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Strivr Labs · Case Study

Airline Demo

The dress rehearsal that unlocked a new pipeline.

The Challenge

Strivr built its reputation on premium live-action VR training. That quality was our brand, but for some clients, it was a constraint: filming meant flying crews out and shutting down a client's working facility. CG was the obvious answer and a hard sell: clients had seen subpar CG elsewhere. Internally, our studio had never run CG at scale. My job was to architect the pipeline that made CG a daily reality—and prove to skeptical clients that our digital fidelity could match our live-action legacy. The clock was ticking: a project for a large account was kicking off, and it needed this pipeline to work flawlessly from day one.

RoleDirection · Procedure research · Pipeline integration
ClientStrivr, and a fictional airline invented to stress-test the pipeline
FormatInteractive CG VR · MetaHuman characters · Motion capture
TimelineScript to deployment in two-week sprints

The Strategy

Rather than risking a live engagement, we manufactured a customer. I directed Project Airline, a fictional airline training simulation, treating it with the same rigor as paid work.

Two-weeks only

Script to deployment.

  1. Script
  2. Production
  3. Quality testing
  4. Deployment

The goal wasn't a pretty demo — it was to find every place the pipeline would break before a paying client did.

The Experience · Hero Cutdown

The learner joins the cabin as crew: a colleague hands off the checklist, and they have to locate the emergency oxygen equipment, inspect the tank — valve position, dust caps, pressure gauge — and make a call: does this tank pass inspection?

The Pipeline

A complete experience, not a linear video

This was the ultimate test of the pipeline we'd been building: rapid environment generation, a MetaHuman character pipeline, automated lip sync, and motion capture feeding animation. Individually, each piece worked. But we needed to prove they could survive real production friction: integrating client feedback loops, managing rendering constraints against strict office hours, and building rich, branching interactivity that could genuinely replace our live-action standard.

The decisionThe learner makes the call, not just watches
The freedomFree to look and move — real interactivity, not a fixed shot

The Craft

Directing for CG

In live-action, talent is sourced. In CG, it's engineered. To avoid the "uncanny valley," every element—eye-lines, body mechanics, lip sync, and wardrobe—required rigorous direction. We knew we'd succeeded when internal reviews stopped dissecting individual assets and started reacting to the overall character performance.

Motion-capture artist in a mocap suit directing a CG character on-screen
The captureMotion-captured and hand-directed, shot by shot
The characterBelievable enough to carry the whole scene

Impact

The demo did more than test our tech; it became our production engine.

Pipeline Validation
We stress-tested our pipeline, fixing the "breaking points" on our own time. Real client work kicked off immediately after, using the exact pipeline we validated.
Process Established
The milestones developed during the demo shaped the operational plan, timelines, and quality expectations that became our standard.
Sales Utility
The sales and marketing teams adopted Project Airline as a demo tool; it proved to skeptical clients that our CG was comparable to our live-action quality standards.