DVR Simulator 0.30 progress report

Hello everyone,

The next update of DVR Simulator is coming in few days, it was planned for this week, but I had to wait because I made so many changes, that I have to test it correctly. You read it well, MANY CHANGES. So what's news?

Improved drag calculation

I spend a lot of time playing Liftoff, which is for me, the best FPV simulator. Why can I spend hours in Liftoff and not in DVR Simulator? (Note that I spend many hours in DVR Simulator, mainly on Xbox One :) ). Because the drag calculation is not correct. The bad behaviour is that when you increase the throttle, the drone will go up and forward, but it's too slow. You've to use a very important angle to get speed. This is not the case with real racers and it's not the case in Liftoff. The previous drag formula was : Drag = Speed * DragIncreaseFactor. It's a simplification of the real drag formula, which is :

The new drag formula takes into account the angle of attack (drone's orientation). The behaviour is still not perfect, BUT it's much better, and more close the reality. It's not perfect because I only use the forward axis and I've to also use the right axis.

The drone editor have new entry

• Minimum and maximum drag: That way, you can control how the drone is slowed by the air
• Maximum Speed: It's NOT guaranteed that the max speed will be exactly the provided value, but it'll do its best
• Use real drag formula, which use the standard atmospheric values

Improved navigation of all menus with 100% gamepad compatibilty

This is something required by Steam and Xbox (One|Series) and in fact, it's better now, because it's clean. Actions can be triggered using gamepad's buttons, like any games on a console.

The multiplayer is directly integrated to the game menu, so it's easy and quick to create and join a session. The multiplayer feature is not yet perfect so it's still disabled for the Racing mode. I'll reactive it when switching to the new network framework, Photon Fusion. But it is for an upcoming update.

Added Ready Player Me avatars

Multiplayer is a thing, VR is a thing so... avatars are very welcomed to enter the Metaverse :) In an upcoming update you'll be able to use your own avatar created on the Ready Player Me website. It's free and you can use it in a lot of apps, including VR Chat, Mozilla Hub, etc.).

The plan is to add a first person controller, to change your point of view when piloting in non FPV view.

Helicopter mode in preview

The helicopter mode is now in preview mode. It's not as good as a "real" helicopter simulator, but it's good enough for some kind of training. The helicopter editor allows you to change many parameters, such as drag, motor power, governor values, etc.. There are three helicopters that you can use in FPV or Third person view.

Remaining tasks before release

• Tweak all drones with the new drag formula => 20%
• Tweak the easy mode => 0%
• Finish the new collision system => 20%
• Add some images of controls => 0%

As you can see, those tasks are not complicated, but it takes time... I'll do my best to release a beta next week!

Fly safe and thanks again for you support,

Yannick.