Flight Simulator Ft. Emirates

Inspiration

During my second semester of the second year, our professor in the course Advanced Programming gave us a three parts project which eventually determined our grade in the course. All three parts involved aircrafts. I knew from an early stage that I want to collaborate with the best airlines in the world and taking advantage of my passion to aviation and travel.

For the first part I featured QATAR Airways, the world’s best airline for 2019 and its home hub, the city of Doha.

For the second part I collaborated with Cathay Pacific, and used the opportunity to feature the world’s tallest hotel, the RITZ-CARLTON in Hong Kong.

Finally, for the third part I featured Emirates and Dubai, and a week after my app published at the Google Play Store, The UAE and ISRAEL, my home country signed a peace treaty!

Because the first two parts scored enough points to pass the course, I could do whatever I wanted in the third part, and let my imagination goes wild.

What it does

For now, you can fly the Emirates A380 right next to you, using a controls system, and even make it bigger, until you reach the size of the actual thing! But I plan to release another mode before I will call it a day. Talking about videos, I tested the flight simulator in Tel Aviv’s beach and it was simply breathtaking. I invite all to download the app for absolutely free, enjoy the world and send me pictures of giants A380 from landmarks across the world!

Extra: Following the guidelines of this Hackathon, the Instagram effect I created, allows you to add the Emirates Cabin Crew hat, using face tracking. This feature will later added to the app already available at the Google Play Store.

How I built it

Using Unity with AR Foundation, and Spark

Challenges I ran into

So many to list here:

Getting a cabin crew hat. Since I begun before the treaty, I had difficulties getting what I need, eventually I bought the hat from Ebay.
Designing the UI and working with Android. I am an iPhone user.
Adding listeners and getting the desired behavior from the controls.
Interacting with the internal storage, to save some settings.
Strict space limits. Qualified effects for Instagram must be smaller than 4MB. I realized this limit only after the effect was ready, and I had to make some changes, by adding the texture manually. As a result, the object isn't look as good as I wanted it to be. I am sure though, that my object will only becomes better when I improve my Spark skills.

And many, many more.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I finally uploaded an app to the Google Play Store, and people actually downloading it and love it. Also being do persistent and insist working with Emirates and not a different 5 star carrier.

What I learned

A lot.

How to design user interface in mobile apps
How to create AR experiences
How to interact with devices permissions 4, How to interact with internal storage of mobile devices
Improved my Unity skills
How to upload apps to the Google Play Store
Learned about Spark.
Learned about Blender
Learned how to publish Instagram effects.

And many more!