Eagle Lander by Ron Monsen

A screenshot from my new Eagle Lander 3D.  Check it out here! Eagle kicking up a little dust near East Crater.  West Crater in the far background.  Click for larger picture. In the large picture the outline of the original Eagle landing spot is shown.

January 01, 2002

News - a new version in development!

• I am working on a new version of Eagle Lander which is designed to be as realistic as possible.  It is a full 3D simulator and is no longer the 'arcade' type.  I had hoped to get it out before Christmas but it looks like it will be mid-January now.  I just uploaded a movie that shows a typical flight.  Go to the link below.

Check it out by clicking here ---> Eagle Lander 3D 

• If you have any suggestions, feedback or problems feel free to send me an email directly.  Have fun!

Now back to the 2D version......

Overview of 2D Version...

I’m sure many of you have done it before.  The concept of a lunar landing program in not new.  I think it was one of the first arcade games I played in the late 70’s.  

I thought it would be fun to build a lunar simulation that incorporated and expanded upon the simulators of the past while simultaneously recreating a truly historical event. If you search the web for "Lunar Lander" you find old 'clones' of the arcade games or super sophisticated advanced sims - nothing in-between.   Eagle Lander accurately portrays the physics of a lunar landing but is not designed to be a rigorous flight simulator. You fly just the last minute of so of the landing sequence, so it is fun to just 'shoot the approach' a couple of times over a coffee break.   Eagle Lander is similar to the ‘old’ ones because you control the LM remotely by watching it from the front and easing it down using the keyboard or  mouse. 

The object of the simulation is easy: land on the moon as accurately, softly, upright and smoothly as possible.

You will be set loose at anywhere between 75ft and 200ft+ altitude to negotiate your way to a soft landing.  The altitude that you start depends on the screen resolution of your system.  I recommend 1024x768 or higher.  800x600 makes a shorter flight and 640x480 is almost too low. 

Download here.. eagle.zip 3.7mb

Features

Eagle Lander provides high resolution 2-D control of the LM.  You must use small corrections and  finesse to accurately fly it.  The engine is fully throttleable and LM rotation is very precise.  This is a change from the old games which had large ‘blocky’ changes in attitude with a fixed on/off engine power.

The sound comes from the actual Apollo 11 transmissions.  You control the output of the sound by the way you fly.  Your flight path, altitude and velocity will ‘trip’ the appropriate sounds.  Even though I have flown the simulator many times as the developer, I still get goose-bumps when I here “Tranquility base here, the Eagle has landed.”

The graphics are actual photos of the Apollo 11 landing site and the "Eagle".

Each flight is scored and your fllight-path  influences the score.  This means a feather-light landing is not good enough if you were nearly out of control a few moments before.

Hardware requirements

Even though this program does not use 3-D graphics, it still requires a CPU built in the last couple of years for smooth flight.  The reason is that the rotation of the LM is calculated real-time and it is smoother with a newer and faster machine.  An old 133mhz machine is a bit jerky.  A 266mhz machine is pretty good.  Anything higher is silky smooth.

Scoring.....

Each Play Level has a max possible score.  You will only get the highest score when flying in Authentic mode.  In all levels most of your score is based on at the first hard pad contact.  The contact probes at the end of the pads do not constitute a landing or end of score.  The criteria for scoring is as follows:

  Velocity

A composite landing velocity (x and y together) is computed and graded relative to the max score for that level.  Obviously touching down at 0fps is ideal. 

  Accuracy

How close did you get to the landing site?  Same story as above.

  Angle

Were you level when you first touched a pad?  Make sure the LM is absolutely level and all four pads (two in 2d) touch simultaneously for top score.

  Smoothness

Aha.  The hardest one to get right.  This separates the video game fast-reflex-types from the smooth-planning individuals.  You can zoom back and forth across the screen doing multiple rolls, zip down to the surface pull up just in the nick of time and touchdown like a feather – and – get hammered on your smoothness score.  NASA doesn’t want showoffs and this program downgrades poor flight planning.  A nice smooth controlled descent with extremely small changes and continually but gradually changing velocities will insure top smoothness scores.

Finally...

I started working on this program several years ago.  At that time I tried to make a little itty-bitty program that would fit on a floppy and was very trim.  Frankly, now I don't care about size.  A few years ago a megabyte was a lot to download.  Now I download 20+meg files routinely.  As a result, I could make the Eagle Lander program more fun with pictures, graphics and real sound.

I would like to invite you to my main website by clicking on the banner above.