At my work, we’re looking into the possibility of using Unity as the simulation engine for a large number of aircraft (400 or so). We would like to give them coordinates of their flight paths. We would like to have the physics for the aircraft (climb/dive rate, turn radius) handled by some physics entity (ours or purchased).
Does anyone have Unity expertise that can help us answer the question, “Will Unity let is do this in a reasonable (cost/time) manner?”
Many thanks - Brian
You can do this with Unity with ease, granted you have programming knowledge. Simulations aren’t easy no-matter which “engine” you use, the calculations and formulas will all have to be done by a programmer of sorts, basically you’d just create a movement script and use standard mesh collision for a plane simulation. Everything else will be done via your movement script.
The scripts could probably be “Completed” within a day (Meaning, in need of tweaking for perfection)
Graphics take as long as you make them take.
As someone who has coded flight simulations before I have to say that depending on the accuracy and complexity of the desired flight simulation a day seems very aggressive. Realistically coding the simulation alone could take upwards of 4-6 weeks. As Christian said this is regardless of the engine used. Having been using Unity for a few months now I would say that there would be a lot of benefits for using Unity in your case. The physics integration, collision detection, and data drivenness all come for free!
What do you want to get out from it,
Visual presentation or super accurate statistics or both / more ?
Do you have wind and other forces, using actual real plane mesh etc.?
We need aircraft models (3D polygons) to take-off and land in a manner that looks realistic. For example, the nose should point up when taking off then level off after the initial, steep climb. We need the aircraft 3D model to glide with the nose slightly elevated during landing then level off at touch-down. We don’t necessarily need the aircraft to roll during turns. We do need to be able to specify the turn radius, rate of climb, rate of descent for different types of aircraft.
I’m hoping that someone has experience with some of the flight physics add-ons in the Asset Store like: UnityFS or Aircraft Toolkit. If one of those can actually do what we need or not, is the question.
Check your Pm’s 