"spyro the dragon" was considerably unique at the time compared to other 3d platform games; spyro's ability to glide allows him to travel huge distances while in mid-air, meaning that the player could nearly fly across an entire level if they glided off of a high enough area. while this made designing levels more difficult for the team, it also meant that they could be made more open-ended and explorative in nature. in order to make "spyro"s controls feel fluid, matt whiting, a nasa engineer who specialized in flight controls, was brought on to help with programming camera movement, as well spyro's movement controls. particular difficulty was found with the game's camera; initially, it was programmed to constantly follow spyro and remain positioned directly behind him, but the resulting high-speed movements were found to make several playtesters feel nauseous, meaning that the level of movement had to be largely curbed so that playing the game felt comfortable. a particular example was with spyro's basic jump, which would trigger the camera to quickly tilt up-and-down to follow him, compared by whiting to the motion a rocking boat; this was ultimately tweaked so that the camera would stay steady as spyro went upwards and back down.