Drone It

Project Type: School project Project Duration: 6 months Team size: 5
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Project Information

Drone It is a VLOS (visual line of sight) drone simulator created to solve a common problem: limited class time, shared equipment and unpredictable weather. Created for our client from Noorderpoort, it offers the students a gamified way to practice outside of school hours.

Unlike standard first-person simulators, Drone It mimics real life piloting by forcing the player to keep eyes on the drone from a distance. The simulator features three main modes:

  • The Hangar: Tutorial pattern exercises and free-roam tracks for control practice.
  • Outside: Bigger flying area were wind can be turned on.
  • The Hub: The Hub: The lounge that connect outside with the hangar. But also a place were a workbench for swapping different drone components is.

It supports both standard gaming controllers and real drone controllers, to keep the experience open to every student!

Project Screenshot 1

My Contributions

Programming

  • Made all the tutorials for the drone, plus a way to play them in order or to pick one on its own.
  • Built a system to choose different layouts to fly around in the hangar.
  • Made sure all the buttons and screens worked with everything in the game.
  • Built a universal interaction system.
  • Created all the in-game menus.
  • Made it easy to switch between playing as the person on foot and flying the drone.
  • Created the player & camera movement.
  • Added a camera zoom in and out feature for flying the drone.
  • Added an option to turn tutorial on or off.
Click here to see Code, Challenges & Implementations

UI Design

  • Designed the UI layout for the tutorials/layouts menu.
  • Created the flying UI that shows helpful information to the player like battery, signal strength, altitude, speed, controller stick movement and drone damage.
  • Made the instruction UI for when players do a tutorial (like tips and which controls are locked).
  • Designed the main menu, credits menu and pause menu.
Click here to see the UI designs

Special Thanks

A lot of the work showcased above was a team effort and for that I'd like to thank everyone at Knakworst Studio (our project group name) and our client from Noorderpoort!