Pieter Levels used AI to build a 3D flight simulator in a browser, added multiplayer mode, and watched it crash… in a good way.
If you haven't heard, Pieter Levels just used the popular coding tool Cursor to rapidly build a viral new flight simulator, despite having zero game dev experience.
How rapidly? And how viral? Well, within just seven days of the first line of code getting generated, the project:
Went mega viral after an Elon Musk retweet,
survived a massive DDOS attack, and even
started generating revenue through $30 upgrades.
To help you appreciate just how much work Levels shipped in the space of a single week, let's cover the entire timeline of events from the beginning:
Last week, while messing around with Cursor, Levels created a lo-fi “radio” app.
A week later (February 22nd), he followed up with an idea to build a "3D flying game in the browser with skyscrapers."
It took just three hours of writing prompts in Cursor for him to announce a playable flight simulator set in a beach town, complete with cliffs and a runway — all based on vanilla HTML and JavaScript under the hood:
By midnight on that first night, he’d added:
mobile controls (nippleJS),
and explosions
But he wasn't done!
He wanted the game to be multiplayer, so Betalist founder Marc Köhlbrugge suggested he use PeerJS (WebRTC). Levels went with this, but it only enabled two players to join a single server at a time.
By this point, he was already 3,000 lines of code deep and ran into some roadblocks with Cursor. So? Michael Truell, Cursor’s cofounder, reached out and helped him sort it out. Less than an hour later, Levels was back in business. And he finally managed to stream player positions in real time using a Python WebSocket server with xAI's Grok 3.
Then the game absolutely blew up. Thousands of players soared through the skies together. Elon Musk even retweeted one of Levels' posts:
In response, Levels promptly added a game mechanic where players could fly to Mars in a nod to Musk's company SpaceX.
At the height of its popularity, Levels threw in a microtransaction allowing users to fly F-16s for $29.99.
That little addition didn’t go unnoticed, and not everyone was thrilled about it. Especially professional game developers.
A user on X named @JimDean9000 weighed in on behalf of game devs:
I don't make games but I wonder how a real game dev feels right now: a guy makes a dogshit game that would otherwise go completely unnoticed, but since his episode of LLM diarrhea happens in public at the right moment of history, he makes bank.
It wasn't long before actual game devs gave their own takes:
From here, the drama only escalated.
Hours after adding the F-16 microtransaction, Pieter’s entire product line (Photo AI, Remote OK, and Nomad List) got hammered by a DDOS attack with 120 million requests via Tor exit nodes. Cloudflare had to step in to stop the attack.
But this adversity only drew more attention to Levels' project and accelerated its hype. Once he and his team had stabilized the servers, Levels shared some early stats:
89K players in total, with a peak of 26K online at once
Nine F-16 jets sold at $29.99 each (~$270)
1 advertising blimp sold for $1,000
Grand total? $1,270.
Not an insane sum of money by his standards, but enough to prove the business model.
UPDATE
3 days later, Pieter shared his newest revenue stats:
19x Blimps sold at various prices = $38,000/mo
12x F16's sold @ $29.99 = ~$360
+= $38,360/mo
Not bad for a project started less than 3 weeks ago.
Here's a list of the technologies he's publicly talked about using for the project:
Tools: Cursor (primary), Grok 3 (backend), Claude 3.7 Sonnet, ChatGPT (for debugging)
Frameworks: Three.js, PeerJS, WebSockets, Stripe (payments)
Levels' game isn’t polished, but he proved it doesn't have to be. By coding in public, embracing AI, and riding the viral wave, he's turned a weekend project into a crazy story which, by all indications, is still ongoing.
Have a story, tip, or trend worth covering? Tell us at [email protected].
Very cool post, I learned about a few JS libs I was unaware of. Especially Nipples.js, wow what a perfect name. PeerJS is also new to me. Cool to see how this dude stitched these tools together. I also like the aesthetic of the game. Dunno about $30 upgrades, but if someone is willing to pay that much, then what I care about doesn’t matter! Shine bright, keep building, keep sharing.
LLMs are a tool, not a means to an end. There are no shortcuts, to weld these tools effectively you need a clear mind (not an empty head). To me, that means that you need to know HOW software goes together and that you must be skeptical about everything an LLM writes.
I think the real reason we can make stuff like this is because we can. Projects like this make waves because of how they were made. But for the maker, I’m sure what they learned is huge. If you optimize for learning (over revenue) you can end up in a place you never expected. Also, the two are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes you need one to get to the other.
Well, with Pieter Levels' audience, he could even make a viral calculator.
Hey Pieter, huge congrats on the viral flight simulator. Building it in 3 hours with AI, surviving a DDOS, and getting Elon’s retweet? That’s wild! Loving the hustle, keep soaring!
This guy is motivational
This is totally insane! So cooool!! I remember, as a teenager, I had wild imaginations and built 2-3 games with a lot of hard work. If I was a teen today, I could build 200-300 atleast.
Yeah, totally. But are you saying you're no longer into building games today?
Yes, I built games only while I was in school (upto Grade 12). Currently, I just launched my own micro SaaS called Clear Mail. Here's my launch post:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/introducing-clear-mail-for-gmail-Tqq9ZNtm9amCvGzwFJqX
Oh, I was waiting for it to list on IH, so it now seems to have been added. Thanks Channing, Courtland and IH team! :)
Yeah, no doubt. This was the case with no code, and it's the case for AI coding today.
This is cool to some extent, but I feel like it’s also killing programming as a craft and lowering the barrier to entry way too much. If anyone can make a game in a few hours with AI, we’re just going to flood the internet with even more junk. I’m already seeing – and I bet you are too – how so much content of all kinds is being churned out by AI at insane speed just to outcompete others and make quick money. Here’s a fresh example: https://somagyarkaszino.com/kaszino-velemenyek/lemon-kaszino/. At first glance, the site looks fine, but when you open the games, everything is so bright and over-stylized that it screams AI-generated to me. Maybe I missed something, and casino games have looked like this for a while? At least in this case, there’s some level of control. But I’ve seen other sites where it’s just absolute chaos – graphics that look completely unhinged, weirdly generated elements thrown together with zero cohesion. It really feels like no one cares about what they’re making anymore, as long as they can pump out more content faster.
I used to be a fan, it's a shame Levels turned out to be an anti-vaxxer.
He employed anti-vaccine mods on the NomadList Slack, and kept them on even after being notified about them. It got so bad, a lot of the community left to form NomadSphere.
gameseek.com is an AI and gaming directory
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This is completely absurd! So cooool!! I remember, as a teenager, I had wild imaginations and built 2-3 games with a lot of hard work. I could build at least 200-300 if I were a teenager today.
The game is good, I tried it
That's crazy, It's impressive
It's crazy the trend he created around it, a lot of people are creating games and posting all over Twitter
Immediate I acquired https://aibuiltgames.com and with cursor created a directory in less than an hour, posted on Twitter https://x.com/rrmdp/status/1895169783747801435?t=2Eu_mnmKvAVNrzKZ0PE7Lg&s=19 and BOOM, passed 400 likes already.
We are living crazy times 🤯
Pieter Levels used AI to create a viral 3D flight simulator in just three hours, despite no game development experience. The project gained massive attention, showcasing AI’s power in rapid game creation.