Wouldn’t it be great if you always had a parachute with you and could, for example, land on a mountain with a helicopter, get out and then race down in a wingsuit?
Or switch on the autopilot from a suitable aircraft and then just jump out? Maybe some kind of mini-game where you have to land on a randomly generated target?
It’s all just an idea, I know that parachutes can be seen in the trailer for the new 2024 flight simulator but I think it would be great if you always had one with you!
As I like the concept of jumping out of a plane to land somewhere with a chute, I did it myself once, I don’t think this kind of activity will make it’s way to the sim.
FlightSimulator is the program where flight is being simulated.
So jumping out of an airworthy vehicle stands perpendicular to the purpose of this beautiful sim.
This would be more suitable for a new title like,
Skydive simulator. With all respect.
The JW1 jetpack includes a full deployable and controllable parachute. It’s fun.
I wouldn’t want it all of the time, but if you’re in a skydive plane then why not? Let the AI fly the plane away, it already does that for glider tow planes.
Given skydiving missions have been teased for 2024, why not have one player as pilot and (Grand Caravan) up to 18 players as skydivers? I’d love to do that from time to time.
Let 1 be a pilot and the rest of it be passengers with a parachute.
The combination of two fun activities.
I really can see the fun in this, rather than just dive solo, that I was assuming this was the OP’s idea.
But to make this work, we need to think of a way to challenge both the pilot and the skydiving aspect.
And then, what to do after the skydivers have landed?
Things that I think of that needs to be implemented:
Walking
Parachute behavior and flight model
A human body flight model
Skydive challenges - formation
- landing target
Gameplay loop.
I am not a developer, but I think this will be a major task.
This could be a fun future project for sure, if there are enough people to work on it.
For now I am happy to see the team work on stability and performance of the core sim.
for 1st person POV, I’d say if the drone stopped drifting, that might work already
That’s the thing I fear most as being the showstopper.
There are many disciplines. Relative Work, Freefly, Canopy relative, Swooping, Target landing. One could add objects to interact with - think of the video clip for Laid Back’s Bakerman… Or have multiple planes in order to do a massive formation… just leaving that snapshot here from Klatovy (August 2016):
why not? It´s also an aspect of flying! Open the Canopy then flying and landing. Also Basejumping with pursuitwings is flying. It should find it´s way into a flightsim. Of course the physics to simulate are strange and chaotic (opening phase) but that should be the incentive!
The saying is that you should never jump out of a well functioning aircraft.
But… it’s just a saying.
In person I did the course years ago and I loved the thrill.
In the longer run it turned out to be a bit too expensive for me at the time and I quit.
Happy
The more I jumped, the scarier it got, so I also quit.
I would love to do this in Flight Simulator though, and FS24 seems like a natural fit. It already has soft-body/cloth simulation for an animated and realistic canopy opening, and being able to skim the walls of the new TIN Grand Canyon while trying to hit a certain landing target would be amazing. I know you can fly jumpers in missions, but can you actually jump yourself?
Even when flying solo, jumping doesn’t have to mean crashing the aircraft. An AI autopilot could resume control of the aircraft and it would simply fly off while you do your jump. Jumping out of the new blimp or hot air balloon from scenic locations would also be incredible. Ie park that blimp over the eiffel tower and then land at the base after doing a few circles around it on the way down.
