Features

This page goes a bit deeper than the tutorial into how the game actually works.

How flight works (physics)

A hot air balloon has exactly two controls: the burner heats air to make you rise, and the rip line vents air to make you sink. Vertical motion is yours to control — horizontal motion is entirely up to the wind. That's true in real ballooning, and it's true here too.

Dropped markers fall under gravity like real objects, with a capped terminal fall speed tuned to feel close to a real marker drop.

Wind that changes with altitude

Wind direction and speed differ by altitude. The game reads a per-altitude wind dataset (the pibal table) and applies it in real time based on your current height. That's what makes changing altitude to catch a better direction such a core part of flying a balloon.

Near the ground (roughly below 500 ft) there's also a "ground wind" effect that adds small, local turbulence — reflecting how wind gets harder to read the closer you are to the surface.

Time control and replays

Fly at normal speed while reading the wind carefully, or speed time up to ×8 during long transits. Flights that land close to the target are automatically saved as replays you can watch again.

View and gondola

Switch between a first-person view inside the gondola and a view from outside the balloon. Inside the gondola you'll find a woven basket, the gores (the 16 vertical panels that make up the balloon's envelope), the burner flame, and the rip-line rope — plus a compass to track your heading.

Multiplayer

Share a room code to fly the same sky with friends; other players appear as "ghost" balloons. To keep the game free for everyone, there's a cap on how many people can fly at once.

Balloon design

Colors and patterns are fully customizable. Beyond picking from ready-made patterns, you can paint individual grid cells or even split cells diagonally into triangular panels to build a fully original design, then share it as a short code. See the Pattern Editor page for details.