I was just sitting watching my dragon Galde flying on autorun today when I started thinking about what could possibly make the experience of flying more... interesting might be the word, or natural. (Obviously the request is for faaaaaaar far far into the future IF it was considered at all, since the devs are very busy with more important things )

You see, looking at the flying animations; they're good, no doubt. Firstly the actual physics behind it is pretty on the ball--the dragons don't just flap up and down but in a circular motion, which is nice. The way dragons bank to the side as they turn is also nice (the animation's broken, though, it only plays for a second then stops D: ). The thing that struck me is that the flying animation is very clunky for several reasons. Plenty people have complained about the hummingbird effect, which would be incredibly energy-consuming and not very practical on the dragon's part... but also even at normal speed, the flapping looks and feels quite strained and unrealistic, and there's no fluidity at all. :/

It's also very similar to running. Forwards, backwards, left and right, except with flight you go up and down too.

It's clunky and unnatural-feeling; large birds usually focus more on gliding anyway, but the animation doesn't feel like a great grand creature sailing through the skies. It's more like the dragons are struggling to stay into the air, flapping with too much effort, and there's nothing new between flying and running besides going up and down; I mean, there's no interesting interaction between objects on the ground; you can't swoop or dive or twist around something. You go over it or around it in the same way you run around things.

I was looking at some potential examples of more interesting and natural looking flight and settled on this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeAvb...eature=related

Note that I'm just looking at the dragon animation in itself (I would have suggested something more akin to Dragon Rage or some such, but this is more fair since it's on a computer too. )

Notice how much more relaxed the dragon seems, barely flapping and when it does it's noticably more effortless. This is closer to how many large birds fly; they don't have to flap like a hummingbird to stay in the air. The dragon here certainly doesn't look like it's struggling.

Overall, what I'm suggesting is:

  • Update the flapping animation so that the wings move less; they should possibly be more relaxed like in the example.
    Maybe make a looped animation that consists mainly of gliding with the occassional relaxed flap for when you're going forwards? :O
    Reduce the exagguerated bobbing motion of the dragon as it flaps; this makes it look like it is struggling.
    If possible, make it so that you don't flap faster with velocity wingscales (hence the hummingbird effect XD ).
    Softer banking perhaps? To get rid of the left-right-up-down tedium of flying :P
    Tricks in the air would be nice! XD


Please note that no, I'm not wanting to make it a copy-pasta job of WoW, and also, if you're about to say : "Just angle your camera down during flight and it makes you glide!" that doesn't make it any less clunky when you inevitably do have to do the hummingbird thing to gain alitude. XD

Just my 2 coppers worth.