Highlights
- A player in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom recreated the first successful powered airplane, the 1903 Wright Flyer, using the game's building mechanics.
- Flying contraptions are popular among fans as they provide the fastest mode of transportation in the game's map of Hyrule.
- The player used guard rails and Zonai Fans to construct the airplane.
One The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player utilized the game's building mechanics to recreate history's first successful powered airplane. Their achievement is just the latest in a long list of engineering marvels ranging from Tears of the Kingdom cluster drones to devastating mechs that the fandom managed to build since the game hit the store shelves in spring.
Though the Ultrahand ability that Tears of the Kingdom bestows to players can be leveraged into creating all sorts of vehicles, flying contraptions continue to preoccupy many a fan. That's largely because flying is by far the fastest way to move around Tears of the Kingdom's map of Hyrule, not accounting for glitches. And while some players prefer to make their custom aircraft as efficient as possible, others are more inclined to experiment with unique designs.
The latter group also includes Reddit user itsJeremy_nz, who recently managed to build a fairly faithful recreation of the 1903 Wright Flyer, history's first successful powered plane. Their newly revealed contraption does a great job at mimicking the aesthetic of the seminal aircraft, with its only standout detail not matching the machine that inspired it being a pair of Zonai Fans required for liftoff. While the Wright brothers' original airplane utilized a wooden airframe, the author of this creation opted to build it using guard rails found in Tears of the Kingdom's Construct Factory.
The game does feature several types of boards that could have helped the machine reach a closer resemblance to the Wright Flyer, but its creator presumably opted for the guard rails due to their unique physical properties. For context, this type of railing is the lightest known component in the game, with its floaty physics being perfect for creating all sorts of flying contraptions. Since its discovery in early July, the guard rail has already allowed Tears of the Kingdom players to improve on the classic hoverbike design and pioneer some other aircraft designs.
Apart from half a dozen guard rails and a pair of Zonai Fans, this Tears of the Kingdom recreation of the Wright Flyer also incorporates a singular spear, which is used for holding the rest of the parts together. Combined with a Zonai Steering Stick, that puts the machine's total component count at ten, leaving plenty of room for expanding on this design with weaponry or extra engines allowing it to reach higher speeds. Namely, Tears of the Kingdom lets players join up to 21 components before their vehicles start falling apart.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available on Nintendo Switch.