Week 10: Final Post

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Welp this is the final week of my Personal Programming Project. Sadly, this update isn’t super interesting as it’s mostly just dealing with those last-minute bugs that love to show up. This week I tackled those as well as doing a final pass and cleanup of my code.

The first thing I had to tackle was the issues I was having with Perforce and Unreal itself. For some reason, even though I had the correct files checked out Unreal was refusing to save any of my blueprints. I tried to submit the files I had checked out, but due to my unstable internet connection, it took quite a while to actually get all the files I needed to submit. After doing this and then rebuilding my project I was able to actually save the files properly. I don’t know why all of a sudden this decided to give me problems, but at least I didn’t lose any important progress.

The next thing I did was work on implementing the VFX that came with the plane model I got. It’s a pretty simple effect that comes out of the exhaust of the plane.

This effect is just an Unreal default Particle System Object, so after doing some research and looking at the Unreal Documentation. I was able to get it placed in and have it move around with the plane.

After that, I started work on the last big bug. After last weeks post I noticed that now with the inclusion of the skeletal mesh on my plane object. That my airplane was now unable to take off from the ground. The only reason I was actually able to notice this was due to me doing some tests with my Wind Forces. I was able to discover that the skeletal mesh was the root of the problem, but I couldn’t figure out exactly why.

I tried to make sure that physics or gravity was not enabled since it’s only there for animation sake. But that didn’t seem to have any effect. I tried doing some research to see if anyone else had encountered a similar issue. But given how specific this issue was, I didn’t get any really helpful results. After many editor restarts and messing with values I was able to kind of trick it into working.

What I realized was that the angle of attack being generated along with the speed wasn’t generating enough lift for the plane now. So, I needed a way for it to work but still trigger at the proper stalling/spin angles. This is where I decided to create an Internal and External Angle of Attack. The Internal Angle of Attack would be for the actual formula calculations, and the external would be for animation and UI measurements. The Internal Angle of Attack is just the external multiplied by 2, which while not the greatest fix in the world, it does do the trick.

Since this is my last post and the end of this project, I thought it’d be a good idea to reflect on the work that I’ve done and see what I could’ve done differently and/or better.

I think a better approach from the beginning would have been to focus less on the warning systems, like TCAS and GPWS, and focus more on environmental variables that can affect a plane’s flight, like Wind and Air Density. Fleshing those ideas out more and adding on to them would’ve been really cool to do and I think would’ve fit better with the project as a whole.

Though, at the end of the day, I think was a super successful project and thank you for taking the time to read about it!!