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# Vane strives for beauty and consistency, even in its bird physics
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/vane-strives-beauty-and-consistency-even-its-bird-physics/
- Published: 2015-08-21T14:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2015-11-17T17:34:08.000Z
- Description: It’s the little things that makes Vane one of the most gorgeous looking games in development right now: the graceful twirl of leaves loosening from thin branches, clouds of dust that kick up behind a small, running figure, or the beating of a bird’s wings against the hot desert air. In games, beauty
- Author: Chloi Rad
- Tags: News, flight, physics, programming, vane, videogame development, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-26 09:39

It’s the little things that makes *Vane* one of the most gorgeous looking games in development right now: the graceful twirl of leaves loosening from thin branches, clouds of dust that kick up behind a small, running figure, or the beating of a bird’s wings against the hot desert air.

In games, beauty isn’t just the product of a pleasing art style. The coding has to do its part too, and a new [blog post](http://www.friendandfoegames.com/devlog-vane/2015/8/19/flight-mechanics?ref=killscreen.com) from developer Friend & Foe Games shows just how much painstaking detail can go into perfecting the systems that many people take for granted.

According to Matt Smith of Friend & Foe, bird flight mechanics in *Vane* used to follow what he called the “Magic Airplane” model, a mechanical approach that simplified the actual phenomenon of avian aeronautics. It would basically register horizontal and vertical turns and then fake gravity by applying downward velocity, resulting in this:

[Card](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/o2zx9ab.gif?ref=killscreen.com)  

The team wasn’t pleased with the visual effect this created. Some more tinkering eventually turned out a much more complex algorithm that implements elements like forward thrust, air resistance, and more.

“A big focus for us on *Vane* is verisimilitude; we want all of our systems, stories, and mythology to be internally consistent,” writes Matt. “With that in mind, I set about reworking the flight mechanics to be more ‘physics-y’ and less robotic.”

Matt calls the resulting system the “Pseudo Physics” model, and goes into more detail about how it works in his [blog post](http://www.friendandfoegames.com/devlog-vane/2015/8/19/flight-mechanics?ref=killscreen.com). To a non-programmer or someone who isn’t great at physics, a formulaic breakdown of in-game flight mechanics might not mean much, but check out the difference these changes make visually:

[Card](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/eu8xle4.gif?ref=killscreen.com)  

One of the most notable things in the second gif is the way the camera moves, which Friend & Foe promises to touch on in another blog post.

*You can find out more about* Vane *on its [website](http://www.friendandfoegames.com/vane/?ref=killscreen.com) and [development blog](http://www.friendandfoegames.com/devlog-vane?ref=killscreen.com).*