you would see a plane, but cannot control it. Maybe we can include touch controls in the schedule soon. Stay in touch

 

Some smoke photos:

 

New video: Airplane Flight Physics Toolkit - 0.63 new features!!

This video shows several features that will be available on 0.63 release to be published at some point of this week: mass redistribution and inertia tensor fine adjustements, smoke and wingtrails, improved exponential controls, ...
We tried to make most of the movements as seen in http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hF9qeaYWsbw#t=69s (the plane behaves correctly; of course do not expect the same results because nobody in our team is the world champion xDDD!) the ones which cannot be performed yet requires propwash, schedulled to be implemented for the next release. So, keep in touch!

 

The controls seem to be a little slow to respond. Is this intentional or does it have to do with the nature of the simulator?

 

Looks amazing, good work !

 

You ask about the video or the live demo?

In the live demo: the 0.61 release does not have redistribution fine weight adjustments, so wings are heavier and controls work slower because of the inertia. In the last video we fixed that so plane turns faster now (in 0.63).

About the video: each pair of key controls have a configurable filter. You can adjust this filter to be more responsive. In the video we used exponential keys (you can adjust linear or exponential curves: exponential allows fine manoeuvres, but boosts the filter delay for hard turns). We thought in include a soft-hard switch key or flag for controls; maybe we can include it for the next release.

You can also use a Joystick by configuring Unity3D axis (linear or exponential). Live demo had been hard-coded to use keys only and no switch keys was programmed. Maybe we can include cyclic configuration keys in next one so you can see also how your code can change adjustments in the surface manager object.

 

Some early propwash (now under development):

This video depicts an early propwash, still under implementation in Airplane Flight Physics Toolkit. Further implementation for propeller dynamics is still needed, but the acrobatics were greatly improved at low speeds

 

New video, a preliminar test with a bird:

You can see more videos @ http://gargore.com/uas/airplane-flight-physics-toolkit/media.php

 

The 0.72 release has been published! Propwash, Inertia tensors fine controls and much more! available now @ http://u3d.as/content/gargore/aircraft-flight-physics-toolkit and more info @ http://gargore.com/uas/airplane-flight-physics-toolkit/

 

The Bird Simulation is awesome! What a great idea... !

 

We have changed the package name a bit: now Airplane Flight Physics Toolkit is known as Aircraft Toolkit. Do you like the new name?

We have created also a new thread: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/190802-(Released)-Aircraft-Toolkit

 

It will be interesting to see how far this development goes. As stated by another person, this is by far the best we have to date.

I mainly develop ww2 aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator, this is exactly what I've been looking for as a stepping stone to creating our own full simulator.

As for engine management, this would be a BIG bonus for us which I'm certainly looking forward to. Additionally this would be a great way of bringing in a damage model to the sim, IE engine misuse will severely hurt the engine.

I'm wondering if we would be able to bring in our own models and if so - how difficult would it be.

Keep up the great work.

This model is around 80k polys to give you some idea of the aircraft which also has a fully modelled cockpit.

 

No problem in creating a physics model for that airplane and rig the elements of the cockpit to make it alive. You can see it in the demo that we uploaded at http://gargore.com/uas/aircraft-toolkit/demo.php.

You can press C to change to the cockpit camera and then if you start to move, you can see all the gauges moving indicating altitude, heading... all except fuel ones because there is no fuel limit in that demo.

 

Hi, could I use this to simulate a paraglider flight characteristics? Can you control how much lift a wing generates and set thermal areas in scenes?