Walk Around Outside the Aircraft

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I would love to see the option to get out of the plane and walk around with the pilot character. Would be great for inspections and RP. Other games like farming simulator have this function why not flight simulator?

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Use for pre-flight checklist.

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This would be cool to implement as another mode alongside cockpit, external and showcase; walk around mode. It would have camera bobbing, footstep noises, etc.

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Indeed-would love to be able to do this-almost like a avatar mode like Prepar3D has (lots of fun).

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Wouldn’t it be great to walk around your airplane to to the pre checks and walk on the Airport to explore like in a first person view. that would give a lot of immersion! Walking to your plane, open the door and things like this would be amazing. I think the drone thing cant give us the same immersion.
Is it realistic to get a tool like this? :thinking::slightly_smiling_face:

Greets to the comunity
Andre

12 Likes

Maybe somewhere far far down the line.

In principle at a basic level it would just be the existing drone camera fixed to ground level and set to a fixed movement speed. The extra work would be the collision physics, which doesn’t seem enabled for even aircraft at ground level at the moment , and any desired interaction with the aircraft. Simple entry and exit out of the plane would just utilise existing camera views, but authentic pre-flight checks for each aircraft would take some work I imagine.

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First, I KNOW this is a FLIGHT SIM and would never recommend it to become GTA or similar. Flying planes is first and foremost. 100%

That said…

We already have little characters sitting in the planes, and standing around at airports… just make it so you can exit the plane as a little person and walk over to the building to hang out with other pilots. Control would be so basic, like the DRONE. So these things already exist in the game programming.
The whole Earth is here. This could be THE social gathering sim/game for pilots and flight fans. I’m sure most are already TALKING live on dischord etc…

Someone else had mentioned getting in vehicles and driving about. That could be great too.

And/or, open plane and jump out: skydive!

Is anyone else interested in these future possibilities? or just me?

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In most flight sims it is possible to walk around the plane and also open doors and lower stairs etc.

I assume this will be possible at some point, especially with addon planes. Right now you can already enable drone camera and move around which is already halfway to your proposed features.

I am very interested and ask for the same thing in another post! :hugs:

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Not really. P3D alrady had soem walk-arounds and drivable vehicles, but they were pretty much just mods to the airplane model. Not really fun at all, IMHO, and having drone camera pretty much gets rid of what I ever used them for.

Probably for driving, shift to a driving game or for walking shift to something that’s made for that.

When A2A releases planes for MSFS, you’ll be able to do a walkaround of your plane to check fluids, fuel, hinges, etc. Just not with an avatar.

But really, this is a flight simulator, not Second Life.

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Very interested! How about a coffee in the terminal? :grinning: P3D does it, it’s called avatar mode.

Every fligth sim has approached this a little differently.

In DCS for example you can actually walk and see you pilot move, but it is very clunky because the pilot moves like an airplane and turns with a literal “yaw” axis. In X-Plane you can move within the cabin, but have no way to increase the movement speed, so it is absolutely painful.

FS so far has a drone camer that can move anywhere quite conveniently, but it is not very good for moving inside the airplane. I would wish they enable this for the larger GA planes like the Caravan or King Air, but as long as the airliners like the Airbus have no 3D-modelled cabin, there is little point in discussing this.

I also assume by the time there are 100$ addon planes this issue will have been solved and you will be able to move freely inside the cabin. Hopefully even with real passengers because the default 3D avatars look already â– â– â– â–  nice, they just get disabled inside the cockpit. I already made a screenshot how it could eventually look like:

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from the programming perspective, I’m thinking NOTHING fancy at all: just have standing avatar characters that simply SLIDE to move, not even animate. Just move around FPS like or exactly with the Drone.

when the game wants to start rolling in money, sell avatar customizations (I am personally not into that, but it seems to make a ton of money elsewhere) customizable jackets, caps, eye wear etc…

again, I KNOW this is a FLIGHT SIM, and get that.

I don’t think that it’s a lot of work to integrate such a capability. An avatar mode would make sense on all fronts. Pre-flights, sightseeing of add-on scenery, checking out airport buildings etc…

Drone camera, set zoom to 65%, set speed to .8 (brisk walk) and then move to your camera to your desired height off the ground. You are now walking. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring this way. Especially for Orbx Santa Barbara.

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On a basic level not at all. I could even see a third party implementing this using the existing drone camera functionality.

But getting something that feels even slightly close to an actual human walking around is a A LOT of work: inertia, friction, step size, gravity, head movement, etc.

For walk around preflight inspections, the other thing to consider is getting your head into unusual positions. On the 172 imagine the functionality your character needs to have in order to: climb up on the cowling step and wing spar to check the fuel caps, get underneath the belly, stoop down to look inside the cowling inlets or at the elevator, or get underneath the wing and work the fuel sump.

Using the drone camera lets you do all of that and without implementing complex character movements that may need more functionality than you commonly get in the latest first person shooter or character driven GTA style game. The fix here might just be better camera controls and ad campaigns on feature usage. It takes too long to setup and figure out how to use this thing, and that’s holding a lot of people back.

Agreed. Don’t change much in the game at all, just slight enhancement of the tools already existing. I would LOVE to stand in the middle of the parking lot with friends, talking the talk before we take to the air… waiting while the new people configure their graphics, and controllers… discussing the flight plan.
Invisible drones are not the same.

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I too would like to customize an avatar for movement - mainly outside the aircraft. Its control could be contextual too. I mean, when you exit the aircraft the game standard w a s d keys get mapped for movement, along with the mouse.

Eventually, once the flight simulator gets the features and fixes it needs, it would be great to be able to have a “clubhouse,” at airports. There are already lots of groups flying together. They could meet up first that way. Of course with built in, distance sensitive voice chat.

I can dream right?

2 Likes