Flight Simulator 2020

Introduction

For "Flight Simulator 2020-Top Gun Maverick", I had to create a mission to teach the player how to do some manoeuvers with the F18, the plane from "Top Gun".

Creative process

The main constraint was to create realistic maneuvers that real war pilots do.
So the first step was to find documentation about the maneuver and talk with our in-house pilots to define what the most important criteria are to succeed in it.
Then we created the first prototype, and used the important criteria to create a challenging score calculation.
The second most important constraint was accessibility; the "casual" players have to be able to finish the mission. That's why we had the help from the UX/UI and QA teams; they gave us some feedback on how to improve the accessibility and comprehension for "casual" players.

The "Ridge crossing"

This maneuver is used to keep speed and visibility while the pilot is flying at low altitude.

To teach it, the mission has three steps:

The main menu: It teases the player about the mission, so when the mission starts, the information the game will give him will be clearer.
It can also be used as a reminder for later.
The first part of the mission is just about going forward, the pace is low, and the player doesn't have anything to do, so we can remind him of all the information he saw previously, to do the maneuver.
Then he has to execute the maneuver.
And at the end, the game gives him feedback on his execution. First by a voiceline and finally with a scoreboard where he can see what he has to do to progress.

The main notation criteria for this mission were:

The respect for the altitudes
The precision and the timing of the maneuver