Wings in flight

colonelmarik

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I'm not supposed to necro old threads.

I find it disconcerting that wings don't flap in flight. I get that you're gliding, but you would still need to flap the wings periodically. Can we get this put in? Perhaps have a flap or two at intervals, and/or when climbing in altitude?

cornivic

Do you charge up your fly all the way when you turn it on? If so that is why yours do not flap. If you turn it on without charging all the way it flaps.

sarkastian

I think the OP means that it's immersion-breaking to be gliding everywhere. I totally agree. Wings flap to gain lift IRL, not speed, Speed is increased by sacrificing lift. It would be fun if the animation reflected that. I can get the wings to flap on landing and take off, and occasionally when jumping or falling sort distances when not flying. Maybe something like this based on the angle of flight:

? Ascending: Wings flap only, no gliding
? Level flight: Mostly gliding with occasional flapping
? Descending/diving: Gliding only, no flapping

I don't know if it's even possible in the game engine to trigger specific animation subsets based on incremental change in altitude, but I think it would add a lot to immersion.

CoX avoided the problem by having the wings always flap and never glide, and flap whenever the character jumped. Not sure which implementation I prefer.

bluecenturion

have a button flap the wings. then the user can flap (or not) to their hearts content.

flyingfinn

Yea. Make 'Bash Z Button To Flap'....

jonsills

sarkastian wrote: »

Wings flap to gain lift IRL, not speed.

IRL, wings would not be able to provide sufficient lift to enable a human-mass being to fly under Earth's gravitic and atmospheric conditions. So much for reality.

When I have toons with wings, I figure my flight is innate, as with most flying heroes, and my wings are used mostly for attitude control, not lift or thrust. It's perfectly natural for them to be extended and not flapping at high speed.

colonelmarik

Well... not entirely true. If the body's mass was distributed a bit differently, and if the wings had sufficient surface area, they could carry a human.

The Angel, for instance, is said to have hollow bones, reducing his weight. There are ways, just not so much for "real" people.

haleakala

jonsills wrote: »

IRL, wings would not be able to provide sufficient lift to enable a human-mass being to fly under Earth's gravitic and atmospheric conditions. So much for reality.

When I have toons with wings, I figure my flight is innate, as with most flying heroes, and my wings are used mostly for attitude control, not lift or thrust. It's perfectly natural for them to be extended and not flapping at high speed.

Every time people bring RL physics into discussions of comic books, god kills a cat girl. Think of the cat girls, and post responsibly, please.

lokikin

haleakala wrote: »

Every time people bring RL physics into discussions of comic books, god kills a cat girl. Think of the cat girls, and post responsibly, please.

My pnp gaming group has a saying we pull out every time this subject comes up...

"It's fantasy, dammit. Accept it..."

jamesbonnell

Or as my wife and I say - it's an example of the principle of "handwavium" and we move on.

jonsills

haleakala wrote: »

Every time people bring RL physics into discussions of comic books, god kills a cat girl. Think of the cat girls, and post responsibly, please.

Hey, they started it, with their discussions of how wings work on birds IRL. This ain't real life, which is why I'm okay with my wings not flapping all over the place at high speeds.

Besides, did you just tell us how to reduce the number of catgirls in-game?? :eek:

:biggrin:

iamrune

Moreover, Soaring birds do not only gain altitude via wing flapping. The larger soaring birds actually often conserve much needed energy by riding Thermals upwards, in a circular soaring glide upwards. Soaring and gliding is actually the preferred method of flight for these larger birds, going up or down.

logandarklighter

The human body is not suited to fly with wings at all. Even if a person had hollow bones it still wouldn't work. The muscles groups are all wrong. Birds are the shape they are for a reason. And the size they are for a good reason.

That said, this is all a superhero world anyway. So who cares, right? Superman and other capes fly without wings at all, etc.

Well sort of.

There's a difference between realism and believability. The latter is what we want in a superhero universe. Superman can fly because he gets powers when he is charged with the light from a yellow G-type star like our sun. This doesn't ACTUALLY explain how he flies. But as long as the explanation makes things consistent and allows us to write stories with other Kryptonians like Supergirl, Power Girl, General Zod, Ursa, etc then that's all that matters. We know what the rules are.

A lot of the powers of the X-Men have similar explanations. Though some are more detailed than others. Wolverines bones and claws don't break because they're laced with Adamantium and the only way he survived that process is because of his healing factor, which also allows him to punch his claws out from between his knuckles and retract them while allowing the wounds to close up instantly. Cyclops generates beams of force from his eyes but the power is out of control and he has to wear specially made Sunglasses or visors made of "ruby quartz".

Nobody tries to explain where adamantium comes from or why it's indestructible, how Wolverine's healing factor even works, or how Cyclops generates such vast amounts of energy. (The calories that would have to be burned for Wolverine's healing ability to work would have him eating... well... a ridiculous amount of food. The thought of Wolverine stuffing his face 20 hours out of 24 like a hummingbird comes to mind.)

But we know what the rules are.

I've also heard this phenomenon alternatively referred to as "The Rule of Cool", the MST3K rule (Just repeat to yourself, "It's just a show, I should really just relax"), or "Bellisario's Maxim" ("Don't examine this too closely")

Thus, in this case we want to have some fun by explaining a winged character.

Well, there's several ways to do this, but I'll offer an example of my own. You don't have to follow what I did, but maybe the thought process might give you ideas of your own.

So among my stable of characters, both in City of Heroes and now here in CO, I have Kara Skye. Who started out as a Gravity/Kinetics controller in City of Heroes, and now is a Freeform build using a combo of telekinesis, force and some other powers to get an approximation of the original playstyle.

When I was first creating the character, I recall tinkering with costume designs in the COH creator and trying out designs with wings since they had recently been added and the thought occurred to me - "wouldn't having wings be really awkward and inconvenient on the ground? What about getting clothing to fit? What other problems might come up?"

Ultimately I came up with the following -

as she is equipped with a 18' wingspread, Kara has found many things that "normal" people take for granted to be difficult or nearly impossible. A short list includes: sleep on her back, ride in almost any car or small planes, fit in the average shower or toilet stall, wear most (un-modified) clothing, or even walk down a store isle and not brush against anything.

(City of Heroes wings weren't quite that large, but CO wings appear to be, which actually works better for the concept.)

So my concept for Kara started as a character when I was figuring out the drawbacks of the wings as a nod to realism.

Well obviously I wanted her to be able to fly, but since I was starting from a point of semi-realism, and I already knew about the impossibility of a winged human actually being able to use their wings for flight, what could I do to make an explanation that would work? That would let me know what the rules are?

I figured the first thing to deal with is the weight issue. Hollow bones I might assume, but that's not enough, you'd have to deal with the mass another way. You have to negate much of the mass of a character. Well - the gravity powers from the controller AT seemed like a good starting point for an explanation. And kinetics too. So that made her a Grav/Kin Controller. I figured the tie-in element was a form of psionic power that was best at controlling gravity and kinetics.

That was when another element suggested itself and I realized - "hey - I'm building a character who is like a biotic from Mass Effect, aren't I?"

And that's when I decided to color all of her power effects blue. ^_^

I refined the concept further and came up with the following -

Although gifted with an impressive set of wings, it is still physically impossible for Kara to fly. Simply put, her mass to size ratio is insufficient to allow her full, independent flight. Kara's ability to fly seems to be the result of a powerful, but limited form of psychokinesis. In her case, her wings serve as a focus for her psychokinetic powers, she negates all but about 1/3 of her mass with her gravity control, and each wing beat directs a kinetic "pulse," providing lift and thrust. Naturally, if her wings are entangled or restrained, Kara will fall out of the sky.

City of Heroes style wings flapped all the time, regardless of speed, thus the explanation about the TK "pulses" above. In CO I've explained the non-moving wings at speed as a refinement of this ability. At lower speeds, she's negating less mass and is using her wings to maintain position and altitude with both TK pulses and aerodynamics. At speed, when she's moving fast and the wings are in "gliding" position, she's negating more of her mass and both maintaining (or increasing) her altitude with her telekinesis/kinetic control. Still focused through her wings, of course, which do provide some lift on their own and aerodynamic steering.

RP notes:

I've always been careful to try never to do things in either game such as emote or lean against or have her back up against walls or objects where her wings would clip (or at least not clip too much). I also tried to always make costumes that were backless - which I later compromised on. I figured once a costume is fitted, that if you have a device that teleports it onto you, then it's less of an issue getting in and out of. But she still favors shoulder-less, backless options.

Her wings are an extra set of limbs, not just something that hangs off her back until she flies. She actually will use them to gesture with. If her hands are busy with something else, she might point out a direction to someone with a wingtip, for example. And there's something truly adorable about the concept of someone who gives hugs not just with her arms, but with her wings as well. ^_^


So that's my pseudo-scientific rationale for one of my own characters. Hope it might help inspire some thoughts or spark a character idea or two.

Here's links to a couple of pictures in case you're curious.

Kara Skye
Kara in flight

haleakala

jonsills wrote: »

Hey, they started it, with their discussions of how wings work on birds IRL. This ain't real life, which is why I'm okay with my wings not flapping all over the place at high speeds.

Besides, did you just tell us how to reduce the number of catgirls in-game?? :eek:

:biggrin:

Nah, only works on irl cat girls, not virtual ones. :rolleyes:

colonelmarik

It's a matter of mass distribution and surface area. Consider that a man CAN fly on a hang glider because it has enough surface area to support his weight. Likewise with planes. Of course neither of these flap their wings, they have other means of locomotion.

Presumably, if you were born with wings, you would have the appropriate musculature to make the work. One would presumably also have other adaptations (such as hollow bones) to make them work.

Certainly, it would be possible to only glide on the wings, but Flight doesn't operate like you're gliding. You maintain a constant altitude and speed, and that would require the wings to flap, at least periodically.

gavinruneblade

haleakala wrote: »

Nah, only works on irl cat girls, not virtual ones. :rolleyes:

So that's why they're so rare. I had wondered.

bioshrike

This is why I want a back piece that has wings AND thrusters that animate w/ the jetpack TP...