VRChat Creators Become Birds With Quest Pro Eye Tracking

Creators on VRChat hacking with avatars are figuring out how to become birds.

The latest work from VRChat’s emerging avian-class sees Quest Pro eye tracking rigged up to an avatar’s head movement system. Creator Purpzie says they took inspiration from an owl by groxxy while building on top of a gryphon from manyblinkinglights. Altogether, Purpzie made a feathery creature with the gryphon’s head movements driven by human eye movements seen by Quest Pro.

“The main goal is to let people feel like they just became a creature. When I was a kid, I daydreamed about being some kind of dragon or gryphon flying through the sky. I never thought I’d get to fulfill that dream in VR,” Purpzie wrote. “After finding manyblinkinglights’s avatar base, I spent 2 weeks hyperfocusing on tweaking it and learning about Final IK. (Nearly everything I know about game development is from working on VRChat avatars…)”

Purpzie takes to the air in worlds with open flight enabled while “constantly tweaking the animation and inverse kinematics systems as it maps onto a human body.” You can switch what your arms control, Purpzie explains, “between the wings, front legs, and even the head. Gestures let people control the gryphon’ s facial expression.”

You can follow Purpzie’s progress in late night updates to Bluesky.

“VRChat has completely changed my life. Within 2 or 3 years, my crippling social anxiety disappeared, I met my boyfriend and so many wonderful people, and my drive to create has blossomed into every corner of game development. I want to share and spread this happiness with everyone,” Purpzie wrote. “I learned tons of stuff by tweaking avatars and worlds for personal use, but seeing people get so happy about stuff I worked on… it’s the best feeling in the world. My heart melts.”