Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Unmanned Awesome Vehicle

A flight simulator of the vehicle from the Tube Racer Track Editor.  I've included it here to show off the HUD, mainly.  A lot of work went into that HUD, so I expect you to appreciate it.  Are you appreciating it?  No, you're still reading this.  Go!




Instructions

UP:  Thrust
DOWN:  Wheel brakes
LEFT/RIGHT:  Steer/Yaw

W/S:  Pitch
A/D:  Roll

SHIFT:  Downforce
SPACE:  Lift


The vehicle is deliberately unstable and aerodynamically consists almost entirely of control surfaces.  This was designed to allow huge manoeuvrability while bleeding off speed very quickly during turns.  This allows the player to navigate back to a driving surface when they come unstuck inside the tube, while preventing cheating by just flying through the tracks.

It also means a phenomenal sustained turn rate, and that no human could ever fly it.  The G-forces would squash them like... well... have you ever filled a human skull with jelly, then swung it round on a rope till the jelly squirted out the ear hole?  That's what it would be like.

You can also land upside-down and the vehicle will roll as it if were upright.  This was because I anticipated players flipping inside the tubes, and I wanted to minimise the penalty of doing so.

A quick note on the simulation:  the control surface drag assumes high Reynolds number / low Mach number flow.  Mainly that's because it's the easiest kind of drag to model.  It's basically cv2. Anyway, what that means is that the vehicle doesn't stall, and there are no sound barrier effects. The Mach number indicator is just for fun.

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