3D RC Car Simulator
A radio-controlled buggy in a city park, in 3D — rendered by a little software-3D engine written from scratch on a plain canvas: perspective projection, near-plane clipping, painter’s-algorithm sorting and one directional sun, no WebGL and no libraries. Pines, leafy trees and a skyline ring the track. The driving is a proper arcade model — grip, momentum, a handbrake for drifting, and launch ramps with honest ballistics: your launch speed sets the arc, gravity does the rest. Traffic cones tumble when you clip them, a timed lap course threads eight gates, a spiral tower in the infield is climbed by driving in circles, and the yard is big enough to wind the motor right out — nearly 70 km/h flat out — with two doorways that take you indoors: a floodlit tunnel on the back straight and a neon-lit barn in the corner. Birds wheel overhead, the yard dog gives chase, and you can ride along from the driver’s seat. Nothing is sent to a server.
Drive through the glowing gate on the start line to begin a timed lap.
How to drive
It handles like the real thing: throttle and brake on one stick, steering on the other. The car carries momentum — lift off and it coasts; turn hard at speed and the back end steps out. Tap Space to pull the handbrake and it steps out a lot more, which is the quick way round the tight corners. Steering softens as you go faster, exactly as a twitchy RC buggy needs it to.
The course is the loop of eight gates marked by striped posts — the next one glows and carries a bobbing arrow. Cross the checkered start line to set the clock running, take the gates in order, and come back through the start to post a lap. Your best lap is remembered on your device. The cones are just for fun: clip one and it tumbles and skitters away; the posts and the cardboard boxes are solid, so don’t. Reset stands the cones back up and returns you to the line.
Then there are the ramps — this is where the physics shows off. Off the lip you’re a projectile: launch speed sets the arc, gravity brings you down, and the status line scores your air time. Jump the start line off the wedge on the home straight, clear the cardboard boxes and sail through gate 3 off the east ramp, or take the rooftop on the north straight flat out. Carry real speed — crawl up a ramp and you’ll just drop off the end. Press C for the driver’s-seat camera and do it all from inside the car, the steering wheel turning in your hands and the nose pitching up the slope and over the crest.
In the middle of the infield stands the spiral tower. Its terraces are too tall to drive straight up, so there’s exactly one way to the top: find the opening on the south side and keep turning — the road tightens as it climbs, a turn and a half to the deck by the flag. The way down is your choice, and the quickest one is straight off the edge.
Two places bring you indoors. The west straight runs through a floodlit tunnel — gate 7 hides inside it, so every lap gets a moment under the strip light — and the barn in the north-west corner is a little neon den with its own cones to rearrange and a crate in the way. The chase camera ducks under the roofs with you; the overhead camera politely removes them so you can see what you’re doing.
You’re not alone out there. Birds wheel over the park, and the yard dog minds its own business until something fast tears past — then it gives chase, barking, never quite quick enough to catch you. It bowls cones over with happy abandon; bump it and it yelps, sulks for a second, and trots off. No dogs are harmed: it is, after all, rectangles.
- ↑ / W — throttle
- ↓ / S — brake, then reverse
- ← → / A D — steer
- Space — handbrake (drift)
- C — camera: chase / driver’s seat / overhead
- R — reset
- M — mute / unmute sound
The engine note, tyre scrub and impact thuds are synthesised in the browser with the Web Audio API — no audio files are downloaded; pitch follows the motor and the thumps follow how hard you actually hit things. Use the Sound button (or press M) to turn them off; the choice is remembered. This is an original implementation and is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any commercial product.