The version I wanted to make
Faceted Flight left Early Access ten years after it went on Steam. It has multiplayer and a map editor now, runs in a browser and on phones, and I'm making it open source.
Faceted Flight went into Early Access on Steam on October 5th, 2016, ten years ago this week. It was a retro-stunt flyer built for the Oculus DK1. I was working at Oculus then, and I wanted it out before I got too swamped with the day job.
I’d been on it for roughly three years as a solo developer. Launch day for a small game with a tiny following is quiet, and a few months later I moved on to other projects. VR was changing fast, and Faceted Flight was designed around the DK1’s constraints - rotation only. Then DK2 came along, giving us the ability for positional tracking - players could lean around the cockpit. Then room-scale VR showed up with the Vive giving creative developers an entirely new canvas to make experiences for. So - the cobwebs started to form, and Faceted Flight stayed in Early Access limbo…
Fast forward to 2026 - I’ve been porting my old Unity projects to web experiences, and I’ve been building King Tide - which kept reminding me of Faceted Flight. Then I realized that the timing was a perfect excuse to revisit FF with a 10th Anniversary Edition.
The edition I wanted
This one is the definitive edition - no more early access.
The game now has multiplayer. You host a race and send your friends a link, and anyone who just wants to watch gets a spectator link. It has a map editor, so you can lay out your own ring course over one of the islands, fly it, and share it.
The original is still in there as the Classic edition, you can swap visual styles mid-flight. Sitting in the cockpit for the first time in a decade hit me like a handful of “member-berries.”
Part of the port’s goal was to make the game easier than ever to approach - it runs in a browser now, on three.js and WebXR, and on phones too.
Why I’m making it open source
A lot of my career was helped by people with more experience who were willing to answer questions and give me feedback. I’m hoping that making Faceted Flight open source gives other people a launch pad for their own ideas, and a place to pick it apart and learn what makes it tick.
It isn’t done. I still want to improve the feel, the sense of speed, ship the aircraft variants and the experience of flight overall. Have ideas on how it could be better? Hit me up - or better yet, make a pull request.
all Faceted Flight updates