Fly

Fly enables you to become a time-travelling pilot – from the earliest imaginings of Leonardo da Vinci and his ornithopter, to the Wright Brothers’ success on Kitty Hawk Beach and, ultimately, into one potential future of flight.

From the product description

About the Experience

Flight has captivated humanity throughout history. We’ve dreamed of being able to fly on our own like the birds, or of designing our own devices and machines to give us lift. It takes more than just imagining though. Human ingenuity shines when we apply ourselves to a problem until we solve it. This experience highlights two such stories: Leonardo di Vinci and the Wright Brothers.

Through the use of immersive storytelling, Fly takes us through the early imaginings of da Vinci and the first successful flight of the Kitty Hawk in North Carolina, USA (and some beyond). It’s more storytelling than interactivity, but it’s still a great story to step into.

Go from early wooden models to motorized craft, and from today’s powerful jets to tomorrow’s imagined hyperspeed travel. You can step into the flight seat rather than just watch from the side. It’s relatively short and completely linear, but still a great trip to take.

Graphics and Sound

I really loved the graphics behind the story. It’s almost like a kid’s book at times. The imagery, visual effects, background sounds, and music worked together to tell a very enjoyable story. If you look too closely, you can see it’s not a AAA game, but that’s not the point. It’s the right style for the story they’re telling.

Information Content

Since this is really a semi-interactive documentary, there are names and dates throughout, along with narration of the key events. It’s not a deep dive by any means, but it’s a fun flight through time to see the various stages of invention.

Navigation and Interactivity

There are several points where you can interact with the action. Early on, you can flap your wings to fly, later you can pull down on some stirrups, you can pull a throttle, and other similar actions. Or at least, you should be able to.

This is my biggest complaint (and it’s a pretty big one). I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t see my hands and couldn’t actually make anything happen, but things seemed to progress anyway. At one point I happened to have my head pass through a surface, and I saw the problem: I’d left my hands on the floor!

Well, that’s what it seemed to think anyway. At least with my Quest 3 playing through Steam Link, it had absolutely no sense of the controllers whatsoever. Thankfully, the action continued anyway, but it was unfortunate to have such a glaring bug. I’m sure it was created for the HTC Vive specifically, but the store page specifically says it should work with Oculus Touch controllers. Very disappointing.

Updates and Support

This was released, received a few awards, and has been left as-is ever since. I’d love it if they could address the controller issue, but realistically this is probably it.

Summary

All in all, decide for yourself it it’s worth a few dollars. It’s mainly telling a story (15 minutes or so), so interactivity isn’t crucial, but you should know what you’re getting. I really liked the story and the style, and it’s free on Viveport Infinity. Check it out if you’re interested in the history of flight.

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