Flight Mode

Overview

The instruments

The glareshield (along the top)

Knobs turn with the mouse wheel over them, or by clicking their left or right half; hold Shift for ten times as much. Hover anything on the deck for a tip.

The panel

The autopilot

Fly to a place

1. Sit in your plane or helicopter.
2. Click the flight computer’s screen (bottom right).
3. Type where to go as REGION/X/Y/Z and press Enter, for example Madrigal/128/128/60. Just Madrigal means 128/128/0, and a height of 0 means as low as is safe. The map shows a magenta line to it. Or pick a place on the World Map, then press <MAP DEST on the flight computer.
4. Set ALTITUDE (on the glareshield) to the height to cruise at.
5. Press CMD. It flies straight there: planes circle over the spot, helicopters hover on it.

With CMD on the autothrottle comes on too, so a plane holds its speed. With no destination it flies the heading it is on.

Taking off and landing by itself WolfViewer

• Take-off: press CMD with a plane on the ground and it takes off along the way it is pointing: it first says your engine command (when one is set), rolls at full power, rotates once it has the speed, climbs out with the gear up, then follows the route (or the heading) at your cruise height. If the roll goes wrong it stops on the runway and hands back to you.
• Landing: when your destination region has an airport on the Airports page, a plane flies to it, finds the runway, flies a 3 degree approach and lands.

The modes, in short

Your aircraft and scripts

Aircraft differ in which keys they use. Press CTL on the flight computer for the CONTROLS page; the keys beside each line change it.

To change a command, type it on the flight computer, then press the key beside GEAR CMD or ENGINE CMD (or beside CHANNEL for the channel). An empty command shows as dashes, and pressing the lever then posts “GEAR CMD NOT SET” instead of saying anything.

For aircraft makers

• Fly from the keys as usual: llTakeControls and a control() event. The arrows and W/S arrive as CONTROL_FWD / CONTROL_BACK, the turn keys as CONTROL_ROT_LEFT / CONTROL_ROT_RIGHT, Page Up / Page Down as CONTROL_UP / CONTROL_DOWN, and Shift+arrows as CONTROL_LEFT / CONTROL_RIGHT. The autopilot holds exactly those.
• The gear lever and the ENG button are chat from the pilot, on the channel the pilot set (0 by default), so listen for the pilot saying your command. Tell your pilots which commands and channel your aircraft uses so they can set them on the CONTROLS page.
• The auto take-off says the engine command before it rolls, and the gear command after lift-off.

// The gear and engine of an aircraft, answering Flight Mode's defaults:
// "g" and "start", said by the pilot on channel 0.
key pilot;
integer gearDown = TRUE;

default
{
    changed(integer change)
    {
        if (change & CHANGED_LINK)
        {
            pilot = llAvatarOnSitTarget();
            if (pilot != NULL_KEY) llListen(0, "", pilot, "");
        }
    }

    listen(integer channel, string name, key id, string message)
    {
        if (message == "g")
        {
            gearDown = !gearDown;
            // move your gear prims up or down here
        }
        else if (message == "start")
        {
            // start your engine here
        }
    }
}

A real aircraft would remove the old listen when the pilot changes and set a sit target in state_entry; this shows only the two commands.