Week 7: New Additions

Last week I talked about changing my schedule and switching out some of the planned features for this project with new ones. This week I started implementing them, as well as, refining some of last week’s work. This week I managed to work on:

· Refining Wind

· Convert Warnings to C++

· Finish Major Stall Work

· Implemented Turn Coordinator

· Minor Bug Fixes

To start off with, last week I worked on creating a basic implementation of wind, which only applied the wind once the plane entered the area, now there is a constant application of wind until the plane leaves that area. Here is an example of how this works now:

Next, I worked on converting the warning system to C++. There isn’t a whole lot to share or show here other than I just converted the blueprints to actual code.

Then I worked on what probably took the most amount of time this week (again), that being the Stall. After a considerable amount of trail and error, I found a system that I think works a lot better. Instead of setting the linear velocity to zero when a stall begins, I just set it to a fraction of that, and then as the angle of attack reaches certain stages the multiplier changes to further increase the negative Lift Coefficient. I still need to clean up the code, but I think that the result is generally a lot smoother than it was last week.

Since I still had a good amount of time on my hands I also decided to start on some of next week’s items. Mainly being The Turn Coordinator. Like the name implies, this device ensures that the pilot turns are coordinated during flight and that they aren’t slipping or skidding.

For my UI, I decided to go with the simplified version that you can see here:

First, I worked on getting the Bank Angles to translate properly to the UI:

And then worked on implementing the Ball:

Even though this post is rather short compared to the rest, I still managed to accomplish even more than I wanted to this week. Next week I’m going to take the time to focus on fixing the Wind UI, more bug fixes/refinement, implementing changing Air Density, and, try to see if I could implement a spin. I usually wouldn’t tack something like this on, but since I was able to finish a lot of stuff ahead of schedule and now have a better grasp on the stall, I think it would be something nice to attempt.