TRIAD

A combat flight simulator, a space program and a deep-sea survey, in one browser game.

TRIAD is written in TypeScript on Three.js and runs entirely in the browser: no plugins, no downloads, no game assets beyond what the code builds. Every aircraft, rocket, rover, submarine, island and sound is generated procedurally at start-up.

It has two programs, chosen on the launcher screen:

Program	What you do
AIR COMBAT	Fly 13 real jets over four theaters: dogfights, campaigns, ranked 5v5, airstrikes, spy flights, carrier ops, aerial refuelling, airshows and online battles.
SPACE EXPLORATION	Fly the Saturn V to the Moon, Starship to Mars, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and SLS missions, drive Perseverance and Curiosity, and tour the whole Solar System at real scale.

Current version: 7.15.1. Full history in CHANGELOG.md.

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Contents

1. Playing
2. The launcher
3. Air combat
   • Aircraft
   • Weapons
   • Game modes
   • Ranked
   • AI pilots and difficulty
   • Theaters
   • Time of day, weather and night
   • Carriers, tankers and Auto-Fly
   • Flight model and physiology
   • Sensors and line of sight
   • Cockpits and avionics
   • Models, paint and the hangar
   • Cameras, replay, logbook
   • Sound
   • Controls
   • Graphics settings
4. Space exploration
5. Multiplayer
6. Building and development
7. Project layout
8. Release notes

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Playing

In a browser

The website build is published to GitHub Pages (see Deploying). Any recent desktop browser with WebGL 2 works; a dedicated graphics card is strongly recommended. The game warns you if the browser is drawing on the CPU (SwiftShader) instead of the graphics card, and tells you how to switch hardware acceleration on.

Windows app

Download TRIAD-Air-Combat.exe: a portable app, no installer. It plays the live website, so game updates reach it without a new download: a few seconds after an update goes live the game switches to it at the main menu (mid-flight it waits until you are back in the menu).

From source

npm install
npm run dev          # http://localhost:5173

Node 18 or newer. See Building and development for the other builds.

Single file

npm run build:single writes one self-contained dist-single/index.html with every script, style and generated asset inlined. Double-click it to play from disk, with no server and no network. Fonts fall back to system fonts offline.

Phones and tablets

Touch controls switch on automatically on touch devices: a virtual stick, a throttle slider, fire, lock, weapon and countermeasure buttons, and drag-to-look.

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The launcher

The game opens on the TRIAD launcher: three full-height cards, one per program, each with its own backdrop. Pick with the mouse, the arrow keys or 1 / 2 / 3, and Enter to start. The last program you played is pre-selected.

Picking a program starts its loading screen: in-engine cinematic photographs of that program, a new one every 4 seconds with a slow push-in and a cross-fade, a fact along the bottom and a loading bar. It always takes 8 seconds from the pick to the menu. On a slow machine the menu comes up on time and the rest (jet portraits, the theater) keeps loading behind it.

A pulsing red NEW badge appears on a program's card while that program has release notes you have not opened yet. Each program keeps its own notes: the air combat menu lists only air updates and the space menu only space updates. Opening the notes clears the badge.

The air and space menus come in two styles, switchable in settings: CURRENT (the full menu with the 3D hangar) and SIMPLE (a compact list).

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Air combat

Aircraft

Thirteen aircraft, each with its own flight model, cockpit, sensors, weapons, sounds and a high-detail procedural 3D model built from the real jet's cross-sections and planform.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗