Flight - anyone successful?

gcewing on 2009/09/09 05:59

Has anyone successfully played Flight? I can't seem to stay in the air long enough to reach the first thermal, no matter what I do. Also, the slightest attempt at steering sends me into wild gyrations from which it's impossible to recover.

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ServalKatze on 2009/09/09 09:24:

I played through it but it took some tries. When the game starts, I swing back and then (slowly?) forward to fly towards the first thermal. And you need to steer very, very carefully..

kent_turbo on 2009/09/09 11:38:

Actually, I tried to time hints to the moment when flyer has catched the wind and is controllable. I played and it seems they are a bit early, but only by a tiny bit. By the time the last one appears on the screen, you can just push the down key to level the flyer. It's pretty stable when flying forward, but can swing wildly when stalling (which is how you start).

gcewing on 2009/09/12 08:12:

Hmmm, so it appears you have to let yourself plummet until exactly the right moment -- that's not very intuitive. I think you'll have to do something to make the initial stages easier, otherwise new players are going to fall into the water a dozen times and then give up.

Also when I got to the thermal, I seemed to get stuck in it somehow, so I was just hovering there without making any forward progress. I found I had to nose down fairly sharply for a short time to pick up some speed -- again something that's not very intuitive when you're trying not to lose altitude.

Another problem is that there's no way of judging your airspeed, so it's hard to tell when you're in danger of stalling until it's too late. Maybe there could be a rushing wind noise that varies in volume to give an indication of your speed.

kent_turbo on 2009/09/12 08:58:

Sure, the game turned out to be packed with counter-intuitive things. Falling face down provided proved to be much less dramatic, so the only way to aid players in this situation would be more hints. Maybe some message after they pluck into the water for the first time. Or maybe a different wind sound, when the flyer is on the wind.

When I first got to thermal myself, I was confused myself at how flyer was behaving in the strong upward stream. Since the game is a simulation and all it does is just applying a few equations from wikipedia to get lift and drag forces, that is not easy to change. I thought that learning how to control feather and how to use thermals could be part of the fun, couldn't it? Besides, there's not much else to do in the game right now. :)
 
There is actually wind with varying volume, strange you've missed it. The music softens when the game start to add some room for the wind, but maybe that wasn't soft enough.

gcewing on 2009/09/12 10:59:

There is actually wind with varying volume, strange you've missed it.

Now that I'm listening for it, yes, you're right. I think I missed it because it sounds more like water than wind to me, and when it got quieter I thought it was just because I was further away from the water. If it could be made to sound more wind-like somehow it might help.

Another idea for airspeed indication -- an over-the-shoulder view of the pilot with his hair flapping in the wind.

Anyhow, I'll be looking forward to a Pyggy version -- it shows a lot of promise!