Basic aircraft physics

How complicated do you want to get?

At its (very) simplest, I'd have four vectors: a constant one for gravity pointing straight down, one perpendicular to the wings for lift, one parallel to the direction of flight for thrust, and an inverse one for drag. Adding these four vectors together should give you an overall direction vector that the airplane moves.

I'll give you an idea of how complex the game is. It's nothing more than some basic flying around, not really a simulator. Have you ever played Mars Explorer? It's no more complex than that. If you have any more advice, it would be greatly appreciated, but what you have written does help. If you could just explain that a bit more, that would be helpful. Thanks!

EDIT: If you could explain the lift and drag concepts a bit more, that would be greatly appreciated!

[Edited by - kryotech on June 14, 2010 7:09:54 PM]

Alright, so I took the advice mentioned earlier, but I can't figure out how to calculate the components for the vectors. All I have is a magnitude for thrust, drag, lift, and gravity. How do I calculate the components for the vectors?

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All I have is a magnitude for thrust, drag, lift, and gravity. How do I calculate the components for the vectors?

Are you asking how to compute the directions for these four vectors:

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Original post by poss74 a constant one for gravity pointing straight down, one perpendicular to the wings for lift, one parallel to the direction of flight for thrust, and an inverse one for drag

?

[Edited by - jyk on June 15, 2010 3:59:49 PM]

I'm asking how I compute the x,y, and z components of these vectors.

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Original post by kryotech EDIT: If you could explain the lift and drag concepts a bit more, that would be greatly appreciated!

When a shape passes through air it pushes the air out of the way to move through that space. This is drag.

For air plane wings the two most important factors in lift are shape and angle of attack. Now as the wing passes through the air it pushes the air under the wing down like a fan blade this creates pressure that pushes the wing up. The on the back side of the wing there is less air than there used to be (because the wing just pushed it out of the way) this causes a vacuum which pulls up on the wing. These two forces combined are known as lift.

Drag and lift are directly determined by the air speed of the aircraft(air speed is speed relative to the air around the plane) If I were you I would make stuff up, though reading a mechanical engineering book on aircraft design could be most enlightening.

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I'm asking how I compute the x,y, and z components of these vectors.

lift is always vertical to the plane, gravity is always down irrespective of plane orientation, thrust is always out the back of the plane(unless you make harriers ) drag is like friction it is always opposite the direction the plane is moving.

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I'm asking how I compute the x,y, and z components of these vectors.

The gravity vector should be easy; it'll most likely be a + or - cardinal axis (e.g. y or z).

The rest of the vectors are dependent on the orientation of the plane. Whatever representation you're using for the orientation (e.g. matrix, quaternion, etc.), the first step is to get the orientation into matrix form. The rows or columns of the matrix (depending on convention) will be the local direction vectors for the plane. Presumably, you'll want to use the local 'up' vector for the force perpendicular to the wings, the local 'forward' vector for thrust, and the negative of the forward vector for drag.