JOIN USThe dream of flying is as old as mankind itself. And pursuing this dream started off with flying a kite and it crossed the expectations when the Wright Brothers invented the airplane two centuries ago. Man was high up in the air, but becoming a bird and flying in the sky still remained a fantasy. Taking everyone close to achieveing this fantasy is ‘Birdly’, a virtual reality flight stimulator. Designed and created in Switzerland by Professor Max Rheiner, ‘Birdly’ is brought to Bengaluru by ‘swissnex India’.
Mount on this stimulator and you can take over the sky like a bird. The ‘Birdly’ machine lets you flap your wings like a bird and soar high in the virtual sky. Completely controlled by the user himself, it gives a true life experience of flying. The machine attached with a fan stimulates according to one’s speed, the headphones add to the experience as you can hear the wind blow and the visual headset gives one a bird’s eye view of the topography.
“Max Rheiner always worked with virtual reality projects and he was always interested in the perception and the idea of flying. The original project was a request from ‘Bird life sanctuary’ and after collaboration with them, Max came up with the idea of developing a full body immersive environment interface to make it feel like you are flying like a bird,” says Ron Lux, scientific assistant from team ‘Birdly’. It is now being exhibited in India giving everyone an opportunity to explore the fantasy of flying.
“Humans do not know how a bird feels when it flies. The perception is completely different and a human’s imagination is different. So, right in the middle, we try to embody the feeling of the bird,” he says.
“A bird has a complicated structure that helps it fly. We tried to find something that humans haven’t experienced in flying and tried to get this feeling in the machine,” says Thomas Tobler, head of design and modelling of ‘Birdly’.
Coming to the challenges he faced as a design head, he says, “It was difficult to figure out how the movement had to be from the platform to the virtual reality. If the movements don’t match, then people might feel sick. The movement might make you feel like a bird. There is a very small difference between latency and the body feet back system. If the movement is more than 0.26 seconds, you feel sick as the mind doesn’t connect to your movement.”
He says that the machine had to be made accessible to all age groups. “The machine had to be designed for different kinds of people. We searched for a comfortable way to lie on the platform and it had to be in a horizontal position as it was a bird. It was very important to concentrate on the movements keeping in mind the body centre. The design follows the function of a bird. Even the wings provide for flat hand structure, giving the exact flight of a bird,” he wraps up.