Physics of flight game

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Stray Fawn Studio. Launch a rocket from a catapult and land it with skill and style! Venus Patrol. Fly straight-winged jets over s Venus. Neil Thapen. The Bernoulli Principle is a foundational principle of aerodynamics. Aerodynamics involves a combination of four different forces: lift, weight, drag, and thrust. Lift is the opposite force of weight, and it occurs as air moves on wings. The weight force includes the total weight of an object: The force of gravity naturally pulls weight down.

Drag is a slowing force, opposite to the thrust force, which happens with the disruption of airflow. Thrust is a forward-moving force that opposes drag.

Thrust happens due to the energy produced by the rotor or propeller. For an airplane to fly, the four forces have to have the right balance. Taking off requires a stronger thrust than drag, and landing requires reduced thrust and lift to bring the plane back down to the ground.

Airplane wings are an important component of lift due to the difference in air pressure on the top surface as compared to the under surface as a plane flies. This difference causes the airplane to go up. Helicopters also use the same forces for flight.

Rotor blades are counterparts of an airplane's wings, providing lift for the helicopter. The difference is that helicopter rotor blades rotate, which forces air over them to give lift to the helicopter. Rockets are another common type of aircraft that also relies on the same four forces.

Rockets use fuel to propel them into space. The rocket's engine exhaust also helps move it because the exhaust moves backward, which forces the rocket forward. Even kites fly using the forces of motion. Wind moving across the kite's sail produces pressure, which gives the kite lift. The actual trajectory of an aircraft is the sum of all of these physical effects:. The thrust of the engine is a force which accelerates an aircraft forward and usually can be controlled by the player.

The acceleration is the power of the engine divided by the mass of the aircraft. In theory, gravity becomes less when you go higher, but at the height where normal aircrafts operate, this can be ignored. The faster an aircraft moves, the more does atmospheric friction slow it down. This is represented by a force accelerating in a direction against the current direction the craft is moving.

But the higher the aircraft is flying, the thinner the atmosphere and the lower the drag-force. The maximum speed of an aircraft is where the forces generated by engine thrust and aerodynamic drag cancel each other out.

It might sound counter-intuitive, but having a stronger drag-constant will actually make your game easier to play more arcade-like , because drag is the force which stops the plane from flying into the direction the player doesn't want to fly anymore like when flying a curve. You can further improve this by increasing the drag when there is a difference between the heading-direction and the movement-direction of the plane this isn't even unrealistic - the aerodynamic profile of a plane is optimized for least air resistance when the plane is flying straight.

This is the force which actually causes a plane to fly. It is generated by the wings. The larger the wing surface, the more lift is generated, and accelerates the plane upwards relative to the wings, not the ground.

When the plane rolls sideways, the lift is accelerating it sideways, too. Just like the atmospheric drag, the lift is relative to speed and atmospheric density.

A plane controls its direction with different control surfaces for pitch, yaw and roll. A control surface only works when the plane is moving.

Its efficiency is proportional to the current speed and atmospheric density. Note that control surfaces only change the direction in which the plane is pointing, not the direction it is moving. This affects the direction of thrust and lift, and thus gradually the movement direction. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

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