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My experience with designing computer flight simulations began in 1980, when I purchased a copy of the SubLogic Flight Simulator for my Apple ][+. I was disappointed. Even though the program used minimal graphics, it was so slow as to be unflyable. I thought "I can do better than that". So I spent the next decade trying to do so. Of course, I never caught up. While my simulation got faster, theirs got faster and better. These days, the flight simulation that I wanted to create is essentially the "War Thunder" simulation which is available free online.

Nevertheless, in case some enterprising programmer wants to create their own simplified flight simulation using Three.js (and does not want to spend decades learning flight mechanics), I thought it would be helpful to share what I have learned by creating a helper program to perform the basic calculations that you can use in Three.js programs. This is the origin of the Flight module.

Flight is a simple js module that uses various inputs to compute aircraft orientation and vectors.

The Flight module provides programmers with an accurate simulation of flight that is easy to operate and implement. The Module uses a Single Vector Flight Model where Speed is the primary vector. In doing so, the Module makes the following assumptions:

• The Airplane Speed is always positive.
• Like an arrow, the Airplane is pointed in generally the same direction as the Speed vector.
• The pilot is an experienced pilot who will automatically handle the small stuff.

The primary forces acting upon an airplane are: Thrust, Drag, Lift and Gravity. The Module treats these forces as either Speed modifiers (Thrust, Drag and part of Gravity) or Speed deflectors (Lift and part of Gravity).

In simulations using aircraft models, you can use animations to create moving parts, such as ailerons and propellers, and to show aircraft pitch. You can create these models using popular programs, such as Blender. We will explain how to create animated models and will provide sample Blender model files.

Here are some additional discussions of the Flight Module:

The Basics of Flight		- Animated examples showing how the Flight Module works.
Programmer Guide		- A Guide for Programmers.
Computations		- The Flight computations.
Validating		- Validating your aircraft performance.

Here is a zip file that contains recent Demo programs and recent versions of Flight.js.