Avatar: Fly a Banshee

An Azure Kinect experience for the upcoming Disneyland theme parks Avatar Experience wing. The experience lets you fly your banshee between aerial islands of the Pandoria. When the player gets into game area, game automatically starts with the player's banshee. (Player bonds with their banshee in a previous experience.) When the game starts the player tries to fly as fast as they can between islands, following other banshees and getting into jet streams. The player uses their own body as controller by leaning sideways, forward and back. When the players flap their arms, their banshee flaps aw well and speeds up.

I was the Lead game developer and worked with a great team of technical artists and animators from Moldova and management from USA.

  • Used Azure Kinect to get the body keypoints. Created a Kinect Input controller to get flapping and the input values.
  • Created a movement controller that handles flying in 3D environment without roll.
  • Implemented an obstacle avoidance system to make sure the banshee doesn't go into islands or go out from the game area. (Standard Unity collider system doesn't work well with high speeds.)
  • Developed a path following system for the banshee to get effected by Jet stream forces.
  • Created a jet stream system for the designers to let them create multiple jet streams around the islands to let the banshee follow and speed up.
  • Used the scriptable object architecture to allow the game designers change the world freely.