Handling User Input - 3D Game Development Practical Introduction - page 112

2.7 Implementing flight simulation input system
Last input system I am going to discuss in this chapter is the flight simulation input system.
Surely, we are not going to implement a simulation of an airplane cockpit like what you
might have seen in Microsoft Flight Simulator , but it is rather a simple system like the one
you might have seen in some GTA series games. We are going to implement a flight jet
with wings, not a helicopter.
This type of input systems is relatively simple to program, since it depends completely on
rotations. Nevertheless, it might be hard to control for the players who are not used to this
type of games. In this section I am going to cover a single state, which is the continu-
ous flying of the plane. This means that taking off and landing are not going to be covered.
Additionally, we are going to assume a constant flying speed that cannot be changed by the
player. So let's at the beginning make a simple plane model like the one in Illustration 28
using cubes with varied sizes. These cubes are added as children to the plane body, so the
plane can move as one unit.