Getting your roblox plane engine to behave properly is probably the most frustrating yet rewarding part of game dev on the platform. It's the literal heart of your aircraft, and if it's even a little bit off, your players are going to notice immediately. We've all been there—you spend three hours building a beautiful 1:1 scale replica of a Boeing 747, only to have it do backflips into the stratosphere the second you unanchor it. It's a rite of passage, honestly.
But once you get past the initial "why is my plane a spinning top" phase, you realize that the engine is where the magic happens. It's not just about making the thing move forward; it's about the weight, the drag, and that specific feeling of lift that makes a flight simulator feel like, well, a simulator.
Choosing Your Physics Approach
When you start working on a roblox plane engine, you basically have two paths you can take. You can go the "Legacy" route using things like BodyVelocity and BodyGyro, or you can use the newer constraints like LinearVelocity and AngularVelocity.
Most veteran devs will tell you to stick with the newer constraints. They play much nicer with the modern Roblox physics engine and tend to be a bit more stable when you're dealing with high speeds. The old BodyMovers are technically deprecated, and while they still work, they can be a bit jittery. If you want your plane to feel "heavy" and realistic, constraints are the way to go.
The biggest mistake I see beginners make is trying to move the plane by just setting the Velocity property of the part directly. Don't do that. It bypasses the physics solver and makes the movement look choppy. You want to apply forces, not just teleport the plane a few studs every frame.
The Secret Sauce: Network Ownership
If there's one thing that ruins a roblox plane engine more than bad math, it's lag. You've probably played a game where the plane stutters every half-second. Usually, that's a Network Ownership issue.
By default, the server tries to calculate the physics for everything. But for a plane, the server just isn't fast enough to keep up with the player's inputs. You have to set the Network Ownership of the plane's primary part to the player who is sitting in the pilot seat. This lets the player's computer handle the physics calculations locally, and then it just tells the server where the plane is. This makes the flight feel buttery smooth for the pilot, which is exactly what you want.
Just a heads up, though: giving the client ownership means exploiters can technically mess with the plane's position. But for most games, the trade-off for a smooth flying experience is totally worth it. You can always add server-side checks later if you're worried about people flying at Mach 10 in a Cessna.
Scripting the Lift and Drag
Roblox doesn't actually have "air" in its physics engine. It's basically a vacuum unless you tell it otherwise. This means your roblox plane engine needs to fake the physics of aerodynamics.
You need to write a script that calculates lift based on your forward velocity. The faster the plane goes, the more upward force you apply. If you stop moving, the lift should drop to zero, causing the plane to stall. It sounds complicated, but it's really just a bit of math inside a RunService.Heartbeat loop.
Drag is just as important. Without drag, your plane would just keep accelerating forever. You need to apply a counter-force that grows as your speed increases. This creates a "terminal velocity" for your aircraft, preventing it from breaking the game's physics at high speeds.
Finding the Center of Gravity
This is where a lot of people get stuck. If your "engine" force is pushing from the very back of the plane, but your Center of Mass is in the middle, the plane is going to want to loop-de-loop. You have to make sure your forces are applied correctly relative to the Center of Gravity.
I usually put an invisible "EnginePart" right in the middle of the plane's mass. All the thrust and lift forces get applied to that part. It keeps everything balanced and prevents the plane from pitching up or down uncontrollably the moment you touch the throttle.
Making it Sound and Look Real
A great roblox plane engine isn't just about the math; it's about the feedback. If I push the throttle to 100%, I want to hear that engine roar.
You can use the PlaybackSpeed property of a Sound object to simulate an engine revving up. Link the sound's pitch to your current throttle percentage. It's a simple trick, but it adds so much immersion. When the pilot throttles up, the pitch goes higher; when they idle, it drops to a low rumble.
And don't forget the particles! A little bit of heat haze or some faint exhaust trails behind the engines makes a world of difference. It gives the player a visual cue that the engine is actually doing work. Even a simple ParticleEmitter with a short lifetime can make the plane feel like it's actually interacting with the world.
Why You Should Avoid Pre-Made Kits
I know it's tempting to just grab a "Free Plane Kit" from the Toolbox and call it a day. We've all done it. But the problem with those kits is that they're usually a mess of outdated code and weirdly weighted parts. When something breaks—and it will break—you won't have any idea how to fix it because you didn't build the logic.
Building your own roblox plane engine from scratch teaches you so much about how the platform actually works. You learn about CFrame manipulation, vector math, and how to optimize your scripts so they don't tank the server's frame rate. Plus, there's nothing quite like the feeling of finally getting your own custom flight code to work perfectly after hours of debugging.
Keeping Performance in Mind
If you're building a game with lots of planes, you have to be careful. Having twenty different planes all running complex physics scripts at 60 frames per second can get heavy.
One way to optimize your roblox plane engine is to disable the scripts when no one is in the pilot seat. There's no reason for a parked plane to be calculating lift and drag. You can also simplify the physics for planes that are far away from the player. If a plane is just a tiny speck in the distance, it doesn't need a high-fidelity physics simulation; it just needs to move from point A to point B.
Final Thoughts on Plane Dev
At the end of the day, there is no "perfect" way to build an engine. Some people prefer a more arcade-like feel where the plane is super easy to control, while others want a hardcore simulation where one wrong move leads to a crash.
The beauty of the roblox plane engine is that you can tweak it to fit whatever style you're going for. Don't be afraid to experiment. Change the numbers, mess with the friction, and see what happens. Sometimes the coolest features come from a "mistake" in the code that actually ended up feeling really good to fly.
Just remember to save your work often. There's nothing worse than finally nailing that perfect flight feel only to have Studio crash before you can hit publish. Happy flying, and good luck with those landings—they're always the hardest part anyway.