Ernest W. Adams - Fundamentals of Vehicle Simulation Design

Representational flight simulators fall into two general categories: civilian and military. Civilian flight sims dont include aerial combat; theyre mostly about the way the aircraft looks and performs, and so are often quite realistic. Military flight sims have to be simplified for reasons well look at later, but they offer exciting physical and tactical challenges. Fantasy flight simulators can be about all kinds of crazy things, such as flying on a dragon.

Driving simulators also tend to fall into two major categories: organized racing and imaginary racing. Organized racing simulators try to reproduce the experience of driving a racing car or motorcycle in an existing racing class, such as IndyCar, NASCAR, or AMA Motocross. (To use the official name and indicia of any of these racing organizations, you will need to get a license. See the section Intellectual Property Rights, later in this e-book.) Imaginary racing games are just that: games about racing in imaginary situations, driving madly through cities or the countryside or even fantasy environmentskart racing games fall into this category.

In addition to racing, many games implement driving as a part of a wider variety of activities. First-person shooters often include combat vehicles as well, and of course cars are central to the Grand Theft Auto series. These vehicles are seldom represented accurately, because the player is less concerned with their driving characteristics and more with tactical needs.

The players themselves also fall into two categories. The purists demand highly accurate simulations of real vehicles with all their quirks and limitations; if a purist forgets to retract the airplanes flaps after takeoff, he wants those flaps to be damaged by excessive airspeed and to be stuck in the down position with appropriate consequences for the planes handling characteristics. On the other hand, casual players dont care about the details as long as they can fly or drive around, preferably fast, and maybe even shoot at things or do tricks.

Naturally the players primary role in a vehicle simulation is that of its pilot or driver. However, the player may take on other roles in different gameplay modes. For example, if youre going to simulate larger aircraft such as bombers or two-seat fighters, youll have to decide how you want to handle the varying roles available. In LucasArts World War II simulator Their Finest Hour, the player can play any of the waist and tail gun positions of the Junkers Ju 88 bomber while leaving the plane on autopilot, or she can set the guns to fire automatically at any target that comes into view. To drop the bombs, however, she has to take over the bombardiers position personally. Three-Sixty Pacifics game Megafortress required the player to manage no fewer than five different stations: pilot, copilot, navigator, electronic warfare specialist, and offensive weapons officer. Each station had its own instrument panel and responsibilities, and the player had to move constantly from one to another to check on conditions and respond to emergencies. At times when the player was away from the pilots seat, the plane flew on autopilot toward the next waypoint.

In racing-oriented driving games, the players role is that of a racing driver most of the time, but the more serious simulations, such as the F1 series, also allow the player to be a mechanic, modifying the angle of the airfoils, changing tires to compensate for weather conditions, and so on.

A few vehicle simulations, such as the classic Microsoft Flight Simulator, arent really games because they dont offer the player a goal, apart from learning to control the vehicle. They dont have any rules other than the laws of physics. Most vehicle simulations, however, offer driving or flying within a competitive context, either a race or a battle of some kind.

The competition modes of military flight simulators resemble those of first- person shooters: single-player modes against artificial opponents, multiplayer death matches (every player for himself), and team-based play. Civilian flight simulators usually offer only a single-player mode, although they sometimes also allow races and follow-my-lead competitions. Driving simulators are generally single-player games or multiplayer races and are seldom team-based.