Apache - First Flight

I had a little experiment with lifting forces, coupled a rudimentary throttle control system to a thurst vector with some torque control. The result isn't pretty, actually it's pretty horrible but she does at least get off the ground. The tail dragging attitude of the Apache means once she lifts off, she tends to travel backwards, all necessary forces and inputs are not yet in place to have any form of satisfactory control.

But she does at least take you for a ride. I added a "blade view", pictured right which is great if you like being dizzy.

Apaches can now be spawned, boarded, seat positions chosen, even an outside view system. And it takes off. Some roll control is available but this is just the first attempt, I didn't expect more that the darn thing to go up and down. Which it does.

Here's a screen-shot from the first flight.

The rotors cast full cockpit shadows (effect akin to MS:FSX with DX10 preview) and from either seat it's quite spectacular with such a high-visibility cockpit. There's no rotor-blur in screen-shots unless we 'fake' it using a motion-blur post effect.

Here are two shots of the Pilot and CP/G positions. The code can accomodate any number of crew positions for any vehicle we want to include.

It's awfully tempting to plug in the HUD module now. That would be way ahead of schedule. There is an odd crash that occurs only in the runtime compile relating to the UnBindPlayer messaging, doesn't happen with the debug compilation. I can get around it using the same code in a different object class but it's most curious.

One last screen-shot from the maiden flight of the Camp Zero Apache. You can see the 8km horizon draw distance, the small town and Camp Zero not very far away. This is our testing area for the game assets before we build the campaign theatres.

Oh, there was one other odd thing. I was pulling my hair out trying to get the camera and crew positions in the right place, everything seemed backwards, I had to rotate the invisible pivot where the crew positions are located by 180 degrees. Turns out, the Apache model is backwards. *sigh*. My original numbers were right at least but I wasted a few hours.

It flies, badly. I love it.