If you've spent any time in the developer console lately, you know that getting a roblox custom plane system script to actually feel good is a lot harder than it looks. It's one thing to make a part fly around the map, but it's a whole different story to make it feel like an actual aircraft that responds to the wind, banks into turns, and doesn't just jitter across the sky like a lagging brick. Most of the free models you'll find in the toolbox are either five years out of date or so bloated with messy code that trying to fix them is more work than just starting from scratch.
Why bother making your own script anyway?
You might be wondering why you shouldn't just grab a pre-made chassis and call it a day. The problem with most generic systems is that they're built for one specific type of plane. If you want to make a nimble fighter jet but the script you found was meant for a heavy cargo plane, you're going to spend hours tweaking variables that don't even make sense. When you write your own roblox custom plane system script, you have total control over the "vibe" of the flight.
Building it yourself means you can decide exactly how the drag works, how fast the engine revs up, and how much the nose dips when you cut the power. Plus, from a performance standpoint, custom scripts are almost always leaner. You aren't dragging around a bunch of legacy code for features you aren't even using, which helps keep your game's frame rate steady when things get chaotic.
The building blocks of flight physics
Before you even touch a line of code, you have to think about how Roblox handles physics. Back in the day, everyone used BodyVelocity and BodyGyro. They were the bread and butter of every flying machine on the platform. But these days, Roblox has moved toward "Vector Forces" and "Constraints" like LinearVelocity and AngularVelocity. If you want your plane to feel modern, you should definitely be looking at these newer objects.
The core of any roblox custom plane system script is the loop that constantly updates these forces. You'll usually want to run this on the Heartbeat signal from RunService. This ensures that every single frame, your plane is calculating its new position based on its current speed and the direction it's pointing. If you try to do this with a simple while true do wait() loop, your flight is going to feel stuttery and gross. Nobody wants to fly a plane that skips through the air.
The old vs. the new ways
While the older Body Movers still work, they're technically deprecated. I've found that using LinearVelocity with the RelativeTo property set to the plane's primary part makes things so much easier. It allows you to say "go forward at 100 studs per second" without having to manually calculate the world-space vector every single frame. It handles the math for you, which is a massive time-saver when you're just trying to get a prototype off the ground.
Connecting the controls to the pilot
Now, a plane that just flies in a straight line is just a missile. To make it a plane, you need user input. This is where the LocalScript comes in. You need to capture the player's mouse movements or their WASD key presses and pipe that data into your roblox custom plane system script.
A popular way to handle this is by using the mouse position to determine the "target" direction. If the player's mouse is at the top of the screen, you want the plane to pitch up. If it's to the left, you want it to roll or yaw. A little tip here: don't make the plane instantly snap to the mouse position. That feels robotic. Instead, use a bit of lerping (linear interpolation) or a "smooth damp" function to make the plane gradually follow the cursor. It gives the aircraft a sense of weight and momentum that makes the flying experience way more immersive.
Making it feel real with lift and banking
This is where the men are separated from the boys in flight dev. Real planes don't just move like flying cars; they rely on lift. In your roblox custom plane system script, you can simulate this by calculating the plane's forward velocity and applying an upward force based on that speed. If the plane is going fast, it stays level. If it slows down, the nose should start to drop as it loses lift. This adds a layer of strategy to the gameplay because players actually have to manage their airspeed to stay airborne.
Banking is another huge factor. When a plane turns, it shouldn't just rotate on a flat axis like a spinning top. It should tilt. You can code this by linking the roll of the plane to the horizontal movement of the mouse. The harder the player turns, the more the plane should lean into it. Not only does this look ten times better visually, but it also helps the player "feel" the turn.
Handling the "deadzone"
One thing many developers forget is a deadzone for the mouse. If the plane reacts to even a single pixel of movement, it's going to be incredibly twitchy and frustrating to fly. You want to create a small area in the center of the screen where the plane just flies straight. Once the player moves their cursor outside that circle, then the script starts applying the rotation forces. It's a small detail, but it makes a world of difference for the person actually playing the game.
Dealing with the server-side lag
One of the biggest hurdles with any roblox custom plane system script is networking. If you handle all the physics on the server, the player is going to feel a delay between moving their mouse and the plane actually turning. It feels like driving through mud. But if you handle it all on the client, other players will see the plane teleporting around because of latency.
The "sweet spot" is usually setting the network ownership of the plane to the player who is flying it. This lets their computer handle the physics calculations locally, which makes the controls feel instant and snappy. The server then just replicates those movements to everyone else. It's not a perfect solution—you have to be careful about exploiters—but for a smooth flying experience, it's almost always the way to go.
Final touches and testing
Once you've got the physics and the inputs working, it's time to add the "juice." I'm talking about engine sounds that change pitch based on the throttle, particle emitters for contrails, and maybe a subtle camera shake when the player hits high speeds. These things don't change how the roblox custom plane system script functions, but they change how the player perceives the script.
Don't be afraid to spend a lot of time just flying around your map and tweaking numbers. Change the turn speed by 0.1, fly again, and see how it feels. Maybe the plane is too floaty, or maybe it crashes too easily. The best flight systems aren't the ones with the most complex math; they're the ones that have been fine-tuned through hours of playtesting.
Building a custom system is a bit of a rabbit hole, but once you see your plane take off smoothly and bank into its first turn, you'll realize it was worth every second of debugging. It gives your game a unique identity that you just can't get from a template. So, get in there, start messing with some vectors, and see what kind of wings you can build.