After their big announcement during FlightSimExpo 2019, the team behind TheSkyPark have been very quiet continuing development on the product. Keven Ménard, Creative Director of Parallel 42 has since written a new blog post on their portal page detailing a few new things about autonomous vehicles and persistent objects.
Starting off with autonomous vehicles, the team is said to have spent a great deal of time developing algorithms to move vehicles around the airport. The idea is to create animation and immersion to each airport in the simulator, bringing payload items directly to your aircraft. Using the built-in Manifest app, you can then load these objects straight into your aircraft ready for your next mission.
The information was accompanied by a variety of smaller details showcasing the work and experimentation that took place to get everything working to the point it’s currently in now (see the video above). In summary, each airport is broken down into different nodes across the airport and the system will then calculate the shortest distance to your aircraft.
The second point of interest in the blog post is surrounding persistent objects. This was focused during the FlightSimExpo 2019 presentation, but Keven goes into a bit more detail this time around and goes beyond a simple wooden box.
The persistent object element of The SkyPark enables missions and adventures to be visible by all in the simulator using TheSkyPark. The team therefore had to create a tool in which they could generate thousands of objects in the simulator. The blog post shows some of that background work into how it all comes together to create a unique environment. You can find out some of the more technical elements in the blog posts, but what we learned from it is that there are going to be a range of objects that can be injected and they each carry their own physics attributes. Furthermore, to prevent objects looking like they were placed by robots, each object is angled or rotated differently compared to the last.
As development continues, we’ll be sure to keep our eye on the portal for any new information.
TheSkyPark from Parallel 42 is due to launch this Summer via Orbx.