I was watching one of my sons play the Arma 3 videogame and was struck by how similar the simulated drone mission planning interface is to what we do with real drones in Mission Planner/APM Planner. In the game, you can program the drones to conduct autonomous missions, with waypoints and functions such as Loiter at each waypoint. It's great training for the real thing!
If you click on one of the waypoints in the screen above, you get the following options, including altitude.
Comments
@Randy I think it's more likely that drone mission planner developers were inspired by playing hours and hours of real time strategy games like Command and Conquer in the 90's. My favourite was Total Annihilation where you could build AI drones (planes, tanks, etc) and create a number of way points to attack, move, patrol or guard :-)
I'm surprised they call in LOITER in the video game. Did APM users write the game or does it have a different meaning I wonder?
My first intro to controlling drones was in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter see http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/644449-tom-clancy-s-ghost-r... for an overhead shot
no mission mode like ARMA3, just Guided. I hadn't thought about this before, but there maybe some useful ideas for GCS from these "experiments" in gaming UIs