Show HN: Droneski, an FPV drone ski camera simulator

by ImJasonH • 5 months ago

2 2 5 months ago

One of my favorite things about watching the Olympics this year has been the usage of FPV drones during downhill events.

The skill on display to maneuver the drone, keep the subject in frame, and keep it cinematic was almost as impressive as the athletes themselves, and added a lot to the immersiveness of the events.

So Claude and I hacked up a simulator this morning. My kids love it!

https://imjasonh.github.io/droneski/

kantord• 5 months ago

that was actually a lot of fun. I think it has the potential to grow into a bigger game.

Bug Tux Racer vibes btw! I think adding some music and perhaps snowfall could make it even more immersive

edit: and i think you could easily make it feel more detailed by adding a texture for the snow,and increasing the resolution of nearby terrain by modulating it with some precomputed fractalized perlin noise. So basically "free" detail that only exists in the rendering logic, does not influence the complexity of the heightmap. and perhaps you could replace the trees with sprites that are images of real trees (stylized to the visual style you're going for)

ImJasonH• 5 months ago

Thanks for giving it a shot, and for the kind words.

I didn't focus much on the realism of the environment, and spent most of my tokens making the drone "feel" right -- responsive but a little sluggish, physical, controllable, etc.

If I spend more time on it I'd probably work on making the skier a little better, since that's what you end up spending the most time looking at. It's basically a placeholder now, and it shows.

But you're right, making the rest of the peripheral view more realistic would also probably have a big impact.

Maybe I'll set up a workflow to deploy PRs to preview environments and encourage folks to send PRs to work on these things. In the meantime, feel free to fork it and make whatever changes you think would make it more fun!

Show HN: Droneski, an FPV drone ski camera simulator

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