Beau got a VR gaming system for his birthday and really enjoys playing a game called Beat Saber, which is like a combo of Guitar Hero and Star Wars. He likes it so much that he wants to make a Beat Saber-themed pine car. So here's the plan:
First, you need to understand the game.
Inside a virtual room, which looks like a tunnel with an elevated walkway, the player holds two controllers, which appear on-screen sort of like Star Wars light sabers. Everything is trimmed in neon. Users can customize the colors, but they are red and blue by default.
After selecting a song and difficulty level, colored blocks begin to approach the user, who must slash the blocks with the correct color saber in the direction indicated by white arrows on the block.
In designing the car, we identified a few key things that make Beat Saber what it is:
The Music
Beat Saber is all about the music. I think it comes preloaded with proprietary electronic dance music, but there are downloadable packs featuring popular artists including Imagine Dragons, Lizzo, and Green Day, as well genre packs such as the Rock Pack which features Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Guns N Roses, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, The White Stripes, Steppenwolf, and Survivor.
We'll add music to the car with a very small 1x1.4" 0.74 oz Bluetooth Speaker. We can then play music from a Spotify Beat Saber playlist through the car via smartphone.
The Arena
Beat Saber is played in a dark arena with neon lights, so the car has to be a Rad Racer, built for blacklight racing.
We replicated the runway by using a body with an absurdly long hood, which we painted satin black. We trimmed it with fluorescent gaffer tape and cut squares out of the tape, which we placed on the long hood to replicate the game play.
Fluorescent wheels and flashing LED underglow lights complete the look.
