Landing Gear

LandingGear component takes care of steering, brakes, rigging and animation.

Basic Setup

• Set up WheelColliders for each landing gear wheel as per Unity's guide.
• Assign the created WheelCollider to the WheelCollider field. Assign the wheel transform (model representing the wheel) to the Wheel field.
• Select the Position of the wheel (front, left, right, etc.)
• Set the maxSteerAngle if the wheel is steerable. Leave at 0 if not.

Rigging

For rigging to work properly, a specific model setup is required with the following hierarchy:

• SuspensionArmUpper
  • SuspensionArmLower
    • WheelCollider
    • WheelModel

Assign the upper and lower suspension arm to the upperSuspensionArm and lowerSuspensionArm fields. The SuspensionArmLower should have rotation such that it's local Z axis points towards the pivot point of the SuspensionArmUpper:

Objects that move and steer with the wheel such as fairing can be added to the Static Transform field.

Animation

Landing gear that can extend/retract can use animation to achieve this. This guide does not cover the steps to set up the animation, as this is a standard Unity process and is explained in the official Unity animation controller tutorial.

The default state for animation is extended landing gear. The default animation (going forward) is extended => retracted. Extending the landing gear is simply the retracting animation played in reverse.

Setup

• Tick Retractable to indicate that the landing gear of the aircraft can retract.
• Tick IsExtended if the initial state is extended landing gear.
• Create new AnimationController.
• Add Animator to the object LandingGear is attached to and assign the AnimationController to the Controller field.
• Add Direction parameter to AnimationController and set the value to 1.
• Create AnimationController with RetractLandingGear state:

• Set the RetractLandingGear state speed to 1 and apply the Direction parameter as a speed multiplier.
• Create new Animation and animate the landing gear as wanted. Initial state should be extended, final state should be retracted.
• Assign the new Animation to the previously created AnimationController.
• Assign the Animator to the Animator field.