Helicopter

[Sammy6200]

I am trying to make a little helicopter simulator.

I want to apply realistic physics ..

 

I just need some advice.

 

When creating a helicopter, should it consist of multiple bodies and should these be connected with pivots or what?

The thrust from the rotors should only effect the roters so they drag the aircraft to get a realistic effect.

 

Hope you know what i mean, i just need to know how to start constructing it, how to structure it and so on.

[Flexman]

I don't think Newton physics will give you the results you want. You can get a basic approximation but what I found with Newton is that composite bodies don't work well together. Fixed joints lag behind the main body at high speed, ugh, bit of a mess. An early experiment I tried had a rotor disc as a static body on which I calculated lift and thrust, what would happen was it would react with the hull and cause all manner of unstable movements at various velocities.

 

I would suggest keeping it simple or add your own physics, you can patch that into your model using an update callback which is what I ended up doing with a very sophisticated mini-physics engine dedicated to the purpose, and it's still not working properly.

 

If someone can fix or find a workaround for composites with Newton then your proposed method might be workable. The concept is sound but actually implementing it never worked for me.

[flachdrache]

Hmmm, magnetism comes to mind - scale velocity towards bodys. Iam in doubt with searching for just "quaternion camera" .. but it might gives a better idea. Report back if you find something about using the xbox360 controller for this if you dont mind - iam completely lost on that part.