 SSS or Slope Soaring Simulator is an open-source flight simulator written by Danny Chapman with an emphasis on slope-soaring, and currently a bias towards simulation of radio-controlled gliders. The sim main site is here. Download SSS here; another version with three "skybox" terrains available here. You can visit the SSS Yahoo group here. |
Software features
- Very realistic aerodynamics. Dave learnt to fly radio-controlled gliders using this simulator!
- Fly against "robot" pilots that attempt to stay aloft, chase you, and fire missiles at you.
- Race/combat/free-fly modes
- Basic networking - currently between two simulations (peer-peer).
- Collisions between gliders and other objects (mainly each other, missiles and the ground).
- Wind field is precalculated using a (3rd party) numerical simulation of airflow over the terrain, or can be generated on the fly (as can the terrain), including effects such as thermals and boundary layers.
- OpenGL is used for the 3D graphics. FMOD for 3D sound.
- Terrain is simplified using the Lindstrom/Pascucci (2001) view-dependant level-of-detail algorithm with geo-morphing and view-frustrum culling. This allows large and/or detailed terrains.
- Quite a few things are modifiable at run-time via a GUI, and almost everything is modifiable via text configuration files.
- Compiles and runs under Windows, Linux and Solaris and Mac OS X.
SSS Installation for Windows:
- Download the latest Windows binary package here, or a version with more terrains here; both of these are zipped (.zip) archive. It is recommended for you to join the Yahoo discussion group for any latest files.
- Extract the zip file to some location; such as c:\sss.
- To Start the program, browse the the extracted folder and locate sss.exe; double click sss.exe to run. By default, SSS will use the sss.cfg configuration file (a text file, use notepad to edit if necessary). You can run other configurations by running the batch files located inside the .\batch_files sub-folder
- Once the program is started (a command line interface, or a "dos box"), choose the game mode "2" (normal: just mooch around; and 0 robot gliders (for now).
