Glider Sim Players Fly the World with Cesium
Joey Sipos, founder of 5D Realities, develops highly immersive flight experiences for virtual reality. His flagship title Glider Sim, which is available on Steam and Meta Quest, leverages Cesium for Unity and Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles to bring the real world to life for users preparing for airborne adventures.
Flying a paramotor trike over the San Francisco Bay in Glider Sim. Courtesy 5D Realities.
In each simulation, users can choose from a variety of light aircraft, including hang gliders, paragliders, and ultralights. They can customize the time of day and wind conditions, adjust both airspeed and direction, and turn on visual cues to reveal wind patterns and thermal updrafts—a critical element in the art of gliding.
A paraglider ridge soaring on the Island of O’ahu, Hawaii. Wind particles with trails show wind currents in real time, with green indicating lift and red indicating sink. These optional visual cues are a valuable tool for learning gliding and how wind interacts with terrain. Courtesy 5D Realities.
In VR, players can use hand controllers to physically interact with the aircraft’s control surfaces—for example, grabbing and pulling the brake toggles in a paraglider. Some enthusiasts have taken the experience even further, building custom flight rigs for an ultra-realistic simulation.
Alek Jadkowski from Paraglide New England flight school using a simple hanging simulator rig for use with Glider Sim VR. Courtesy 5D Realities.
Originally, Joey manually built custom maps for iconic locations like the Tetons in Wyoming and Walenstadt, Switzerland, using elevation data and satellite imagery. After that labor-intensive process, he was thrilled to discover Cesium for Unity, which made it possible to bring the entire Earth into the simulator. Within just a couple of weeks, Joey integrated Cesium for Unity, allowing players to explore anywhere in the world.
Hang gliders ridge soaring cliffs near Marseille, France. In multiplayer mode, all user locations and weather conditions are synchronized across the entire globe. Players can navigate Earth, spot friends in real time, and instantly jump to their location. Courtesy 5D Realities.
Built on open standards and APIs, Cesium for Unity gives simulation designers access to an accurate, full-scale globe. With a Cesium ion account, Joey combines that geospatial foundation with Photorealistic 3D Tiles, which use the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) community standard 3D Tiles created by Cesium to efficiently stream massive amounts of 3D data.
Photorealistic 3D Tiles make Glider Sim a beautiful, accurate way to explore Earth for the casual player as well as the experienced pilot. Courtesy Joey Sipos.
The app has over 5,000 users. Both new and experienced pilots can practice their technique anywhere in the world, including at real launch sites fetched from the Paragliding Earth API, allowing them to get familiar with the terrain and practice real-world scenarios such as takeoffs and landings.
Flying a hang glider in an XC (cross-country) challenge based on a real-world hang gliding competition that takes place in Mobelo, Italy. Scores are saved online and displayed in an in-game leaderboard. Courtesy 5D Realities.
Integrating Cesium has attracted a wide range of users to Glider Sim, from dedicated pilots to casual explorers. It also has allowed Joey to focus on enhancing other areas of the simulator, such as delivering a smoother multiplayer experience and introducing new features like saving and sharing favorite launch sites.
Flying an ultralight trike over the Golden Gate Bridge, California, in multiplayer mode. Courtesy 5D Realities.
With Cesium, Glider Sim is a more powerful training and practice tool, exploration platform, and global flight simulator. To bring real-world data to your simulation, check out Cesium for Unity.