How a Roblox flight ends up on a real world map

A Roblox game is a world of its own. It has studs instead of metres, no north, no latitude and no longitude, and its airports are usually much closer together than the real ones. Yet on RoFlightTracker24 a flight from a Roblox version of Stockholm to a Roblox version of Gothenburg shows up over Sweden, taking off from the real runway at Arlanda and landing on the real one at Landvetter. This guide explains how that works, and why it looks right even though the game and the real world are built so differently.

What the game sends us

The tracker is a small script that airlines place in their game with our Studio plugin. Once a second it notes where each tracked plane is: its position in studs, how fast it is moving, which way its nose points, and whether its wheels are on the ground. Every few seconds it sends those notes to our server in one small batch for the whole game server. It also sends where the game's airports are, because those are what we measure everything against.

Two kinds of airport markers

The simplest marker is a single invisible part at each airport, tagged with the airport's real ICAO code, like ESSA for Stockholm Arlanda. One point is enough to know which airport a plane is near, but it can't tell us how big the airport is in the game or which way it faces.

The better way is to mark both ends of a runway. We know where both ends of about 13,700 real runways are, from the public OurAirports data. Two points in the game matched to two points in the real world fix everything we need: where the airport is, which way it is turned and how big it is. If your runway is 1,200 studs long and the real one is 3,300 metres, we know one stud is about 2.75 metres at that airport, so any game scale works. The taxiways, stands and aprons around the runway are stretched to match, and a plane taxiing in the game taxis around the real airport on the map.

Airports with crossing runways can have a pair of markers on each runway. Each runway then lines up with its real one, and the ground between them is blended smoothly. An optional gate marker, matched to a spot you click on a satellite map, pulls the terminal area onto the real terminal as well.

Between the airports

Roblox maps are small. Two airports might be 20,000 studs apart in the game while the real ones are 500 kilometres apart. If we used the airport scale for the whole flight, the plane would never get anywhere. So once a plane leaves the area around its departure airport, we switch to the route: how far along the line between the two in-game airports it is, and how far to the side of it. Those fractions are applied to the real great circle route between the real airports. Halfway in the game is halfway over the real world, and a turn to the left in the game is a turn to the left on the map.

The switch is gradual. Near an airport the real-size map counts fully, further out the route counts more and more, so the plane glides from one to the other without jumping. Approaching the destination, the same happens in reverse, which is why landings touch down on the real runway.

Altitude, speed and heading

Altitude is measured from the ground height of the nearest airport in the game, so a higher arrival airport still reads zero feet on its runway. Heading is worked out from where the plane's nose points after the same stretching the position goes through, so a plane lined up on a runway points along the real runway. Readings that are impossible, like a plane at two billion feet after a teleport glitch in the game, are thrown away before they reach the map.

Why the map is a few seconds behind

The live map draws each plane a few seconds behind the newest data. That way there is always a next position to glide towards, so planes move smoothly instead of jumping every time a batch arrives. The flown line behind the plane always stops exactly where the plane is drawn.

What this means for you

If you fly in a game that uses runway markers, what you see on the map is as close to real life as a Roblox game can get. If you run an airline, marking your runways takes about a minute per airport. The setup guide walks through it.