- Riding back and forth in one place (a halfpipe, a bowl, laps of a spot) is filmed from a spot
off to the side, high enough for the airs, instead of chasing each turn; riding off or no turn
back for a few seconds goes back to following.
- It looks along where it flies and slows in time to stop short of a wall, sliding along it;
short probes push it off anything close and keep it from climbing into a ceiling. A spot behind
the skater that is inside a wall comes in to this side of it.
- It keeps its clearance over the ground under it and just ahead of it, climbing as fast as a rise
needs, and only sinks slowly near the ground whatever its spot asks.
- FOLLOW ME has Follow distance (3-12 m) and Aggressiveness (0-1, how quickly the pilot reacts,
how hard it leans, closes gaps and turns); the middle is the tuning it had. Also dronetune
followdistance / followaggression.
- Tests: a halfpipe session, turning round at a wall, a slope and a spot under the ground, and the
settings' middle being the usual tuning.
An autopilot flies the real flight model behind the skater while they skate: it
works the sticks a pilot would (angle mode with height hold), reacts a moment late,
eases toward the lie of the ground instead of every ollie, closes gaps no faster than
it can slow down gently, and climbs a little over what blocks the shot. Its camera
sits on a tilt gimbal so leaning to speed up or brake keeps the skater in frame.
Started from FOLLOW ME on the DRONE page or the dronefollow command; it hides the
game's interface like Start flying does. Tests cover straight, turns, hard stops,
ollies and catching up.
Gamepad: the drone flies with a gamepad by default (Xbox or PlayStation,
read directly; with none plugged in, the keyboard and mouse fly it), Mode
2. Its throttle stick springs back and its middle is hover power, so a
resting stick no longer means 50% throttle; the sticks are scaled down
(60%, which in angle mode slows turning only), softened in the middle and
given a round dead zone, and the right stick is inverted by default (up
tips the nose up; padinvert 0 for a radio's way). A arms and disarms, Menu
puts the drone back; while the ReSkate menu is open the pad is the menu's
and the drone holds still. An RC radio is still a choice.
Height hold is a toggle (off by default): the middle of a springing
throttle holds the height, adding throttle as the drone leans; partway it
climbs at the climb speed (20 m/s), and full stick is always full or no
throttle. Angle (self-levelling) mode, leaning 55 degrees, joins acro.
Flight: thrust grows with motor output to the power 1.5, so the hover
throttle sets thrust to weight (22% is about 10:1); the motors spool up
and down and the turn rates catch up with the sticks in about 30 ms.
Drag is quadratic and larger across the props, set by the top speed
setting so flat out settles near it (no more hard cap); inflow, ground
effect and prop wash. Defaults: gravity 9.81, camera tilt 0; the drone
starts level.
Crashes: collisions sweep to the surface met, find its normal with two
more rays, and slide along it; hard hits bounce and tumble the drone,
and one at the crash speed (7 m/s) cuts the motors until it is armed
again, with a warning and a broken-up picture.
- overlay.h: the gamepad reader is declared in the overlay namespace,
where it is defined; nothing could call it before.
- Tests (drone_flight_tests): hover and height hold, full stick past the
hold, thrust, motor and rate lag, top speed, angle mode, wall crash and
re-arm, crashes off, a gentle landing, and the gamepad's sticks.
An FPV drone flown from the free camera: real quad physics (thrust,
gravity, drag, Betaflight "Actual" rates), collisions with the world, and
a goggle-style display. Open it with `dronemenu` (or the drone window's
Start flying).
Flying
- Keyboard and mouse, gamepads, or USB RC radios (EdgeTX etc. in Joystick
mode). "Set up controller" learns each stick and switch by asking for
one at a time, reversed axes and springing gamepad throttles included.
While a controller flies the drone, the game is kept off it, as
freecam's controller mode does.
- Presets (Tinywhoop, Toothpick, 5 inch), arm/disarm, back to takeoff,
and every setting live through `dronetune`, saved in the profile.
- Optional range: the picture breaks up and is lost with distance from
the takeoff point; past it, failsafe cuts the motors.
- OSD, on-screen sticks, an analogue video look, synthesised motor sound.
- Goggles: the pilot's skater wears eyewear from the game's catalog while
flying, and gets their own back on landing (Road Rash aware).
- Start flying hides the game UI, Stop flying brings it back.
Multiplayer
- New packet `drone` (36): where a player's drone is and which way it
faces, 15 times a second, unreliable, relayed like effects. Markers
glide between updates. Protocol version 52.
- FLYING DRONE above the name of a player who is flying.
- Players choose whether to share their drone and whether to see others'.
- Dedicated servers: `sync_drones` (players section) and `drones on|off`.
Off: no drone packets are relayed, and players are told in the roster.
Changes to existing code
- `flyspeed` takes any speed from 0.6 to 1500, not only the seven listed
(the drone's presets and top speed slider use speeds of their own).
- Overlay: begin/end_input_access, so the drone's controller read sees
the device while the game is kept off it.
- Profile: local_surface_hit, the park editor's ray from one point to
another, for the drone's collisions.
Tests: Skater/Test/drone_radio_tests (controller setup), and the drone
packet and roster rule in Multiplayer/Test/protocol_tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MArBL6UbYZPsp9rMnq2Ks5
With the game's Camera height control on (Gameplay > Advanced Camera),
R3 on the board switches between the high and the low camera by writing
the opposite of the UseHighCam option. A new switch in SKATER > CAMERA >
FIRST PERSON, "First person in the camera cycle" (off by default), makes
it high -> low -> first person -> high.
- The existing native option hook passes UseHighCam writes to a
listener, so the settings code does not depend on the skater code
- Low -> first person keeps the low camera and turns first person on;
first person -> high turns it off and keeps the high camera
- First person is switched through the menu toggle's own action on the
next client tick, so the player's first-person settings apply as
they are; it only starts on the board, outside Freecam, Noclip and
the Park Editor
- Saved as FirstPerson.CameraCycle; Reset arm settings keeps it
- Add a ctest (first_person_cycle) for the cycle's steps
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
First person copied the head bone's full rotation into the camera, so every
nod, tilt and wobble of the skater's animation shook the view.
True first person (on by default) splits the head into heading, nod and tilt.
The heading is followed in full; a share of the nod (86%) and of the tilt (0%,
a level horizon) is kept. All three pass a One Euro filter: heavy smoothing
while the head barely moves, little lag in spins (a 720 stays within about
10 degrees). The eye's movement around the body is filtered the same way, and
Head bob sets how much of it is kept. Upside down (flips, bails) the view
blends back to the real head unless Follow flips is off. It runs before the
existing spring arm, which is unchanged; switching it off gives the plain
head camera back exactly.
Third person on foot (off by default) hands the camera back to the game while
the physics state is Offboard (504) and takes it again on the board, through
the same actions as the menu toggle. It only runs while first person is on or
paused by it, and the player's own toggle, Freecam or the Park Editor end it.
New settings are saved with the other FirstPerson.* choices.
Engine/Game/Skater/Test/first_person_stabilize_tests.cpp covers the math.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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