Tinus

Good call, I almost ignored that fact when I started working on the wing animation. Having the wings rigid most of the time gives us some leeway. :)

I've certainly been taking my time so far, so don't worry. :) Beta 'soon'. There's been a lot of interest for beta-testing and preordering, but there are a couple of things that need to be done before that can happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRz5fa7yIEs Highlights: New, much more dynamics chase camera. Extra joint in the character's back resulting in smoother and more natural movement. I'm also in the process of integrating McCordia's 3d wingsuit model, but animating the cloth parts is turning out to be tough. More on that soon! Once that is in I'll create a better looking environment, and then some beta testing is in order .

Aaaand a proper trailer with plenty of footage this time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NVw7Wk-5v0 Throughout the development of this prototype I've been able to determine some key elements that need work, the most important one is the wings. Right now I'm drawing plans to simulate ram-air surfaces in greater detail, so that they deform based on inflation and body position. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFnxdRysKz8 First person proximity flying!

Agreed, it's very hard to get a sense of scale and depth currently. I'm aware of this, and as production continues this issue will be worked on; it's just not a priority right now, since that stuff will mostly be solved in terms of presentation. :) An altimeter is planned. There's one in the game now actually, that measures the distance to sea level, as well as whatever object is directly below you. It's just the the game's interface doesn't really show it prominently and there's no audio queues. The other thing is, like Jarno says, terrain with recognisable features. Trees, buildings, etc. Also, right now the physics are tweaked so that when you flare really hard you can fly up for a few meters. Not sure if that's completely true to life, but it sure is fun to play with. I'll give users some way to tweak the lift, drag, and muscle systems to suit their realism needs. However, I'm building a game first and foremost. Simulating for sake of realism alone has a tendency to dampen fun. Most of the more exotic gametypes I'm planning are actually very gamey; it's the best way to fully explore the mechanics of flight. :)

While we're at it: Here's the first footage for split screen play. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpOan0bbnIY It's buckets of fun; it really lets you experience (and play with) the freedom of movement you have much more than solo flight. Let me know what you think!

Integration with an online community system is on the long-term todo list, and I'm setting the foundation for the game up to support it in the future. As soon as your doing multiplayer, you really need to have communication as a core component as well. Hell, even if multiplayer was not part of the plan I would still push for some online community tools. :) While I'm all for a little friendly trashtalking (e.g. my little jibe about grid systems), I'm not so much for all that bitching and moaning you see in a lot of gaming communities. Most of the gametypes I'm designing right now have some form of cooperative play in them, anyway. Not sure how it will all work out, we'll see when we get there. The bunch of early fans that the game has right now have all been very kinds and supportive; with a bit of luck (and a bit of work) I think we can keep it that way. :)

I could, but I'd probably create some enemies in the process. Heck, I'll just roll my own grid system; one that's better than all the others.

Burbles aren't in there yet, but they will be. Right now the wind system is still very simple: I can set wind direction and amount of turbulence only for the whole level. So first I'll build a simple model that allows wind to be different everywhere, and then I'll make it so that you leave a turbulent wake as you move through the air. Having that wind system will eventually also allow me to make wind travel up against mountains to cause updrafts and crosswinds. But that's all further down the road. Docking's also on the list. I'll do it the easy way first: temporarilly 'welding' the player's limbs together when you hold a button. I hope I can make it so that you can grab onto any body part (hands, torso, legs, etc), so you can also do multi-way docks and maybe even rodeo jumps. It might look a bit wonky first, but it will work. After that comes making an animation system that makes it all look nice. Thanks for the feedback as always, SuperGirl. :)

Hey guys! Time for another small video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnqfF0gDOJ8 This one shows what its like to fly relative to other people. I've been tweaking the movement model a lot, and it looks and feels a lot better now. For proper relative work I'll have to teach wingman how to perform braking manoeuvres (using legwing/cupping armwings, etc.), and give you the option of locking the camera to point at other players automatically. When that's all done I recon you can do some pretty accurate formation flying. :) Next to that I've been working on multiplayer, gametypes, etc. Hope you guys like it, cheers!

Excellent idea.

Yeah, I'm going to have to sit down with a couple of experienced flyers again soon to tweak the settings a bunch. I've got the tech setup so that I can quickly change body and suit characteristics: For each bodypart you can now set the dimensions, weight, muscle strength, joint rotation range, etc. For the wings you can define the surface area, location, connection to body parts, span, and lift/drag characteristics based on angle of attack. I plan to do a deeper simulation of actual ram-air aerofoils in the future, but what I've got right now flies pretty well. You can define all sorts of body types and suit types right now, and that will only get better. Anyway, that's exactly what I was thinking for the fatique system, awesome! Basically I'll code a system on top of all the individual muscles that regulates the amount of force they produce and energy they'll consume. I'm also planning a system with which you can finetune your own flying style, so you can tweak your performance with fatique management in mind. Finally: Multiplayer will be pretty much a must for this game to really take off, so network code is one of the first things I'll be working on. Thanks for the detailed feedback, it's immensely valuable! If you think of anything else let me know.

Thanks guys, it means a lot when it's coming from people who actually do this thing for real. Good suggestion there. That comes down to tweaking the drag and lift algorithms so that he generates less gravity-resisting forces when not flying flat. I'll probably also integrate that into a difficulty settings menu such as this: Fallrate: arcade realistic Muscles: arcade realistic Fatique: arcade realistic Stabilize pitch: none full Stabilize yaw: none full Stabilize roll: none full etc. And as for crashing: I haven't decided yet. For now he just ragdolls around, tumbling down the mountain lifelessly. I'll probably keep that in so there's at least some kind of drawback to crashing, and besides, it can look kind of funny. However, you can instantly respawn your character at the press of a button, and start flying again right away. Since this kind of game can involve a lot of trial and error having a quick reset button is crucial for your enjoyment.

Hey all! Remembering how enthusiastic you all were after seeing the first trailer, I thought I'd post a quick update on things: First, here's some much-improved gameplay and physics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhnPdVAO8ZA And second, you can now follow the progress on the projects very own blog: http://www.synthode.com/blog/category/volo Cheers!

Good call, just sent you an email. Never bothered with paper construction kits before, but I'll make an exception for this.

Excellent stuff, Lurch! Some of those things I had considered, others I hadn't thought of yet. Those are all really convincing arguments for a linear approach. Basically, you have full control over *flow* of the level, really fine-tuning the geometry for the most exciting experience possible. Contrasting sections; drops with wildly varying slope angles, different lanes (with different trade-offs and difficulties), close-to-ground followed suddenly by a wide open valley; they should all really help to make the experience more dynamic and engaging, like you said. Tunnels, overhangs and trees are something that I'll need someone else to model for me. I can do terrain generation by myself for now, but that's about the limit of my 3D modeling skill. Regardless, they are all very interesting terrain features, and should definitely be present in the game. Also, some good ideas for creating level boundaries there. Particle effects for various surfaces and objects are planned. I'll probably exaggerate their intensity a little to make it more dramatic. Thanks again for your many thoughts, they're great help!

Thanks for the questions.

Thanks for the feedback, that just put a very big smile on my face. The rigidity of the character is what I'm working on now, so that will definitely start to look better. As for supported platforms: I'm we're building this using Unity, which supports PC, Mac, Wii, iPhone, and soon als PS3, Xbox360 and Android phones; so a lot is possible. It's going to depend on the business model really, not the tech. As for levels: If at all possible I'd like to try huge, larger than life runs like they do in some snowboarding games. There's some issues that will need to be dealt with. You have absolutely huge freedom of movement in a wingsuit, compared to a snowboard. On a board the shape of the mountain limits your options way more than when you're zipping through the air. This means: - You either limit the player's freedom of movement over the mountain in some specific way, being careful the limitation doesn't feel artificial (invisible walls, 'you have 10 seconds to turn back', etc.), or you have to be prepared to model entire regions of mountain area. Which in turn means: - You have to generate a huge amount of content, which is not possible for a two-man team. With content I mean anything that is interesting to interact with. You could quite easily do endless randomly generated content, but if it contains not interesting features it is all for nothing. - You need to have tech that can handle that huge amount of space with that huge amount of content. That said: A cool thing about bigger, open environments is that you can go exploring and experimenting. You could grab a map and plot your course, setting yourself an easy flight or a heavy challenge. Heck, you could even hike all the way up a mountain for some pre-flight immersion. A pro for a more linear approach is that it will be easier to chop levels up into chunks that can be loaded as the player gets closer to them in a streaming fashion. This would make it possible to do 10 minute runs, which would be very cool. So those are some of the options and their consequences. I'm not sure which way we'll go yet. Anyway, since we're talking larger than life, here's a crazy idea I've been playing with:A mode with multiple gravity sources. Since gravity is the only 'motor' force a glider has available for propulsion, why not have multiple ones? As you learn to use multiple gravitational fields you'd be able to fall/glide forever, and use some tricks that astronauts use to fling yourself through the air very fast. Out of interest, which snowboarding titles are you referring to? I'm familiar with the SSX titles, and more recently Shaun White snowboarding. Any others I should check out for inspiration? Lastly, if you have any more ideas on what would be interesting in terms of level design: Keep them coming!

@Kallend Definitely! Thanks for reminding me to do that. I've been planning to write several blog posts on the development, several of which will be about the technical details.

Hey all, Martijn here! First off: Man! I'm really glad you guys like it so far. That really validates all the time I've spent obsessing over wingsuits and aerodynamics the past months. About the physics; there's two important factors here: 1. I was a newbie when I started this. I barely had any knowledge of aerodynamics when I started. 2. Similarly, I also did not have much experience with the tools I'm using (Unity game engine, which contains nvidia's PhysX for physical simulation). All this meant that I had to experiment. And I'm serious about that part. My first prototypes would have made Leonardo da Vinci explode in his grave for sure. Eventually though, I had some code that allowed me to design airfoils very flexibly. From that point on (to brag slightly) my code was already better than D3's BASE, since they don't even simulate lift (and thus also drift and flare) correctly. Even modeling the player as a single, rigid wing behaved better than that game! But no point in stopping there. I'm now working on simulating all control surfaces (the wings) individually, linking them up to a simulated human skeleton with a simple muscle system. The first prototype of this system is featured in the video. As you move the arms and legs around, the wings move along, and the resulting forces change. What it does not yet have; and what I'm working on now, is that the lift force should really impact the body so that it will really have to struggle to maintain a good posture. This will make the task of finding balance a lot more complex and dynamic, resulting in a much more deep and fun system.