A leather flying helmet, goggles and a flight jacket for the gull
There is a souvenir shop in Hamburg that sells plush seagulls in brown leather flying helmets, round goggles on their faces and "Moin" stitched across the chest. We saw two of them on a shelf and decided the Skydex gull should be able to dress the same way. So the wardrobe in the Trident Exchange has three new rows.
Leather flying helmet (35 🔱, head slot). It is a hood rather than a cap, the way the plush wears it: brown leather over the top and the back of the head with a stitched seam along the crown, an open window for the face, long flaps that hang straight down the cheeks past the beak, and a chin strap on each side. The forehead stays bare above the goggles, and the back of the helmet drops onto the nape.
Flight goggles (30 🔱, eyes slot). Two small round cups with black gaskets, clear lenses and a black elastic strap that runs round the back of the head. Worn with the helmet, the strap goes over the leather, as on the plush; on a bare head it sits on the feathers. The lenses are clear on purpose. The aviators already cover dark glass, and these are the open-cockpit kind you would wear against the wind, not against the sun.
Leather flight jacket (35 🔱, body slot). A bomber in the same brown as the helmet, zipped to the throat, with a thick pale shearling collar, two chest pocket flaps and a darker knitted waistband. It has no sleeves, for the same reason the pilot's uniform has none: a gull's wing is its arm and sweeps through about ninety degrees on every beat, so nothing can be mounted on it. When the bird stands, the folded wings lie over the sides of the jacket; when it opens them, the leather is there underneath.
All three were fitted on the realistic gull you fly in the game, not on a test shape. We measured the head and body by casting rays at the actual model: the eyes sit on the sides of the head, so the goggle cups are placed over them rather than straight ahead, and the body is wider at the flanks than the older coat assumed, so the jacket is cut roomier.
They are separate items in separate slots, so you can wear all three together for the full souvenir look, or mix the goggles with the captain's cap, or put the helmet over the monocle if that is your idea of a pilot. The flying scarf from the neck slot goes with all of it. All three are marked new in the shop for the next month.
How it works under the hood is the same as the rest of the wardrobe. Everything is built from simple shapes in the game itself, not painted into the bird's texture, because the realistic gull's texture cannot carry a bought item without it bleeding onto other parts of the body. The props are mounted on the head bone, so the helmet and goggles move with every animation the bird has: the head turns in a bank, bobs on a wingbeat and tucks when it lands, and the helmet follows. The same pieces fit the box-shaped gull too, scaled to its head.
Other pilots see what you wear on your bird in the shared sky, on your public profile portrait and in the hangar preview on the exchange page, where you can hover a row to try it on before you spend anything. If you fly the drone, nothing changes: the wardrobe belongs to the bird (more on how it works in Dress the bird).
Tridents come from achievements, seasons and running a receiver. If you have ten or more you can already afford most of the wardrobe, and the exchange page shows the price of every row before you buy.