Flight Lab
- Brand
- Red Bull
- Year
- 2008
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Less Rain
Objective
Red Bull's Flugtag contest — teams launching homemade flying machines off a 30-foot ramp — only touched down in 23 countries, leaving most of the brand's audience watching from the sidelines. Flight Lab moved that DIY, build-it-yourself spirit online so anyone, anywhere could design and fly their own craft between real Flugtag events, competing rather than just spectating.
Solution
Players start with a bare aircraft — hull and wings — and sketch its outline by hand; the drawing instantly rebuilds itself as a 3D flying machine. From there they paint it, apply their own photos onto its surface, and pick a material — sheet metal, wood, even a pizza box — with each choice changing how the craft looks and the scene around it. Launching the finished design sends it into a flight simulator, where its shape and material decide whether it glides or drops straight into the water. Every completed aircraft lands in a public hangar with pilot profiles, regional browsing, and rankings, so players end up comparing flights and competing against builders worldwide.
- 1
The game frame stays constant across every section: a top menu switches between Home, Build, Fly, and Hangar, while login, highscores, and a sound toggle remain fixed at the edges. Only the central scene changes as the player navigates.
- 2
In Build, the player works at a virtual bench, sketching a rough outline of a flying contraption by hand. The drawing is automatically converted into a 3D model, producing anything from a realistic glider to an abstract flying sculpture.
- 3
The player adjusts the shape and proportions of the body and wings, which directly affects how the craft handles in the air. Choosing a building material — sheet metal, wood, a pizza box, paper, or foam — likewise changes both flight behavior and the look of the surrounding scene.
- 4
A set of painting tools lets the player brush and roll on color from a strip of sample finishes, and uploaded photos can be applied to the craft's surface as custom textures.
- 5
A pull-out strip called More Planes runs along the bottom of the screen at all times, letting the player browse other users' creations without leaving the current task.
- 6
Finished aircraft are sent to Fly, where the craft is shown on a launch pier with on-screen prompts for the flap controls before take-off. Once airborne, a heads-up display tracks Energy and Altitude on one side and Style, distance, Votes, and a running Total score on the other, all starting at zero.
- 7
The player pilots the craft in a glide over water, flapping to spend Energy and manage Altitude while steering through parachute-borne targets strung along the course. Successful maneuvers add to a separate Style score, distance accumulates, and the Total rises — with the denser, later stretches of the course worth disproportionately more points than the opening seconds.
- 8
In Hangar, each aircraft has its own card showing its name, a pilot figure, and its stats, alongside rows of other users' craft shown in color and in silhouette. The player can browse the archive by region and check separate leaderboards for pilots and for aircraft.
- 9
Every finished aircraft stays on file in the shared hangar, where players compete against others worldwide — an online rivalry standing in for the real-world Flugtag event.
