Flyable Airliner

Get it on the Exaro store or on Fab (search Flyable Narrow-Body Airliner).

1. Install

From Fab:

1. In the Epic Games Launcher, open Fab Library, find Flyable Narrow-Body Airliner and click Add to Project.
2. Pick your project and Unreal Engine 5.7. The pack lands in Content/FlyableAirliner.

From the Exaro store: the download holds the five game-ready packages (exterior, cockpit, cabin shell, cabin seats, service) as FBX and GLB with their levels of detail and fitted collision, and an Unreal folder with FlyableAirliner_UE5.7.zip.

1. Unzip it. It is a ready project, FlyableAirliner.uproject, that opens on the flight map: press Play.
2. To fly it in your own game, close your editor and copy the project's Content/FlyableAirliner folder into your project's Content folder, then open your project again (section 7).

The pack is Blueprints and content only: no plugin, no C++. Besides the flight map it has Maps/L_Airliner_Overview, which lays out every Blueprint, mesh and animation of the pack. The demo project renders with DirectX 12, Lumen and hardware ray tracing; copied into your game, the airliner uses your project's settings.

2. The controls

Seven controls, the way mouse-and-keyboard flight games do it: you point, the aircraft flies there. There are no separate keys for pitch and roll to juggle; the mouse sets where you are going and the aircraft banks and pitches to follow.

A few things happen for you: the speed brakes pop up after touchdown once the throttle is closed, the arrow keys (and the number pad) nudge the aim if you would rather not use the mouse, and after a crash the readout offersEnter to put you back on the runway.

3. A first flight

Take off

1. Press F once for TAKEOFF flaps.
2. Move the mouse up a little so the ( + ) sits just above the horizon: about ten degrees is right.
3. Hold W until the throttle reads 100%. You roll down the runway and, at about 120 knots, the nose lifts and you climb away. Steer with A / D to stay on the centreline.
4. Once you are climbing, press G to raise the gear and F twice more to bring the flaps up (LAND, then UP).

Fly

Point the mouse where you want to go. A turn banks the aircraft, up to sixty degrees for a tight one, and it rolls level by itself when it is on the new heading. Point above the horizon to climb and below it to descend; ease the throttle back with S when you are high and fast. Fly too slowly and the wings stop holding you up: the nose drops and you sink until you pick up speed again.

Land

1. Line up with the runway a few kilometres out and bring the throttle back to about 20% with S.
2. Press G for gear down and F until the flaps read LAND.
3. Put the ( + ) just below the horizon, a gentle two or three degrees down, and let the aircraft settle toward the runway at around 140 knots.
4. On touchdown, hold S: the throttle closes, the brakes come on and the speed brakes deploy. You stop in about fifteen seconds.

A landing counts if the gear is down, you are sinking slower than about 6 m/s (1,200 feet a minute), the wings are within twenty degrees of level and the nose is no more than six degrees down. Anything harder, or a belly landing with the gear up, is a crash: the readout says so, and Enter starts you again at the end of the runway.

4. Cameras

V cycles through three views.

5. On the ground

Stop on the runway and press E to open the passenger and cargo doors; press it again to close them. They only open when you are stopped, and they swing shut on their own if you start rolling.

6. The demo valley

L_Airliner_Flight puts a four-kilometre runway in a 24 km valley of farmland and rolling hills, ringed by mountains that rise to nearly a kilometre with rock on the steep faces and snow on the peaks. The mountains always tell you where the edge of the world is. The terrain is an ordinary Unreal landscape with a layered material: no plugin is needed to open, play or edit it.

7. In your own level

1. Open your level and, in World Settings, set GameMode Override to BP_GM_Airliner_Flight.
2. Put a Player Start at the end of a runway, facing down it. Anything that blocks the Visibility channel counts as ground (a landscape, a runway mesh), so give it at least three kilometres of flat ground to take off and land on.
3. Press Play. The airliner spawns at the Player Start, settles onto its wheels and is yours to fly.

The flight readout comes with it (WBP_GR_FlightHud).

8. Tuning

Every placed BP_Airliner_Flight has its own Flight settings in the Details panel, each with a tooltip. Units are Unreal's: centimetres, seconds and degrees.

The cameras are ordinary components on the Blueprint: ChaseArm and ChaseCam for the chase view, DeckCam at the captain's eye and CabinCam at the window seat. Move them in the Blueprint editor to change a view.

9. How it is put together

BP_Airliner_Flight is a Pawn that carries the aircraft's parts as child actors: the exterior, flight deck, cabin shell, seats and service areas. Each frame it reads the controls, works out speed, lift and attitude, moves the whole aircraft, and sets the inputs of the two control Anim Blueprints (ABP_Airliner_exterior_Controlsand ABP_Airliner_cockpit_Controls): Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Steer, Flaps, Spoilers, Thrust, Gear, FanSpeed and WheelSpeed. That is why the ailerons, elevators, rudder, flaps, spoilers, gear, fans and wheels outside move together with the yoke and levers inside. If you write your own flight model, set those same inputs and everything still animates.

It is all Blueprint: no plugin, no C++, nothing to change in your project settings.

Troubleshooting