At EGX Rezzed 2018 at the NationalExhibition Centre in Birmingham, REMEX Software was showcasing theiryet to be released title 'Deadstick Bush Flight Simulator' to thosewho attended the show. While I was only playing a tech demo at thistime, there was definitely a lot to see and a lot that we could do,giving me a good idea as to what we can expect once the simulator isreleased to the wider community.

At the show, I sat down with the lead developer of REMEX Software,Chris Cheetham, and we played the game for 30 minutes. During thistime he told me all about what the simulator already had, and what wasto come in the short and long term.

In this article, I aim to cover what we talked about, as well asdiscuss how as a flight simulator, Deadstick has already taken amassive step in where the genre is heading.

Customisation & Maintenance

The first thing we talked about was aircraft customisation and howthis system works. Situated at your main hangar is a smallcustomisation bench where you can look over the aircraft andcustomise/upgrade it in any way you see fit. This includes new wings,cockpit modules and engine parts to name a few.

Each part of the aircraft also exhibits wear the more you fly, anddepending on how well you fly too. If you overstress the engine, theparts wear down quicker than in normal operation. This means beforeyou fly each time, you are required to do a pre-flight check. This iseasily achieved by opening the engine cowling and looking over eachpart. The part will then turn green, amber or red, and will indicate apercentage depending on how much life it has left. The more wear aparticular part has, the less efficient it will be and as a result,the harder the aircraft will be to fly.

Once the full game is released and the whole career mode isimplemented, it will then be possible to buy new parts and work onyour aircraft. This will be in a lot more depth than is currentlyavailable on any flight simulator currently available.

The Environment

The first thing I must point out is that the environment that we saw inthis show was not final. When the Flight Sim Show at RAF Cosford onOctober 6th comes around, there will be a whole new map to explorewith so much more to see and do.

The map we flew was 8km x 8km in size and featured mountainousterrain, inspired by Alaskan and Canadian territories.

Graphically, the scenery looked fantastic. There were one or tworough edges where the ground textures did not appear properly, butwith this particular demo map now being a year old and going through anumber of updates, there was always going to be a small error here andthere which will be patched in the next major update.

The mountainous terrain also meant that winds could be ratherunpredictable. When you fly over the peak of a hill, the downdraft youwere flying in, can quickly change to become an updraft, and as such,the aircraft dynamics change as you would expect. The winds in thegame are highly dynamic, and interact with the aircraft. This can beviewed by selecting an option via the debug command, and shows avisual representation of the wind around the aircraft. The way theweather and the terrain work with one another is very nicely done andis something that will definitely catch out even the most advanced ofsimulator pilots.

Clouds and fog are also 3D and volumetric. This means no morepopping and no more billboarding when terrain peaks through the cloudlayer and when your aircraft flies through them. When you fly througha cloud, this will surround you and affect your visibility as youwould expect. This is one of the benefits of using the Unity Engine tobuild the game, as it has pre-defined modules which when tweaked, cangive you some rather stunning visuals - something I saw when flyingover the clouds in clear weather, with only the highest of pointsbeing visible.

Eventually, REMEX aims to add full icing simulation too, meaningwhen you fly into a cloud at high altitude, components of the aircraftwill start to freeze, affecting your instruments and controls.

We should also talk about the main airfield you start at. Oneof the main features of Deadstick is that you have the ability toleave the aircraft and walk around the environment, not just fly init. This gives the simulator a whole new aspect of how you will manageyour aircraft.

This is an uncontrolled airport, with a number of buildings andhangars for you to walk around. Two of these buildings in particular,you can enter: the main company hangar and the maintenancefacility.

The company hangar is essentially the spawn point for you and youraircraft. Here you can modify the plane, do your pre-flight checks andcontrol the day-to-day running of the 'airline'. You can also loadcargo onto the aircraft either via the small cargo hatch on the tailsection or by removing the rear seat of the aircraft - this I willtalk about later on.

The maintenance facility lets you repair your aircraft so that it'sready for your next flight. If you manage to clip the end of yourwing, lose a tire or shatter the windshield, this is where you willtake the aircraft for general repairs and bring everything back totip-top shape.

I was also told that when released, there will be around six majorairports, as well as numerous smaller airfields dotted around the mapat various distances and locations from one another (some being moredifficult to spot and approach than others). This will add an extrachallenge to the game with pilots now having to navigate the worldwith nothing but a compass, a map and an idea of where they are in theworld. One wrong turn could send you the wrong way, never to be foundagain! However, another may help you find a shortcut to yourdestination! You also have the option to purchase a GPS for youraircraft, but will it be worth the investment?

Eventually in the long-long term once the base simulator has beencompleted and everything is finalised, there is the potential for DLCto add new environments and aircraft the game, but Chris has statedthat he wants to perfect the main game first, their main product thateverybody will be using, before thinking about implementing paidadd-ons making it more of a side note than the main talking point.

The Plane

The aircraft in Deadstick is made up and is a mix of a PiperSupercub, an Orion Maule and an Aviat Husky. Rather than licence anaircraft and stick to their plans, the first step into Deadstick wasto create an aircraft that looked and felt like a real thing.

The aircraft itself is rather nicely designed and is well suitedfor the rugged terrain it flies in. This means small body, wings withlarge surface area, and big tires.

There is full physics simulation built in and does get affectedbased on the way you fly - this however is not 100% completed yet andis still being tested. When you fly upside down the fuel indicatorwill slosh around and all loose objects will move such as the keychainlinked to the aircraft magneto. Eventually, the weight distribution ofthe aircraft will also change, and the engine will choke and die oninverted flying as fuel flow will have stopped.

The electrics also work as you would expect. It is possible tooverload the circuit causing the circuit breaker to pop, and leavingthe master battery switch in the on position over long periods willcause the battery to drain. This means even the poor management ofyour flight systems will eventually cause the aircraft to fail onyou.

Gauges however are something that is still lacking and is thecurrent main focus in development. At present we had all gauges butthe vertical horizon which will be added soon. The aim is to get thevacuum system working in sync with the battery as well as other flightsystems and the weather. Customisation will also be available such asthe GPS being functional and the ability to swap components around tomake the cockpit fit your needs. Come the Flight Sim Show, we'll havea lot more information on how this works.

REMEX have also been contacted by a number of small aircraftproducers who have expressed an interest in working with them forDeadstick, meaning future licensed aircraft are not totally out of thepicture!

Flying In Deadstick

Flight dynamics are done through blade element theory. For thosethat use X-Plane, that will be a familiar term as this is the exactsame method used in Laminar's own simulator. This is where thesimulator will calculate the airflow around the model's airfoil andchange how you fly depending on the weather you are flying in.

The wing is broken down into different sections, the angle ofattack is calculated and the lift and drag coefficient is then used togive you as close to the effect of flying as if you were in areal-world aircraft.

Being a tail dragger, the aircraft can also be rather tail-happy,especially at high speeds and while taxiing. This is something I foundwhen performing my first landing with the aircraft, where braking toohard caused the plane to flip on the ground and damaged the engine andwindshield in the process.

The main controls however are fairly simple. Taking off can be atricky thanks to the rough ground terrain, but once you are airborne,flying is both challenging and fun. You do feel each bump as you fly,and the wind does strongly affect how you fly. By only making a singleaircraft in the game, REMEX has been able to put a lot of focus ontohow it flies and how each component works with one another. Thisallows for a much more in-depth flying feeling as the aircraft worksexactly as you would expect it to, something a number of simulatorsfall on. By perfecting the one aircraft, it will eventually lead tofuture planes with their own styles of flying.

The world runs at 6x the normal speed. This means an hour passesevery 10 minutes, with a full day-night cycle taking four hours intotal. This does also mean that fuel burns 6x the usual amount and theaircraft wears at 6x its normal rate, meaning you will always need tobe checking each part in your pre-flight before something starts to gowrong.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer will be a big thing in Deadstick. Players will be ableto communicate with one another via the aircraft radios across UNICOM,rather than speaking to Air Traffic Control as this will not be afeature of this simulator.

Multiplayer will consist of pilots flying around the differentairfields completing jobs while upgrading their aircraft and goinglonger distances to earn more money.

In order to stop griefing and to phase out the bad eggs in thecommunity who will instead spend their time ramming aircraft, therewill be a variety of collision and non-collision servers as well asmore casual and serious communities too. This will ensure thateveryone who wants to have a part in the game will be able to do so oftheir choosing.

There will then be a third, passive multiplayer mode where you willbe able to carry another user in the rear seat of your aircraft eitheras a passenger or as a navigator. As a navigator, they will be able tointeract with the map as you fly and assist in guiding you to yourdestination.

Career Mode

One part of Deadstick that has interested a lot of people is thecareer mode aspect of the game. This is where you take on a number ofdifferent contracts within the game and perform deliveries to thedifferent airfields on the map.

At first this will solely be for cargo movement, but eventually,REMEX will look into doing passenger movements too, but before this,they want to perfect any character models to make them look human andnot like a robot.

When it comes to delivering cargo, you will manually need to loadyour aircraft with what you will want to take with you and where. Asyou are loading, a weight distribution graph appears on-screen, whereyou need to ensure that your aircraft is also balanced forflying. Anything off-center means more trimming and lessstability. This stage is almost as critical as your pre-flight checksas this could be the difference between delivery or disaster.

This does also mean that if you really wanted to, you could hikeand hand-deliver any cargo to its destination rather than fly. Theopen-world nature of the game means that it is able to just pick up acrate, walk 10 kilometers and just drop it at its destination ifthat's what the player sees fit.

As the player progresses and earns more money, they will then beable to upgrade their aircraft with new parts and cockpit additionswhich will allow them to fly further and more efficiently. This thenunlocks new delivery and mission types, which allows the player tofurther progress their company.

Overall, think of a cross between Euro Truck Simulator 2 andX-Plane 11, with a hint of FSPassengers in there too, just with fewerpassengers and more cargo.

Crashing/Damage Modelling

Something that I know a lot of people have been talking about, thecrash detection and modelling in Deadstick is something quitespecial.

REMEX has used a mix of soft body and rigid body elements to ensurethat the aircraft wears and tears as one would expect in a crashsituation. While the aircraft itself is rigid to stop any flutteringfrom occurring when the plane was airborne, ripping apart in theprocess. However, when the aircraft detects an impact has been made,it will switch to a soft body effect for the duration of the crash,which leads to damage being made or being ripped off entirely.

During my test-run of the simulator, I decided to try this byclipping my right wing into a tree standing on the side of a mountain,to which the wing was sheared off and left my aircraft spiralling intothe ground.

With the main impact, much more of the aircraft was thendamaged. The front windshield was smashed, the cargo door latch wasbroken, the left wing was bent out of shape and the main canopy hadalso fallen off. While some of this did not feel the full force ofimpact, the kinetic energy in the plane had to go somewhere and as aresult, a lot of it had buckled.

My first landing attempt also went swell...Not being used to thetaildragger, I over braked leaving the nose of the aircraft to go overthe top and flipped. In this instance, the propeller had smashed up,the front canopy shattered and the right flap had also fallenoff. Again these were all dynamic to how the aircraft had crashed,resulting in damage that suited the accident itself.

Chris then told me to try damaging the aircraft myself to see howthis worked in detail. This meant picking up a barrel, climbing ontothe wing of the aircraft, and dropping it. This, as expected, left adent in the wing damaging the external model and tweaking the airfoilto fly the aircraft as you would expect with a damaged flightsurface.

Modding

Chris has expressed his love for modding in flight simulation, andhas expressed how he hopes to see it grow within Deadstick. That meansby releasing the appropriate tools and SDK, the community will one daybe able to create new maps, aircraft and cargo for the aircraft totake. He jokingly went on to say how if people will then want to flytheir Boeings and their Concorde in Deadstick, all they will need todo is mod it, before loading it up and fly!

Opinion And Closing Remarks

Overall I really enjoyed the half an hour I had on Deadstick andgetting a good feel for what the game will include and where it willgo before releasing at the end of the year.

I was very impressed with this simulator from the moment I startedplaying it. The environment looked fantastic, the aircraft felt asreal as it gets (don't forget that all my cockpit light aircraftflying experience at this time comes from an 11-minute taxi aroundElstree...) and the game itself fit together nicely to give us thedemo we saw today.

I also have to say, if you ever get the chance to speak to theirlead developer Chris, whether it be at the Flight Sim Show or on theofficial Deadstick Discord Group, it's definitely worth it as he's gotplenty of experience in flying himself, as well as how he gets thisalso into the simulator. He's also an all-round positive guy who'salways happy to talk...whenever he can get the time of course.

You must also remember that at the end of the day, this is an indiegame developed by a very small team (two or three people if I remembercorrectly?) and while now their main project, started off as a sideproject around their daily lives and for the first year and a halffrom first idea to actual code being written, was just a conceptwritten on paper.

This project has also been written and made in Unity. Not an engineyou'd commonly associate with a flight simulator, but one that REMEXhave had a lot of experience in and as a result, why they've been ableto push out such a strong product with a lot more to come.

I've got very high hopes for this simulator when it does release,and is something I'll be sure to fly a lot once it does find its wayonto my Steam account!

Michael Hayward

REMEX Software:

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Web site:https://www.remexsoftware.com/