Quote:Original post by microb
what do I have to consider to bring flying sensations to the player?

Motion sickness and a barf bag?

All the usual stuff. The vessel has inertia/momentum and it is travelling quickly through a heterogeneous viscous potentially turbulent medium.

Model the craft as the massive object it is and you'll produce a realistic experience. That means coding in the annoying angular momentum that makes rolling and turning that much harder, but also that much more satisfying when done correctly.

To be more useful, we'd need to know how big the spaceship is, how it is propelled, how fast it will travel and what sort of atmosphere (or lack thereof) it will travel through.

Admiral

One way I find of making a ship feel like its really moving is to have the camera indicate the speed. Suppose the ship accelerates forwards as long as the engines are on, up to a certain speed. When the brakes are applied the ship slows down. The camera follows behind the ship, its position being -(ship.direction_vector)

The faster the ship is moving, the further the camera is from the ship. By doing this, the player feels the speed the ship is moving at.

More ideas:

Have the ship shake as it approaches higher speeds.

Leave a trail of particles behind the ship as it accelerates, left by the engine. The particles are alive for N seconds, therefore the faster the ship moves the longer its trail of particles.

Use a wide field of vision. The player will see more of the stuff the ship is speeding past.

Have a km/s meter. (or m/s or kph or whatever).

If you feel your ready, why not show us a few screen shots? That would us some more ideas.