I reported on Saturday that I am creating a game involving airplanes.
All weekend, I have been reading and trying to learn some of the math behind it. I want to make it as realistic as possible, but also it is tough because I obviously can’t make every little thing accurate. It is a game, not a simulator, but I think it’ll be a challenge if the player has to control the airplane similarly to how actual airplanes are operated, whilst trying to shoot down enemy airplanes, or execute whatever mission they are sent on.
So, I started reading a free book online called See How It Flies by John S. Denker. It is a book clearly written for pilots, but with enough mathematics to keep me interested, as well as detail on how the controls work, and actually affect the plane. On the first night I started reading it, I only got through the first chapter and a few sections of the second. The second night, I got through part of the second, but then got sucked in by Wikipedia, where their articles have much more math and science explained.
Often, I had to look up a term that I did not know, such as angle of attack. For a while, I did not know the difference between angle of attack, pitch attitude, and angle of climb.
Of course, one article led to another, and soon I found I had been reading articles on Wikipedia for several hours. Kind of scary. 
The thing is, I read much of chapter 2 without knowing exactly what angle of attack was, so probably missed a lot of what it was talking about. I am planning to re-read those sections of the chapter.
I still don’t understand everything, obviously, but I feel like I have a much better grasp on certain things. I even had a few breakthroughs, where I realized how to calculate certain things.
One thing that confuses me a bit is whether airspeed can be sounded strictly as your horizontal speed, or if it is counted as your speed relative to the wind. I guess Wikipedia says it is relative to the air, which is not always horizontal relative to the ground.
The reason is that I figured out how to calculate the rate of climb if you are climbing at a given angle and airspeed. It is a simple trigonometric problem. The thing is that if airspeed is horizontal, then you take the tangent of the angle, but if it is relative to the air, then you take the sine. I believe it is the latter.
On the other hand, if the plane is taking off, and it is at a given pitch and going at a certain speed, that speed must be horizontal, since it is on the ground, so I believe in that case, the tangent would be the correct answer.
As I have been reading both the book and Wikipedia, I have been writing down all equations I could, that I thought I could use. I have a file of equations that is 174 lines long now.
So, I will be continuing to read this book, and trying to understand these concepts better. I was not very strong in physics last year, as anyone who has been reading this blog knows (though that was probably partly because of all of the pictures and the failure of the department to help), but I am good at math, and really enjoy this subject. I think it is fascinating, so it is very worthwhile for me to research it like this.
I do want to get started on the game soon, though. After a while, purely theoretical study gets frustrating, and I just want to see something tangible.
On that front, I’ve been researching for BDD frameworks for .NET. That is an entirely different pursuit, though, deserving of its own blog post, especially once I come to a decision.
Until then, I would like to ask those who are reading, do you have any names in mind for such a game? As mentioned the other day, I just entered Flight Shooter on a whim, just to have a project name for Visual Studio. I even registered the domain before posting about it, in case I ever wanted to actually use that name.
So do you like that name, or do you recommend something else? Do you have any other suggestions for this game? Please let me know in the comments.
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