HoverDrive

HoverDrive turns any physics-simulating pawn into a hover bike, anti-gravity racer, hover tank, flying drone or 6-DOF ship. Add the Hover Drive component, or drop in the ready-to-drive Hover Drive Pawn with its physics hull, body mesh, chase camera and keyboard and gamepad bindings, and press Play.

Hover points are spring-damper raycast thrusters placed by socket or relative offset. They carry the craft at its hover height, follow hills, ramps and loops, ignore walls steeper than the maximum slope and soften hard landings. The drive model adds throttle, reverse, strafe and turning with a top speed, air control while airborne, lateral grip for tight cornering, drifting with reduced grip and sharper turns, and an air brake that multiplies drag. The visual mesh banks into turns and pitches under acceleration within your limits, without ever disturbing the physics.

Switch to flight mode at any time for full 6-DOF control: gravity is compensated, every released axis is braked, a PID auto-level keeps the craft upright, and altitude hold keeps it at its absolute altitude or at its height above the ground, so a released drone simply hovers in place. Boost draws on an energy pool with drain, recharge delay and recharge rate.

Hover over water and other liquids with a dedicated liquid trace channel, and give each physical surface type its own rule: hover or look through, force scale and drag scale. Hover Drive Influence Volumes add wind with gusts, updrafts, low-gravity or zero-g zones and drag fields with soft edges.

Every hover point reports its thruster output from 0 to 1 for particles, lights and audio, and events fire for thrust changes, landing impacts, touchdown, take-off, mode changes, boost and energy, and influence volumes. A telemetry struct reports speed, altitude above ground, grounded points, energy, thrust, air time and mode for HUDs and AI. In multiplayer the owning client sends its input to the server, the server simulates and owns energy, boost and mode, and the engine's physics replication moves every client. The HoverDrive.Debug console variable draws hover rays, forces and live telemetry.

HoverDrive is part of the Alpha XP collection for Unreal Engine 4.27 and 5.8. Every feature is exposed to Blueprints and C++, it uses only engine-level physics so it behaves the same on PhysX and Chaos, it ships with styled HTML documentation, and it is compiled and verified warning-free against clean UE 4.27 and UE 5.8 projects.

Key features

• Hover Drive component with any number of spring-damper raycast hover points (sockets
• Ready-to-drive Hover Drive Pawn with physics hull, body mesh, chase camera and default
• Throttle, strafe, turn, lift, pitch and roll input functions for Blueprint and C++
• Visual banking into turns and pitch under acceleration, with limits
• Terrain following with adjustable hover height, height range and maximum slope
• Flight mode: full 6-DOF drone and flyer control with stabilised hovering in place
• Altitude hold: absolute altitude or height above ground
• Boost with energy pool, drain, recharge delay and recharge rate
• Drift with reduced lateral grip and sharper turning, air brake with drag multiplier
• Hover over water and liquids with a liquid trace channel
• Per physical-surface rules: hover or look through, force and drag scale
• PID auto-level stabilisation with strength, damping and integral settings
• Influence volumes: wind with gusts, lift, gravity scaling and drag with soft edges
• Thruster output per point (0-1) and events for VFX and audio, including landing impacts
• Grounded and airborne events with air time and an air control factor
• Telemetry struct: speed, altitude above ground, grounded points, energy, thrust, mode
• Server-authoritative input replication with replicated mode, energy and boost
• HoverDrive.Debug console variable drawing rays, forces and telemetry

Blueprint & C++ API

Every call is reachable from more than one place — pick the entry point that fits your project:

Callable runs when executed · Pure no exec pin, returns a value

Events & delegates

Bind these in Blueprint (drag off the object → Bind Event) or with AddDynamic in C++.

Options & enums

Compatibility

One ready-made build per engine version is included in the download — copy the one that matches your project.

Technical details

What's in the download

Quick start

1. Unzip the download and pick the build that matches your engine (4.27 · 5.8).
2. Copy the HoverDrive folder into your project's Plugins/ folder (create it if needed).
3. Open the project, enable HoverDrive under Edit › Plugins and restart the editor.
4. Right-click in any Blueprint graph and search Input — or include the public headers from C++.
5. Package for your target platform (Windows, macOS).

Good to know