A fan-made browser recreation of the Tesla Roadster launch night (15 October 2026, US time, at SpaceX's McGregor, Texas test site). Drive the three versions of the car, sit back and watch the four highlight stunts replayed in Event mode with a broadcast-style overlay, or take the base car for a track day at Spa-Francorchamps, by day or by night. Built with three.js and Vite. Playable with a keyboard or a gamepad.
Event mode, then laps of Spa by day and by night, recorded frame by frame. The car is on autopilot, but it uses the same physics and controls as a player. Full MP4. Re-record it with tools/demo.
This is an unofficial tribute. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tesla or SpaceX, uses no Tesla assets or logos, and draws everything procedurally in code.
Each image puts the in-game render (left) beside a frame from the closer-look video or an official photo (right). Reference frames are shown for comparison only and belong to their owners.
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| Side profile, wing raised | Front three-quarter, headlamp panels dropped |
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| Tail bar under braking, wing up | Diffuser with cold-gas nozzles and suction fans |
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Rear trunk lid open on the gas tank behind the seats (K) |
Butterfly doors and wing up |
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| Yoke and floating touchscreen | Live track-mode touchscreen |
Headlamps on (L): the triangular corner panel sinks at its rear edge and uncovers the lamp bar.
First-person camera (C): live speed and telemetry on the touchscreen.
npm install
npm run dev # http://localhost:5173
npm run build # static site in dist/Pushing to main deploys to GitHub Pages through .github/workflows/deploy.yml. Add ?event to the URL to start straight into Event mode, or ?spa=day / ?spa=night for the track day.
Pushes and pull requests run a read-only check of local README links, images and
supported commands against the source snapshot. It checks that documented
npm run scripts are declared in package.json, without executing those scripts
or installing game dependencies. The Action is pinned to the reviewed Readme
Reality v0.1.1 commit. Read its summary for skipped coverage: a passing static
check does not validate game physics, browser interactions or external links.
The car, modelled from Tesla's official photos, the close-look video and the Track Mode reveal: a low wedge in satin silver with smooth, creased surfacing with a black lower body and silver sill blades, a bronze glass canopy from the windshield to the tail, a raked black nose under a full-width light line, headlamps hidden under a triangular panel on each front corner of the hood that sinks at its rear edge to uncover the lamp bar, a hood outlet that only opens when the fans run hard (the front lid's rear edge sinks below the windshield base, as in the High-Downforce Mode shots of the reveal), a rear trunk lid behind the cabin that swings up over the carbon-wrapped gas sphere, amber markers over the outlets behind the front wheels, butterfly doors, a deck wing that rises up and back on swan-neck struts and tilts into an airbrake, fender flaps behind each wheel that open in Track Mode, a full-width red tail bar with lit lettering over a lit RDSTR plate, four gold-lined cold-gas nozzles over four suction-fan bays in a carbon diffuser, and six-spoke wheels on aero discs. Inside: white buckets with lit badges, belts, a dark alcantara dash with carbon trim and a red ambient strip, the squared yoke (it turns with the steering), a console tray, the roll hoop, and the floating touchscreen, which in the cockpit camera shows live telemetry in the car's Track Mode layout (speed, gear, battery, brake/accel/regen, temperatures, g-meter, lap trace, tyres, 0-60 session and thruster gas).
Three versions, as announced:
| Performance | Thrust | Rocket | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suction fans | yes | yes | yes |
| Cold-gas nozzles | none | 4 rear | 10: 4 rear, 4 lift (one behind each wheel), 2 nose (angled forward and out from the front corners) |
| Seats | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 0-60 mph in the game | 1.57 s | 0.84 s | 0.58 s |
| Tesla's claim | under 1.6 s | under 0.9 s | under 0.6 s |
The physics is a real rigid body, not an arcade model. The car has mass and inertia; four raycast wheels with springs, dampers and a slip-angle tyre model (about 1.26 g of grip on their own); fans that pull the car onto whatever surface it is on, up to 4,700 kg (the figure the broadcast's downforce gauge peaked at; Tesla quotes up to 2 g of suction and over 2 g of cornering, against about 1.26 g for the tyres alone), independent of speed; traction control, ABS and stability control; and speed-sensitive steering whose full lock follows the grip you have right now, so with fan boost on the car corners at around 3.5 to 4 g at any speed and without it at about 1.5 g; aero drag and wing downforce; and every cold-gas nozzle as a separate force at its real position. The Rocket has a flight computer: stick input commands roll, pitch and yaw rates and, while hovering, holds the attitude you left it at. It splits the lift between the four lift jets with the least total thrust that still gives the roll and pitch it wants (push-only jets cannot pull, so it adds just enough lift to the opposite side), and fires the angled nose jets for yaw. Levelling is roll-first: an upside-down car rights itself with a barrel roll about its long axis, not a flip, and each axis eases off as it closes so the car stops level instead of rolling past it. When the jets can't give full lift and full torque at once, lift gives way, so a roll can always be stopped. Turn on flight assist and it also levels itself and holds its heading when you let go, and leans against drift like a drone while hovering (Event mode always flies with assist). It ignores a wheel briefly leaving the road over a bump, so it never fights your steering on the ground. This is what lets the car climb past vertical and hang upside down, and why a flip only works if you have the thrust and the height for it.
Landing burn. Gas is the limit in the air, and cold-gas jets burn it at a rate set by thrust alone, so hovering down slowly is the most wasteful way to land: every second on the jets is spent just holding the car up against gravity. The idea comes from vibe-motion/hoverslam, whose sampling optimiser, given a gas cost, kept finding the same answer: level the car with small puffs, let it fall, then fire everything at the last moment (a "suicide burn"). The Rocket's flight computer now lands that way. It works out each step how far the car needs to stop from its current fall speed, planning on 90% of the most lift the four jets can give without pitching the car (the front pair sits nearer the centre of mass and saturates first, so that is about 57 kN rather than 80 kN), lights the burn when the ground is that close, and trims the thrust from there to reach the ground at about 1.2 m/s. Those numbers came from a cross-entropy search over the burn margin, touchdown speed and ignition lead, run on the game's own physics with every touchdown kept soft. Against the old hover-down landings the same stunts now use: flight off the ramp 66 → 50 kg of gas, kickflip over the lineup 59 → 43 kg, vertical jump & flip 50 → 46 kg (that one is mostly the hop and the flip itself). With flight assist on it also catches you: fall off something without holding lift, fast enough that the touchdown would be over about 9 m/s, and it fires a late burn of its own for a firm landing at about 3 m/s (the car's screen shows Landing burn). Hold lift and you fly it yourself.
The four stunts, in the order and with the captions of the broadcast highlights:
- Vertical wall climb / holding upside down. A tall, narrow ramp that curls over to 170°, about 68 ft up. Suction holds the car on the ceiling; it then reverses back down.
- Flight off the ramp. Up the same ramp and off the lip upside down. As in the broadcast, the flight computer barrel-rolls it upright about its long axis in under a second, levels it, drops flat with the lift jets off, and catches itself with one short, hard burn on all four just above the ground for a soft touchdown in a cloud of smoke (see the landing burn below).
- Kickflip over the lineup. A thruster hop and a full 360° roll over a Model 3, Model Y, Cybertruck, Cybercab and Semi parked side by side. As in the event, take-off, roll, recovery and landing stay on one straight line: the hop pushes along the car's own up axis only while it is upright, and heading hold keeps the nose pointed down the track (about 1 m of sideways drift and under 1° of heading change over the whole jump). Replayed in slow motion.
- Vertical jump & flip. From a standstill: lift, backflip, then a late landing burn, in front of the red pillar and the light fans. Replayed in slow motion.
Event mode closes with a 0-60 run on the drag strip (the event's timed run was 0.81 s).
Spa-Francorchamps track day. A separate map, well away from the launch site: pick Spa · Day or Spa · Night in the menu. Only the base Performance car is allowed on track. You start in your pit box in the pit lane, drive out past the end of the pit wall and join the lap. The 7.0 km circuit follows the real outline and its roughly 100 m of climb and fall: La Source, the plunge to Eau Rouge and up Raidillon, the Kemmel straight, Les Combes, Pouhon, Blanchimont and the Bus Stop. Kerbs line the corners, grass run-off slows you down, armco and the pit wall are solid, and the Ardennes forest fills the hills around it. Day has sun and shadows; night has stars, moonlight, floodlight towers lighting the track in pools, lit garages and the car's headlamps. The timer starts when you cross the line: current, last and best lap (kept between visits). R puts you back on the track.
The broadcast overlay, after the stream's: an arc gauge for downforce (kg) or G-force, a globe with the car inside showing its attitude, pitch in degrees, altitude in feet, and a top-down diagram that lights each nozzle as it fires. Free driving adds speed, a 0-60 timer and a score for flips, rolls, air time, clearing the lineup and the wall hang.
| Action | Keyboard | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Throttle / brake (hold brake at a stop to reverse) | W S |
RT / LT |
| Steer | A D |
Left stick |
| Rear thrusters | Shift (Thrust: also Space) |
RB (Thrust: also A) |
| Rocket: hop, hold to hover | Space |
A |
| Rocket hovering: climb / descend | W / S |
RT / LT |
| Rocket in the air: pitch, roll | W S, A D |
Left stick |
| Rocket in the air: yaw | Q E |
Right stick |
| Track Mode (lower, stiffer, wing up, more suction) | T |
X |
| Fan boost: full suction for maximum grip (on the wall: fans off to drop) | F |
LB |
| Handbrake | B |
B |
| Camera (chase, far, cockpit, broadcast) | C |
Y |
| Look around | Right stick | |
| Headlights / doors | L / O |
D-pad up / down |
| Trunk (gas sphere) | K |
|
| Jump to a stunt | 1-5 |
D-pad left / right |
| Respawn (Spa: back on track) | R |
View |
| Menu / pause / leave Event mode | Esc |
Menu |
| Flight assist (auto-level) on/off | G |
RS click |
| Hide help / mute | H / M |
LS click |
| Controller vibration on/off (remembered) | N |
Hold LS click |
Controller details: radial stick deadzones with a rescaled live zone, response curves on steering and flight inputs, trigger deadzones, speed-sensitive steering, and continuous rumble from thrust, suction and tyre slip. Pads that support trigger rumble get brake load on the left trigger and traction limit on the right. The menu works fully from the controller.
Tips: take the wall at about 35 mph and keep a little throttle on; brake near the top to hang, then reverse down or press fans-off to drop. For the lineup, hop with the Rocket about 30 m before the cars at 40 mph and roll the stick.
- Tesla's official Roadster photos and reservation page (tesla.com/roadster): body, glass, nose, tail, wheels, doors, wing and interior.
- The broadcast highlights clip of all four stunts: stunt order and captions, the wall ramp's shape and height (pitch 170°, altitude about 68 ft), the 4,700 kg downforce reading, the overlay design, the four downward lift jets and the smoke on landing, the lineup and the flip stage.
- The Track Mode reveal video: paint, surfacing, glass tint and the fender flaps that open in Track Mode.
- Fan figures: up to 2 g of suction, over 2 g of cornering from 0 to 50 mph, about 1.26 g from the tyres alone, and a front airflow passage that opens in the high-speed mode: Drive Tesla Canada, TeslaNorth on the Hagerty interview.
- Spa-Francorchamps outline from bacinger/f1-circuits (MIT, © Tomislav Bacinger). Elevation is approximated from published figures for the circuit.
- Press coverage of the event for trims, the 0.81 s run, 0-60 claims, nozzle counts and the 600 L / 250 kg air load: Fox Business, Engadget, ExplainX.
Inferred or invented: exact surfacing (the model is low-poly), nozzle placement on the body, all physics constants beyond the quoted figures (tuned to land on the claimed 0-60 times), the ramp's exact curve (modelled as a circle), the venue layout, a slow gas top-up between runs, and the scoring. At Spa: the elevation profile, track widths, run-off, barrier and kerb placement, the pit buildings, grandstands and terrain.
src/spec.js car dimensions, wheels, nozzles, collision hull and the three versions
src/track.js venue layout shared by physics and rendering
src/physics.js rigid-body car: suspension, tyres, suction, aero, thrusters, flight computer
src/car.js procedural Roadster model and its animation
src/world.js night venue: wall ramp, lineup, flip stage, drag strip, lights, crowd
src/spa-track.js Spa-Francorchamps centreline, elevation, pit lane and the physics surface
src/spa.js Spa scene (day or night) and the lap timer
src/hud.js broadcast overlay: gauges, attitude globe, thruster map
src/event.js Event mode: autopilot scripts, cameras, captions, replays
src/input.js keyboard and Gamepad API
src/fx.js particles (cold gas, smoke, tyre smoke)
src/audio.js synthesised sound
src/main.js menu, scoring, cameras, game loop
preview/ standalone pages for checking the car and the venue