And now, Blimps.

I was mostly just screwing around in Blender, and next thing I knew, I had a blimp. Also, a low-poly fighter plane (not pictured).

I think the next game may very well be a dogfight game. Or a plane racing game. Or a blimp hunting game. Maybe all of these.

It sure would be nice if the GamePad API had better support on Linux.


I've done a little bit of investigation into aerodynamics, and the math for a simple sim seems pretty easy - you've got the force of gravity (which I understand pretty well) and one or more control surfaces (flaps, rudder, etc) that are represented by a tensor - a 3x3 matrix, which gets multiplied by the relative wind vector to create a force vector that you apply to the craft. Maybe for my game, I have two flaps (one on each wing), each of which can be in one of three positions, call them -1, 0, and 1. For each of those positions, I'll make a tensor. Because of symmetry, that's really just one set of tensors, which I use twice.

So, if both flaps are up (1, 1), the force would be pushing back (drag) and pitch the nose up. If both flaps are down (-1, -1), the force would push back (drag again) and pitch the nose down. With no flaps (0, 0), there's less drag, and less pitch. With one flap up, one flap down (1, -1), the forces on the two wings would be unequal, and the craft would be inclined to roll.

Hm, we're getting pretty close to dealing with moments of inertia, which was more math than I planned to do.