Goggles : a flash flight sim

Hello, Sorry to be pimping my own website in my first post, I realise its really bad nettiquette, but I figure most of you fellow flash coders and designers may be interested in my game:

http://www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html

It's a flash flight sim that loads in images from googlemaps. controls are arrow keys, spacebar to fire and a and z to chane speed. Its still work in progress but a few people have picked up on the link so I'm making it a bit public in an attempt to get a job!

Thanks for looking at it, I'd be happy to answer any technical questions about it (within reason! no 'give me your sourfce code' pm's please ;) )

Not asking for code, but assumed you used XML, right?

nice idea!

fixing the shadow so it appears smaller and further away from the plane according to it's altitude would dramatically improve the perception of height.

If you could combine this with up to date weather reports for the relevent map areas you could have real cloud cover/rain/snow etc. and alter the matrix value of the bitmaps to lighten or darken them accordingly!

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Originally Posted by mentuat

nice idea!

fixing the shadow so it appears smaller and further away from the plane according to it's altitude would dramatically improve the perception of height.

If you could combine this with up to date weather reports for the relevent map areas you could have real cloud cover/rain/snow etc. and alter the matrix value of the bitmaps to lighten or darken them accordingly!

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um. the shadow does change with height ;) it doesn't move too much, but does a bit (12 pixels in all) and gets more blurry and less opaque.

I'd considered doing a day and night thing on the maps based on the time in that part of the world but then thought 'meh'

You could just change the tint and make it darker....

aye, I was thinking more like this:

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g2...ane_shadow.jpg

to make it easier to know when you are about to hit the ground

I tried and tried to reach the edge of the map to no avail...does it just load more of it forever and ever?

could you make it so that you could choose anywhere to go, rather than a few preset options? I have a strange urge to fly over area 51...

This is dope. I'm totally excited to see the final version.
I agree with the captain--I'd love to be able to set the starting position, and/or have a zoomed out view somehow so it would be easier to get your bearings. I had a hell of a time getting my bearings over New York (although I did finally locate my house and crash into it!)

wheeeeee I can see my house from here

This is really cool! I like the way the plane behaves too
someone mentioned live updates, and if you want, I know you can use yahoo's live traffic report to plot locations of traffic warnings on the map. you can also use their geocoding service to convert addresses to long/lat

thats really nice. Cool idea, would love to see a dogfight over a famous city.

Very very cool, runs very well too. Great work.

Suggestion:

I don't know if google does it by hieght or has any height markers whatsoever, but it would be cool if you crash into things according to your height. Like you crash into skyscrapers in NY and stuff like that.

I saw this a day or so ago, flash culture have a link to it. It made me think of the red bull air races :D, but in famouse cities. Also has a gta feal to it, but in a plane and with no bounderies.

Can i ask, would it be possable to fly from say newyork to australia? I want to go flying over my home :D

Very cool, great idea and slick implementation, congrats! I'm amazed how well it runs, Google's servers manage to keep up nicely (I'm seeing an almost continuous 60KB/s datastream). I like how you scale both the ground and the plane when changing elevation. Is the plane pre-rendered or drawn with your own 3D engine? Couple of requests: it would be nice to be able to fly higher so you can see more of the surrounding area, and please add Los Angeles (if it isn't too much trouble).

it really does need a bigger window, but this would off course need more images to load and migth look a little shizen.

Is there a limit to how many images can be loaded at one time?

never used the google maps thing. If there isn't you could load a large area around the plane at start, load in the image data into a bitmap, record the image position, copy the pixels from that bitmap when needed.

So basically a bitmap is always being filled with new images and is grabbing images from the data

You should add in a compas. For directions :)

EDIT: Just thought about how stupid that would be considering how the map scrolls anyway. Ignore this whole post :p

i just like that i crashed into my house... very cool idea though... not much else to say...

added San Fran, so you can fly to LA from there. Will add LA in a bit.

Am trying not to kill googles servers, as they've been really cool about all this. so not adding more panes in.

Sydney's in there too now.

theres no way to detect height on map items without hand coding them, and I so can't be bothered.

Plane is pre rendered in a 3d app. I have a flash 3d wireframe renderer (on my portfolio) but CPUs aren't up to solid face on the fly shaded rendering. So its flick book stylee for now.

Some twat's nicked the games code, recompiled it and put it on his site. at least he left a link to me in there, but still, twat, obviously.

Would love to make an electroserver 2 player one, or sequential levels in various capital cities of the world, but just dont have time.

solved the memory issue, you can fly as long as you like now.

increased the shadow dsiplacement too, it should get smaller as the plane gets higher along with the ground, but its not going to be elegant to do that.

"but still, twat, obviously"

Mate, I've warmed to you instantly.

Is a very nice thing you've made too, pimped that around the office as soon as I saw it yesterday, good work.

Squize.

Someone emailed this around work this morning, great stuff!

I spent a good half hour trying to find our offices in farringdon so I could shoot them up.

I need to get out more.

Ohhh

Your using google servers eh

Luckily its google, so they won't mind

I think that if they have enough space to give 2GB webmail space for free, they won't mind this =)

I like the subtle improvements. something is weird with the shadow though: it should become smaller when the airplane goes higher up, not larger... I persume (at least it's like that where I live)

Great Job on this, really - u get innovation (and aviation :)) points

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Originally Posted by ozmic66

something is weird with the shadow though: it should become smaller when the airplane goes higher up, not larger

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That's what happen when you use the drop shadow :rolleyes:

Very interesting idea..., but where are the enemies????
;P

This is brilliant! Love the concept. Love the Execution. Love the fact that your great flash work is being appreciated via inboxes across the world!

real nice!

Congratulatios

This would be fantastic with multiplayer!

Thanks for the feedback guys! :)
It's not hosted on googles servers, it's on my own, but all the images come from Google. My app is small and I'm getting 4 hits a second and my bandwidth is hurting. I'm sure they have alot faster connections than I do, but still at 10k an image it's not going to be nice...I've been forced to use ads as the sites getting big hits: I'm using Google ads and trying to big em up everyway I can.

Would like to do a multiplayer with ElectroServer technologies, but I need to read through it a bit. any action multiplayer would pretty much have to be running on the ES for everyone to be viewing the same thing, and with the amount of hits I'm getting it'd cost me alot (ES hosting is charged by the number of users). Would be cool tho....

as for drop shadow I could just have a duplicate of the plane, thats hidden, but with a visible drop shadow, and make it smaller as the plane gets higher, but its not a nice way to do it..

I read somewhere that Yahoo! is pretty kind to developers that wants to mess around with their search results/images/and maps, and then found this:http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/flas...ngStarted.html .
I must admit:that's very kind.

Great game indeed! It inspired me so much so I tried my hand at one as well!
http://www.markfennell.com/flash/wings/

you fly as an eagle, thermalling etc etc.

(ps ISOMA I actually emailed you with some code so you can generate a keyhole string from a lat long zoom coordinate and allow hotlinking to any location in the world!)

Incredible find, Walnoot! Isoma, does Google do anything like that to make your life easier, or did you have to trace packets and stuff to figure out which images to load?

I'm not Isoma, but
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/

[offtopic]

And for other google API's:
http://code.google.com/

My favorite (nothing to do with maps) is
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/

I would really like to play around with a wikipedia API.

[/offtopic]

Works great for me! The only one thing you need to add is the enemies :)

#1 plane is a byplane and it's the size of a 747, I mean I blow up when I hit the ground right? But my plane is the size of 10 cars when I hit the ground.

#2 The google maps stuff to me is way played out, the graphics on those maps are horrible, nothing moves, the whole thing seems stale. And it makes your plane seem way out of place, at least use a 3ds plane that looks real and is scaled properly.

#3 Alot of bravos on this thread saying what a great job, but I don't see it, the only effort I see in this whole thing is the actual drawing of the plane which took all of 1 hour at the most I'm sure.

Sorry to be harsh, but Taking google ,aps and adding a giant by plane to it is not creative, original, or a game.

Everfornever... just moving a plane around some bitmaps is hardly something to be excited about, true. The thing we're impressed by is the fact that he's streaming those images from the Google server. The fact that this can be done points to many other exciting possibilities. For instance, people building houses in the place they live on the globe, and being able to put flags up outside those houses, with a message from them. Or maybe letting people pilot planes and fight in real-time to defend their homes from other people. Like the Battle for Britain recreated in Flash, but multiplayer.

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Originally Posted by everfornever

Sorry to be harsh, but Taking google ,aps and adding a giant by plane to it is not creative, original, or a game.

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*google hits on 'goggles flight sim':222.000
*10th place on most popular diggs this year at digg.com

just 2 numbers,
too bad you can't come up with something not-creative and unoriginal that's not enjoyable to play, can you?

walnoot that sounds like a straight direspectful post directed to bash me, not constructive, by any means, I have the right to my opinion, and I expressed it.

To be combative against me for expressing those opinons is wrong. I take your post a straight disrespectful slash at me personally.

And about your numbers, they mean nothing, as said by Ven X it is something that sparks curiosity, and although many people may look at it, it does not mean they are enjoying or playing it.

Maybie it's just me, but using google maps for this is something I have seen a billion times, and over used, and I have yet to see it done in a gameable way, and still lacks coding skill and artistic talent, or any creativity what so ever.

Sorry to have to sound like this but when you make a post that attacks me personally and my creativity I am forced to stand up for what I find creative and artistic.

edit: btw anyone can get google maps on there site, and use keys to move the map and zoom, just do a search for google map api. It takes about 30 seconds to set up, adding the plane takes about another 30 seconds. I have about 15 websites I Have done out there that all have google maps enbedded in there site, and use alot more suffisticated mapping than this, such as VEn mentioned about flag placing, text popup balloons, this stuff is all available trhough google, they have many tuts that show exactly how to use there maps.

On a side note, since your trying to establish my worth as your post sounds, I help out around here alot.

But as everyone one of the posts I have made and you have responded to have been uncunstructive, and unproductive, (now that I go back and read alot of them) it actually sounds like you think I am not on your level and talk to much, and therefore should not be around.

Maybie I'll take your advise and the advise of the mod's that have been through here the last few days and just move on down the road to a different forum community.

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yes, I did, it's terrible, I estimate the fps on my computer around 1 or 2. Change the screen size and cut the bitmap into pieces. I can't tell you at this moment what I think of it, because it's unplayable.

Something totally different: Could you talk alittle bit less? I'm member of the forum since one and a half year, check the site 2 or 3 times a day, and comment when I feel to. You're member since a month, and almost reach my amount of posts. I'm nobody here, but I feel the quality of "my number one knowledgebase" is going down, because of all your blabla. I'm sorry.

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are you talking bout that racegame, AGAIN ?

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But everfornever, Google's map API is written in JavaScript. Either there's an ActionScript version, too, or Isoma ported it to Flash by himself (although admittedly the languages are both based on ECMAScript and are therefore very similar).

This experiment doesn't 'lack coding skill', as you put it. It's fiendishly clever, and implemented seamlessly. Plus, an experiment like this doesn't NEED sophisticated mapping. It's meant to be a flight simulator, not a route-planner. :P

whatever, I'm taking walnoot's advice. see you guys some other time