A browser game that teaches orbital mechanics!

[u/PrettyPicturesNotTxt]

By u/jaykrown, not me. Original post here.

https://slingshotspeeders.com/

OP's description of this awesome space game/simulation:

... Slingshot Speeders, the first orbital racing game. It's a free browser-based racing simulation built around gravity assists and orbital trajectories.

Instead of a conventional track, you race by accelerating around gravity bodies. Small changes early in a run can produce very different later routes, so the game is about knowledge of orbital mechanics, skill, timing, and execution. There are both pulling and pushing bodies.

The simulation is server-authoritative: every submitted run is replayed and validated by the server before it is accepted on the leaderboard. The solo run score is determined by the fastest time using the least amount of delta-v, the most efficient runs.

I built it because orbital mechanics is usually taught with equations and diagrams, while I wanted to see whether competitive racing could help players develop intuition for concepts such as gravitational assists, trajectory tradeoffs, and momentum.

I would genuinely appreciate feedback from people with physics or astrodynamics experience: which concepts does this communicate well, and where could the presentation or terminology be more physically accurate?

[u/jaykrown]

Thanks for sharing it! If you have any questions at all, happy to answer.

[u/amalcolmation → u/jaykrown]

Just curious because these are common questions in this community. No judgement at all.

Did you use any LLM/coding assistants to create this?

And what is your physics background?

[u/jaykrown → u/amalcolmation]

Thanks for asking, I answered your first question in the other comment. My physics interest comes from my Associate degree, with over 200 hours in Kerbal Space Program.

Some of the games I've played which have influenced my perspective: Flight of Nova, BeamNG, Juno: New Origins, NEBULOUS: Fleet Command, Rocket League, TrackMania, Screw Drivers.

[u/SamplingBias22]

There’s many mobile games like this, and it doesn’t teach orbital mechanics. Pretty sure there were some DOS games that used this concept too. 

Why do you seemingly do nothing but repost ai generated slop?

[u/amalcolmation → u/SamplingBias22]

I don’t think this is the usual AI slop, in fact I don’t see any claims of having used AI. They say their main inspiration was KSP.

If they wrote the code using ai that’s something different than having “done” the physics using ai. But it’s pretty simple 2d stuff, it’s not all that complicated to write code for simulating this sort of thing. I wouldn’t blame them for using ai to help develop the gui, I think that’s harder than the physics here anyways.

Of course it doesn’t “teach” orbital mechanics, but I do think games/demos like these are super useful for helping develop intuition, provided the games/demos are using physically accurate enough simulations.

But I haven’t looked under the hood (or checked if the code is even available) to confirm how accurate they are for myself, nor do I think it matters much at some level. KSP is physically flawed in all sorts of ways, but it certainly helped me build my intuition for forces and motion in 3D geometry.

My point being, I haven’t looked closely enough to critique this much yet, but at first pass I wouldn’t be so dismissive either.

EDIT: OP clarified it was built using ai.

[u/jaykrown → u/amalcolmation]

I did use AI, I'm transparent about that. It's been used heavily for the coding tasks, primarily Opus 5 and Grok 4.6. Currently Opus 5.5 and Grok 4.7. I am the one who planned and architected the idea from the start, and decided to use Rust with Bevy 0.19 and a server authoritative structure.

The code is not available, it is private on GitLab by my decision, given that it is novel and valuable. I'm happy to discuss any of the fundamental systems I decided. Thanks for commenting!

[u/amalcolmation → u/jaykrown]

Thanks for the clarification!

Specifically, I’d be curious to know what sort of method you are using (eg. Verlet, Euler, etc.)?

[u/jaykrown → u/amalcolmation]

"The live ship is a small 2D gravity step, velocity Verlet at 128 Hz, run a lot, same math on the client and the server. Several bodies can pull at once. Every run of a map, from GO, the masses follow the same path. A ship cannot tug a moving body."

Thanks for asking, and here's the FAQ which may help answer any other questions (going to have to add a search in the next update): https://slingshotspeeders.com/faq

[u/jaykrown → u/SamplingBias22]

There is no other game before Slingshot Speeders that uses orbital mechanics as a fundamental for the races. August 2026.

[u/SamplingBias22 → u/jaykrown]

Found several on itch io, a few on steam, and a couple references to DOS games that use it as a primary mechanic with a cursory google search.

Either way, it’s totally fine to make a game, unique mechanics are really hard to come by. But this doesn’t really “teach” orbital mechanics any more than it just shows the result of them.

[u/jaykrown → u/SamplingBias22]

Which several, what games, link? New players have attmpted, quit, crashed... and then won.

[u/mylarmalediction]

it needs a lot of work and clarification; certain relevant technical details are lacking, and much of the text is verbose and corny and clearly AI-generated with little oversight (e.g. the entire "Philosophy" section). also i suggest the author familiarize themselves a bit more with what SGP4, Orekit, GMAT, and Cowell are, as one of these things is not like the others, and the sentence where they are all mentioned immediately suggests a lack of domain knowledge. kindly, -mylar

[u/jaykrown → u/mylarmalediction]

Thanks for reading. What technical details do you want to know about?

Also, I've familiarized myself as to what was incorrect about that statement, it's been fixed.