Why does my drone feel "floaty"?

Your drone feels "floaty"? This may come from many different factors, from the physics engine to visual perception, etc.

As EreaDrone has a fully comprehensive physics engine, it is possible to tweak all settings in order to get your drone to behave exactly as you desire.

What is floaty?

We would first need to define what "floaty" exactly means. Does your drone take time to fall to the ground? Is it projected in the air for too long when giving thrust impulses? Is it changing directions and turning too slowly? Each of these symptoms is the result of a different physical behaviour.

My drone takes too much time before falling to the ground

If this is your case, this means your drone has too much air drag or is too light. That’s almost always air drag vs mass.

Reduce air drag: it will increase its terminal velocity (max speed at which it falls), but it will also make your drone penetrate more easily in the air, and thus make it faster.

Increase the drone's mass: It will make it fall faster, but will also increase its inertia and slow its acceleration.

Terminal fall speed follows Vt = √(2 m g / (ρ A Cd)) —more mass ↑, less drag ↓ → higher Vt.

What about gravity? Even though it is a setting you can change, we recommend keeping it at 9.81 m/s² as it is the real-life physical constant of Earth's gravitational acceleration.

My drone is going too far when giving thrust impulses

If your drone tends to go too far, or if its inertia feels too strong, 3 parameters can affect this behaviour.

Increase the drone's air drag: it will make the drone stop faster after a thrust impulse, as air drag will prevent the drone from penetrating the air for too long.

Decrease the drone's mass: for the same opposing drag, a lighter drone slows faster (F=ma ), so it coasts a shorter distance.

Lower the motors' thrust: this can also fix this issue, as it reduces the peak speed you reach from a tap, so you coast less. (Note: thrust doesn’t change inertia—that’s mass—but it does change the speed you reach from a tap.)

My drone feels slow, even though the stats look right

That’s perception. This is a completely normal perception in realistic drone simulators. It is caused by the visual perception we have in video games in general.

Visual perception

In video games, visual perception is a real matter for developers and designers. As we are looking at an environment through a screen and not directly with our real-life eyes (even though we use them to look at the screen xD), many signals are interpreted differently.

Larger field-of-view and stronger peripheral optic flow make speed feel higher in video games/simulators.

Scale and speed

Generally, scales in video games are completely off compared to real-life environments.

Many games compress distances and exaggerate cues, so our brains calibrate to different ‘speed/scale’ norms: mountains in Skyrim are only a few hundred meters high, and the 1m wide blocks in Minecraft look smaller than a real-life 1m wide block, small doors are actually 2m wide, short grass is actually high, etc.

In CS:GO, the default run speed is ~250 units/s ≈ 17–18 km/h, which often feels slow on a monitor, etc.

All these are caused by the fact that we don't perceive virtual environments the same way as real-life environments.

Therefore, in EreaDrone, where we use only 1:1 scale environments, things may seem odd sometimes.

But how do other racing games do? Most racing games, such as car racing games, use many tricks such as speed effects (variable FOV, peripheral blur, shaking), exaggerated sound design, etc. Unfortunately, these effects cannot be applied to drone racing as they will simply ruin the FPV experience. Imagine your FOV changing while you fly!

FPV Goggles

Most pilots fly with FPV goggles, and almost never with a monitor. Now, as an FPV pilot, try to fly with your real-life drone, but with your 16" or 24" computer screen. Unusual, right? It is actually the same thing the other way. Where FPV pilots are used to pilot with FPV goggles, when it comes to piloting virtual drones with simulators on computer screens, habits and marks are different, requiring a slight adaptation.

In short

• Falls too slowly → less drag or more mass (don’t change gravity).
• Goes too far on blips → more drag, less mass, or lower thrust.
• Feels slow → check FOV/camera tilt, remember monitor vs goggles perception.