Improved the Flight Path Simulation with GPU Instanced Rendering - 30,000 planes at 60fps!

[u/Ok-Entertainment1592]

Just finished improving this interactive flight tracker that renders thousands of flights around a 3D Earth. The key breakthrough was implementing GPU instanced mesh rendering:

Performance Stats:

• 30,000+ aircraft: Single GPU draw call

• Instanced geometry batching for both planes and flight paths

• Custom GLSL shaders handle all animation on GPU

• ~1000x performance improvement over traditional rendering

• Consistent 60fps even with maximum flights

Tech Stack:

• Three.js + WebGL 2.0

• Custom vertex/fragment shaders

• Instanced mesh geometry

The GUI is organized into 5 control panels (Flight Controls, Flight Path, Plane Controls, Earth Controls, Brightness) for easy experimentation.

Live Demo: https://jeantimex.github.io/flight-path/ Source: https://github.com/jeantimex/flight-path

Would love feedback on the performance optimizations or any suggestions for improvements!