Sylph

Sylph is a first-person spaceflight simulation set in a star system orbiting a black hole. You fly spacecraft using realistic orbital mechanics and Newtonian physics, manage ship systems, and explore a real-time simulation of the black hole that includes Schwarzschild geodesic ray tracing, a gravity funnel and an event horizon.

Flight and navigation

The game includes open-world play and scenarios. You can dock using a capture envelope and skip time instantly in increments down to a minute. Orbital mechanics include sphere-of-influence transitions, a transfer planner and a rendezvous solver, while telemetry is calculated in real time from live state vectors.

Flight uses a momentum-based six-degrees-of-freedom model: each thruster applies Newtonian force to the spacecraft. An independent lower-thrust system has forward and aft modes, and 12 individual RCS thrusters provide rotational and linear control. Eight autopilot programs operate through the physical thruster simulation.

Cockpit and ship systems

Ten holographic cockpit panels display functional information. You manage startup sequences, electrical loads, pumps and valves; these systems are independently modeled from real physics, and failures cascade from the simulation state.

The main engine models closed-loop expander-cycle bipropellant combustion, including rotational inertia, turbopump performance and flow-dependent degradation, cavitation, turbulent-flow losses, boost-pump staging, line charging and draining, heat soak and regenerative cooling. The electrical simulation tracks state of charge and voltage sag, with two independent generators, circuit breakers, power draw, proportional load sharing and overload trips.