alt.hn

2/14/2026 at 7:33:24 PM

Descent, ported to the web

 https://mrdoob.github.io/three-descent/

by memalign

2/14/2026 at 10:34:50 PM

I absolutely LOVED this game when it first came out. I played with a trackball + keyboard, and the 6 degrees of freedom, paired with an environment where there often was no natural sense of "up" or "down" (zero gravity, inside tunnels) really blew my mind. I experienced a sensation I had never before experienced, almost out-of-body.

For example, you approach a "T" junction, and depending on your pitch angle, the branches may be up/down or left/right. But since there's no natural ground or sky, you can either maintain an orientation memory (I usually did automatically), or you can just let all that go and travel with no sense of true orientation.

Occasionally you reach an area with some signs or printed panels, and then you realize what the regional up/down orientation was; but it didn't matter in zero gravity.

by michaelteter

2/14/2026 at 8:50:26 PM

For anyone who enjoyed Descent, please go buy Overload. It's a pretty much perfect spiritual sequel, with a great soundtrack.

And I believe made by some of the people that formerly worked on Descent.

by dale_glass

2/14/2026 at 9:07:17 PM

That is true, furthermore Overload has an usermade campaign called Overload: First Strike, which is a conversion and upgrade of the entire Descent 1 campaign to Overload. Additionally I recommend Desecrators, which is a Descent-like with procedurally generated maps. Think Sublevel Zero or Everspace, except good.

by krige

2/14/2026 at 10:20:59 PM

One of the first PC games I ever played, I was single-digit years old when this released. Fond memories.

Will have to have a play of this web version and try out Overload, thanks.

by alias_neo

2/14/2026 at 10:35:25 PM

Surprisingly faithful! Works great on Safari, latest Mac OS.

by internet2000

2/14/2026 at 8:15:42 PM

Mr. Doob has been doing experiments like this for at least a decade, glad to see that he's still at it.

He's the creator of three.js, and it looks like this uses that for rendering instead of being a straight port.

by pverheggen

2/14/2026 at 9:03:58 PM

Impressively faithful, right down to weapons functioning incorrectly at a high framerate!

by Dove

2/14/2026 at 9:32:53 PM

I remember buying this at fry’s with my dad in the 90s!

by rkaregaran

2/14/2026 at 8:06:57 PM

Descent was a huge part of my childhood (and surprisingly my little kids are now big fans as well)! Unfortunately this seems to stutter pretty badly with audio issues as well for me on Firefox on Linux. As a huge fan of three.js and other past work... I guess I'll blame Claude?

by _dwt

2/14/2026 at 10:30:34 PM

Grew up with an Acer running Windows 95 that came with this preinstalled… now that’s bloatware that ain’t bloat. Descent floatware.

by Apocryphon

2/14/2026 at 8:01:23 PM

I’ve been following Mr. Doob since the flash days. Cool to see they’re still doobing cool things.

by efnx

2/14/2026 at 8:35:31 PM

I need to replay this game with a dual stick controller. Previously played it on a serial joystick and keyboard.

by xnx

2/14/2026 at 8:08:37 PM

I used to play this game incessantly. Audio on Firefox on Linux is, sadly, very very garbled.

by rcarmo

2/14/2026 at 8:14:11 PM

Is there a way to play this without geting vertigo?

by eptcyka

2/14/2026 at 8:27:18 PM

Try configuring WASD controls, mouse look, turning off auto roll / leveling. Use your choice of 'jump' and 'crouch' to slide up and down. Then it feels more like an ice-skating FPS than a flying game.

Keeping the cockpit on screen may also help provide a frame of reference.

I found that helped me enjoy the game more now that I'm older and less tolerant of 6DOF movement.

by paulryanrogers