KitHack Model Club

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My first creation, the Hyper Text Glider, which sports two rockets on the wing for emergency thrust.

Kerbal Space Program creator Felipe “HarvesteR” Falanghe’s KitHack Model Club, previously known as Balsa Model Flight Simulator, has taken off from a grassy field on a beautiful sunny day.

I’ll be playing it fairly regularly to make things that fly, drive, and float live on Twitch, while keeping ongoing notes with thoughts about the game here. Links to past streams on my YouTube channel below:

HyperTextHero KitHack Model Club videos originally streamed on Twitch

Notes

Controls

Try to make the default in-flight keyboard and mouse control similar to War Thunder. I think this may already be possible, but I need to remap controls.

Physics

Consider adding collision modelling to ambient vehicles and to pedestrians and their hats and things they may carry like ice cream cones, beverage containers, and paper plates with french fries.

I want to make missions with objectives like “hit the annoying delivery van that always drives too fast in the neighborhood”, and “knock the ice cream cone from the rude customer’s hand onto the pavement”.

Audio

Sounds and soundscapes sound good. I love the sounds of crashes and pieces breaking off and of hitting foliage and other surfaces! Custom sounds for each type of collision really help the immersion. I like the sound of the wind.

Strange not to hear anything when you walk, as your avatar has no legs :)

Sound balance does need work. Given the loudness and high-picthed, treble rich nature of aero RC engines, some sort of automatic audo setting like [ ] Auto-reduce volume of loud engines in Vehicle View would be useful for when you change camera views from ground controller view to vehicle/chase view to avoid having to go to volume settings regularly. I’d keep the engine volume at or slightly above the wind volume, and would add a separate volume slider for vehicle weapons. This would also be very useful for streamers of the game.

My Current Volume Levels

World: 0 dB
Vehicles: -75 dB (air) 0dB (ground)
Environment: -60 dB
UI: 20 dB
Master: -30 dB

Consider also increasing the volume of, or having a dedicated volume slider for wheels touching surfaces. This can make landings and touchdowns feel more dramatic and rewarding.

You can build cars and boats as well as planes now, and there is a single, very large island with moving cars and others avatars.

It’s lovely to be able to build on tables in different parts of the landscape, outdoors, listening to the soundscapes.

Very good that you can quickly test what you are building at the location you are at with minimal load times after click “Go!”

The interface has quite learning curve. It’ll be easier for people with experience with 3D modelling and aerodynamics. The game is a teacher of the latter, I feel. Here is a video with good beginner tips from TrimBarkTree.

There’s 3D attitude indicator on the interface which activates when you have vehicle control.

Controller was (8BitDo Pro 2) was automatically identified and mapped. Good! I don’t have experience controlling RC (radio controlled) models, so maybe this is normal, but I found it weird to have roll mapped to Q/E and yaw to A/D on the keyboard (usually I am used to the opposite). No matter, you can change keybindings.

There is a very basic tutorial and then it’s up to you. For the release a more detailed tutorial would be nice, or maybe we’ll just need to RTFM for this one!

A series of missions including “glider golf” are available, and you can make your own.

Graphics look nice, with an old-school vibe.

There is multiplayer. Hope there is PvE and not PvP only!

The physics simulation seems very detailed, with weight, aerodynamics, suspension stiffness, and even internal “wobble” physics modelled. The “blue B” graph overlay thing is very helpful to have turned on while moving bits around to try and make a model airplane fly.

There are many parts like wings, control surfaces, motors, engines, ducted fans, batteries, rockets, paintball guns, and procedural parts that adjust shapes automatically like bulkheads. These can be combined to make custom imaginary vehicles or replicas of your favorite real life machines.

I love the names of places and things in the game. Wirraway Bay. Imaginative, humorous, and creative.

There is a scenario editor, and I think a world editor will be included as an SDK so we can make our own maps. Here’s a brief overview.

Excited about this one, as it gives me the feeling I had when playing with kites and a balsa model that I made with my dad when I was a kid in Brazil!

Abração!


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