[ODE] Flight Simulation

[Nate W]

On Sat, 19 Oct 2002, Sasha H wrote:

> Okey, I'm planning to use ODE to make my airplane fly...
>
> Would it be possible to simulate aerodynamics on each element of the
> airplane (body, right wing, left wing, tail, etc...)? What is the best
> approach, even if it's not "super realistic".

$0.02 from a guy with a moderate understanding of aerodynamics and flying
things:

How about applying a force to each flying surface, in proportion to what
the aerodynamic force on said surface should be?  You could calculate the
lift and drag for the wings, for example, and a force for the deflection
of each control surface, etc.

I bet you'd get fun, if not realistic, results.  Make the force
computations as accurate and sophisticated as your understanding of
aerodynamics, learn all you can, and polish them up as you learn.

> And also, if I have a mesh and a terrain, does ODE support such
> collisions?

If you mix in the "tri-collider" contribution, you can do collision
detection between height-mapped terrain and boxes or spheres.  A few of us
have been doing this in our ODE projects for a while now.  I'm using it
with the Demeter terrain engine and I'm pretty happy with the results.

--

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
http://www.natew.com