When you first join Avionic by BuilderAtWork, the chats you see are much more professional than what you probably expect from a multiplayer game. The majority of the people inside the game are communicating simple orders with one another. “Clear for takeoff.” “Lining up on runway.” “Landing in TNCM.” Not your typical ROBLOX chatter–though this isn’t your typical ROBLOX game. This is a full-blown flight simulation in a massive 3D world.
This is BuilderAtWork’s grand design–one that represents the accumulation of his years spent on ROBLOX designing different types of simulations. He’s only been working on this particular project for a month, and the game has already garnered a huge following. Because Avionic is still a work in progress, it’s not always open. Players wait patiently for the game to open just to experience the rush of taking a plane into the sky, as well as the equally difficult (if not moreso) task of actually landing it hundreds of miles away.
There are so many unique sounds in Avionic. You even hear the tires of the plane make contact with the tarmac.
Again, this isn’t your typical ROBLOX affair. Don’t expect to join this game, hop in a plane and get to flying. This is a simulation, and the learning curve reflects that. Once you spawn one of the several planes available to you and board up, hop in and a complex interface will appear on your screen. This is where you prepare your plane for flight–turn on the engine, toggle your lights (if it’s dark or rainy out), and monitor the type of weather you’ll be flying into. It’s refreshing to see a ROBLOX “game” so centered on realism.
Lights up, engines #1 and #2 a go, clear for takeoff.
The “game” is one of precision. Taking off requires a lot of patience and practice. First of all, these planes are heavy. Like real life, you’ve got to find a strip of land where you can generate enough forward motion to achieve lift. Adjust the angle of your flaps to help with this. You control your plane’s throttle with the directional keys, and the direction the plane faces with your mouse.
Hearing these planes roar to life is exhilarating, and hearing their engines gradually rise in volume really brings you into the realism of the game. BuilderAtWork tells me that custom sounds motivated him to begin piecing this game together. His method for achieving such reactive and smooth sounds is innovative.
When you’re flying high the engines roar.
“I stitch my sounds together in 0.1 second increments,” he tells me. “If you reduce the time between each sound that gets played, they transition into each other much more smoothly. The sounds are constantly shifting based on the commands that you hit. So when your throttle is up, your engine thrust increases, meaning the sound does too. It’s all little pieces stitched together.”
The planes themselves are highly realistic recreations of real life planes. They vary in size, engine power, weight (which is an extremely important factor that we’re going to touch on a bit later) and features. Having been a lifelong aviation aficionado, BuilderAtWork understands the various types of plane engines, and uses pictures and decals to model them realistically.
“Scripting the planes is the most challenging aspect, because each plane has differing physics,” he tells me. “Some planes are heavy, some are light. I have to make sure that each plane I create can actually take off safely regardless of their weight. The weight of each plane is dependent on the size of the parts that create it.”
“There is a very specific tradition I have for the construction of each plane,” he adds.
He goes on to tell me that every time he builds a new plane, he opens his game and has fans watch him fly it. He then asks them for feedback from a spectator’s point of view.
“A lot of times they’ll inform me that maybe the engines need more power, or the nose of the plane has to be edited slightly,” he says. “A lot of times they record the flight and put it on YouTube, so I can use their videos to see what needs to be edited with my own eyes.”
You can fly the planes between four airports throughout the massive map–each with its own environmental theme. There’s a desolate desert hangar covered in red rocks and dry vegetation, a lush tropical hangar by the ocean with green foliage and ocean-side huts, and more. The weather dynamically shifts too, and BuilderAtWork has very specific plans about how weather will affect the overall experience of the game.
Last time I was visiting, the skies turned gray and it started raining (and I could hear the rain drops!).
“When I finish developing the weather system I’m going to implement strong winds and stormy weather that will affect how you fly. This will force pilots to think about whether or not to fly through a storm, or wait it out.”
BuilderAtWork has tons of plans for Avionic–he is constantly updating the map with new airports, planes, and other cosmetic touches. His fan group is growing, as more and more users start to catch wind of what he’s trying to do. You can join it to keep tabs on all new announcements and provide feedback. When it’s all said and done, BuilderAtWork is hoping to have constructed an entire world you can discover–each island will have its own airport where you can land and have a look around. When you’re finished, jump back into one of 40 (!!!) planes he’s hoping to make available, each with their own unique sounds and physical attributes, and continue exploring!
“In the end, I want to make the most detailed and realistic simulator on ROBLOX. I want this to be the go-to place for any fan of aviation.”
He’s off to a heck of a start.