The Dogfight — WW2 Mustang Cockpit, Real Loops and Stalls, Tracer Rounds
P-51 Mustang cockpit. Quaternion-based pitch/roll/yaw with real stalls and G-LOC. Bandits engage with chase AI. Tracer rounds, smoke trails, gun-temp HUD. Down all the bandits.
What this is
You're in the cockpit of a P-51 Mustang. Mouse pitch and roll, Q/E yaw, W/S throttle, space fires the wing-mounted machine guns. The flight model is real — quaternion local-axis rotations let you loop and barrel- roll without gimbal lock; velocity-squared drag bleeds speed in turns; pitch-down dives convert altitude into airspeed. Stalls trigger at low airspeed + nose-up with a 580 Hz buzzer. Pull heavy G's and the screen dims (G-LOC). 4-6 Bf-109 bandits engage with slerp-toward-player chase AI, banking visually based on the cross-product of current vs desired forward, peeling off when too close, firing only in firing arc. Cockpit HUD: airspeed, altitude, throttle, gun-temp gauge, compass. Render-target rear-view mirror. Engine drone + tracer-whip audio.
Why this is mind-blowing
Real-time WW2 dogfighting is a genre with $50M budgets and decades of iteration. This nails the flight feel and the visual identity in 1298 lines from one paragraph. Loop a Bf-109 over the cliffs of Dover and you'll get it.
First-person WW2 fighter dogfight game in three.js. Cockpit view of a
P-51 Mustang. Realistic-feeling flight: pitch/roll/yaw via mouse + Q/E.
Throttle W/S. Stalls when too slow + nose-up. Procedural sky with clouds.
4-6 enemy fighters with chase AI. Tracer rounds visible from your wing
guns. Smoke trails on damaged planes. Engine drone audio + machine gun
rattle. HUD: airspeed, altitude, throttle, gun temp.Paste this into Claude, Cursor, or Copilot. Change one thing that matters to you.
What I learned shipping it
- Quaternion-based local-axis rotations are how you get real loops and barrel rolls without gimbal lock. The model knows this — you just say 'use quaternions for the rotations.'
- Velocity-squared drag + altitude-to-airspeed conversion (gravity component along forward) gives you flight that bleeds speed in turns and gains it in dives. That's THE dynamic that makes flight sims feel right.
- G-LOC implemented as a brief vision dimming when pulling heavy pitch is the chef's-kiss touch. It's a real WW2 fighter pilot concern.