Version 12 of Sailplane Flying Game
Updated 2003-06-10 16:24:12
This is a project I started while trying to teach myself Tcl/Tk. It is a moving map using an aviation sectional chart. You can fly sailplanes over the map after selecting a set of goals, usually a triangular course. You can launch multiple sailplanes. Give each one a unique "contest ID". You must "stop flying" in order to launch a new sailplane. You can control the sailplane who's ID is in the box with the arrow keys. Left and Right arrow steer left and right. Up arrow speeds up the sailplane. Down arrow slows it down. Your sailplane starts with 5000 ft. of altitude. There is a polar performance curve similar to a real sailplane, so if you try to fly faster to get ahead, you will lose altitude faster and risk "landing out" or running out of altitude. You can regain lost altitude by slowing down and lingering in randomly generated thermals of varying strength that appear on the map as brown smoke stack like images. Flying faster does not make you win. The pilot that makes the best judgement of how fast or slow to fly, given the lift conditions, will win. In general, if the lift conditions are strong and lots of thermals can be reached, it will pay to fly fast. If the lift conditions are weak, it will take much longer to regain lost altitude, so it will pay you to fly slower between thermals and conserve your altitude. If you run out of altitude, you "land out" and the game is over for you. There is one consolation not available in a real sailplane race, if you can maneuver your glider behind an opponent, and line up your course in his or her direction, pressing the space bar will launch a cruise missle in his or her direction. If it hits within the bounding box of the opponents glider, he or she will disintegrate and be removed from competition.
Alex Caldwell M.D.
Problems
- The steering is wierd. A real sailplane circles in thermals. These can only slow down and make kind of "S" turns. The steering input is not linear, as you add input, the glider starts flying off course in a sort of exponentially faster rate, so you have to keep the inputs small.
- The distance calculations for this particular map are all hard coded in the program. Need to develop ability to import any map and calibrate flexibly, so the distances can be calculated.
Goals
- I have a preliminary network game version that connects to a server, so two clients can play each other from remote network computers, but it has a few problems.
- Use Tcl's new serial connection abilities to connect directly to a GPS receiver and plot courses in real time. Possibly on a PDA. The program is able now to read a Garmin .trk file and plot the positions on the map.
- A 3-D version using Tkogl, the Tcl extension to OpenGL.
RS: Thanks for showing this to us! Next question would be, whether it can be downloaded at some place?