Be A Bird VR Project: Week 2

This week I ditched the flight dynamics and started working on the aesthetics.

Flying over the clouds in an aeroplane can be mesmerizing. Imagine how it would feel without the plane. Just you, gliding on the winds, high in the sky. Endless expanses of white fluffy oceans of water vapour that form eye-pleasing shapes stretch out to the distant horizon.

Rather than having skyscrapers poking out from the clouds I was thinking L-system trees

I spent weeks wrestling with the problem of how to find high enough resolution images to have an attractive landscape to glide over without placing too much pressure on the graphics card. I realised that a data-cheap solution might be to use dense cloud cover through which occasional features poke through. This may save the need for creating detailed landscapes that might cause problems down the line by dramatically slowing down the frame rate.

Be_A_Bird_VR begins in the nest of a giant tree — somewhat reminiscent of Enid Blighton’s Magic Faraway Tree — where the PLAYER chooses an egg (giving them a different bird species’ wings), has a quick flying lesson from a seagull, and then takes a leap of faith to start flying.

All eggs are within arm’s reach of the PLAYER who remains flat on their back throughout the whole experience. The music is calming, the vibe serene, a voice instructs the player to reach out and select an egg by overlapping the hand with the egg and pulling the trigger to pick it up. They are then instructed to move the egg towards them, as if they are putting on a hat.

This triggers a short tutorial explaining how the PLAYER should move their arms to glide, steer and to flap when they want to go faster.

Next step is to start creating suitable 3D assets. I plan to using L-system trees. I also need to work out whether it really is efficient to generate clouds in Unity to form the cloud tops or whether a low poly landscape with an appropriate shader would actually put less pressure on the graphics card.

I’ve been experimenting with shaders that can produce this kind of cloud effect

Scene 1 will essentially be a 360 degree film of me in a seagull fancy dress outfit providing instructions on how to fly. This concludes with the seagull flight instructor disappearing through a hole in the middle of the nest from which the sound of wind is emanating, having encouraged the PLAYER to make a leap of faith by “stepping off” the apparent edge, and dropping into their inaugural flight. Scene 2 is the flight itself where the PLAYER has to fly around trying to collect berries before the flocks of other birds steal them all. And finally Scene 3 takes place at the top of the tallest tree, where a nice surprise will be waiting to reward those who manage to complete the challenge.

Here are some mood boards / palettes I’m considering taking inspiration from…