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Cruise flight

Pro packv3.0.0-13DArcade

A first-person flight model over a landscape: you fly where you look, at a cruise speed that holds when you let go, and the ground is never in your way. The flying stays easy, so the player's attention goes on what they are doing.

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Released October 19, 2026 · updated October 20, 2026

Cruise flight: a screenshot of its demo
A note about these graphics

Expansion packs don't come with graphics. This screenshot is one way of drawing what the pack does, made for its demo: none of the sprites, tiles or backgrounds in it are in the pack.

That's by design. A pack is a game's logic, mechanics and effects, and it works with whatever art you give it. Some packs draw effects, backdrops or 3D scenes of their own, but none carries a game's sprites.

So the look is yours. Make the art on phaser.io, bring your own, or let your agent draw it in code: the same pack can look like anything.

What it does

One function, fly, advances one flyer by one step. Each step you pass what the rider is doing: thrust forward or back, a strafe, a turn and an aim pitch. Held thrust moves a cruise speed up or down, and it holds when the key is released, with a single tap stepping it by a set amount. A strafe key slides the flyer sideways and the slide decays when released. The turn is capped at a turn rate and the pitch at a maximum, so a fast mouse cannot spin the view.

Height takes care of itself. Looking up climbs fully below one height over the ground and fades to nothing at a soft ceiling, above which the flyer sinks. It never goes below a clearance over land or sea, so it rides up hills rather than crashing into them. Horizontal speed holds whatever the pitch, so looking down at a target does not slow the flight. The turn rate the step reports drives a bank of the camera into turns.

The flyer and its command are plain numbers, so a snapshot is just those numbers, and the model asks of the ground only its height at a point and how coordinates wrap. That makes it fit a wrapping world, a terrain field or a flat plane alike. It is pure, deterministic and draws nothing.

Features

  • Fly where you look — yaw and pitch steer the flight, and lookVector gives the direction for aiming shots.
  • A cruise that holds — held keys move the cruise speed, a tap steps it, stop zeroes it, and a reverse speed is a share of the top speed.
  • Slides that decay — strafing moves at a slide speed and eases off at a decay rate when released.
  • A soft ceiling and terrain following — climbing fades out towards the ceiling, the flyer sinks above it and rides at a clearance over hills and sea.
  • Wrapping worlds — positions fold through the ground's own wrap, so a torus world has no edge.
  • Camera numbers — the rider's eye height, the share of the aim pitch the camera shows and a bank per unit of turn, plus a speed scale for boosts.

Good for

  • Flying-carpet and wizard battles in the style of Magic Carpet, where the player and every rival fly by the same model.
  • Exploration flyers over open landscape, such as a glider, a broom or a spirit, where crashing would only get in the way.
  • Drone and camera flights that should hug the terrain at a steady height.
  • Arena shooters over terrain, where the player strafes and aims while the cruise carries them on.

Make it yours

A FlightDef holds every number, in world units and seconds: top speed, how fast held keys move the cruise, the tap step, reverse speed, strafe speed and decay, turn rate and pitch limit, the full-climb height, the ceiling, the sink rate and the clearance, plus the eye height, view pitch share, bank, and boost multipliers for a held boost and after it. The ground is any object with groundAt(x, z) and wrap(v).

Two quite different uses: a quick, agile carpet with a fast turn rate and a low ceiling, skimming a wrapping island world in a duel; and a slow, stately glider over a flat terrain field, with a gentle turn, a high ceiling and a long slide decay, for a calm sightseeing game.

A quick look

A flyer stepped by the keys and mouse, with the camera following its yaw, pitch and bank:

const { fly, lookVector } = game.cruiseFlight;
const f = { x: 0, y: 40, z: 0, vx: 0, vy: 0, vz: 0, yaw: 0, pitch: 0 };   // a Flyer
const c = { cruise: 0, slide: 0, turnRate: 0 };                             // its FlightCommand
fly(f, c, { thrust: keys.up ? 1 : 0, strafe, turn: mouseDx * 0.003, pitch: aim }, def, land, dt);
camera.yaw = f.yaw; camera.pitch = f.pitch * def.viewPitch; camera.roll = c.turnRate * def.bank;
lookVector(f.yaw, f.pitch);    // where shots go

Works with

  • torus-land — a wrapping land that answers both questions the model asks of the ground.
  • terrain-3d — a terrain field, with an identity wrap.
  • mana-conquest — a flying-carpet conquest game that flies the player and every rival by this model.
  • jet-combat — for aircraft with banking and energy.
  • heli-assault — for hovering gunships.
  • rail-route — for a flight that flies itself.

Good to know

  • There is no physics: no momentum beyond the slide, no stall and no gravity below the ceiling.
  • The only collision is with the ground, through the clearance; obstacles above it are your game's to handle.
  • One call moves one flyer: formation, avoidance and AI steering are the caller's.

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