Yes, a small radar quad located, say, near one of the screen corners would be handy …

“Glad to hear”

I really like when the planes collide since it’s quite fun to see them fall …

For the smoke trails, fireballs, explosions & clouds I’m just using a single quad with a texture. (using the Spacewars’ Shape.Plane(1,1) method).
I don’t know how to do *true* billboards yet, but I really want them to be billboards. With the clouds in particular you’ll notice they’re not true billboards (always facing the camera) with the high altitude clouds. When the camera looks up towards them as the plane flys higher you’ll see they are slightly squished with some perceivable perspective. Not pretty.

Yep, yet another thing on my lengthy todo list. I’ve noticed there’s a Matrix.CreateBillboard() method that looks like a starter. I’m assuming you’d use it instead of applying any Rotation Matrices?

If you have any more great tips, you know where to send them.

Great game, man!

For the smoke trails are you using billboards, pointsprites or normal particles?