
Enter Darth Vader's Tie Fighter - showwebgl
https://sketchfab.com/show/eIFt03aD0BrZPcTVU4F9jfw9duj
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camiller
<James Earl Jones voice>I find you lack of interior ... disturbing</James Earl
Jones voice)

Admittedly, you would be making stuff up since not much of the interior is
visible in the movies but...

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hluska
Would someone please build a 'don't distract freelancers on Hacker News' app?
My morning started off so strong, now I want to watch the original
trilogy.....

(Great model!!)

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acuozzo
> now I want to watch the original trilogy.....

The original original trilogy or that "Special Edition" crap?

Edit: Despite the down-votes, I stand by both my opinion __and__ phrasing. The
1997 Special Edition, 2004 DVD, and 2011 Blu-ray releases were done poorly
(a.k.a., half-assed). They suffer from numerous issues that suggest an
inexperienced team was used for the "restoration". See:
<http://savestarwars.com/specialeditionfail.html>

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xyzzyb
How about the despecialized edition?

[http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-
WARS-...](http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-
Despecialized-Edition-HD-REMASTERED-is-now-released/topic/12713/)

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acuozzo
> How about the despecialized edition?

I'm a fan and an active user at originaltrilogy.com :-)

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SkyMarshal
Is there still a version out there where Han shoots first?

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acuozzo
Are you asking this question seriously?

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anactofgod
<nit>It's a TIE Interceptor.</nit>

And, it's nice work.

<edit>Doh. I stand corrected. Vader _did_ fly a TIE Fighter - technically the
"TIE Advanced x1".

Looks like I'm overdue to rewatch SW:ANH. _smile_ </edit>

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tiddchristopher
It's a TIE Advanced x1. Although features developed for it were incorporated
into the later TIE/IN Interceptor, the x1 had substantial differences, such as
shielding and FTL capabilities. The mass-production craft resulting directly
from the x series was the TIE/D Defender.

<http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE_Advanced_x1>

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jiggy2011
That brings back memories of playing the MS-DOS "Tie fighter" game from the
mid 90s where you could pilot the Tie Advanced later in the game, IIRC it was
also slightly faster than a standard Tie Fighter.

However from what I remember of the original movies though there was no
reference to Vaders craft having shields or hyperdrive (maybe I'm wrong?).

So I wonder if the technical details of the craft were invented specifically
for the game and then retrofitted into the overall mythos?

One thing that always amused me about star wars was that the Imperial forces
must have had a military budget that would make global GDP look like pocket
change but had such clearly flawed designs for all of it's equipment (crap
fighters, walkers, death star etc) while the Rebels had stuff that worked much
better. Was Lucas trying to say something about the inevitable result of the
military industrial complex?

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talmand
No, the idea was that the Empire was using clones for their pilots so they
didn't give a crap whether they lived or died. Therefore they received the
cheapest equipment possible. That way they could often win by sheer numbers.
Only important people got nice equipment that would keep them alive.

On the other hand the rebels considered every pilot they had as rather
important since they had so few. That, plus the fact they had so few in the
first place, warranted more expensive yet more robust equipment.

So, as the rebellion continued, the rebels were winning more often than losing
and were swaying more and more to their side. Which made it easier to obtain
the same equipment. The Empire had to respond in kind because pilots started
becoming important, especially the pilots that had learned how to win against
superior equipment. Kind of sucks to lose your best pilots because you were
too cheap to get them cheap shields. This led to the development of later TIE
fighters that had shields and other "rebel" equipment. You didn't really see
things like the TIE Interceptor's until Return of the Jedi time, which by then
the rebels had the A-Wing to counter that as well.

This is the reason that TIE Fighter is one of the greatest games ever made.
You don't know how much it sucks to face a highly trained opponent with
superior equipment until you fly the TIE fighter into combat. It's like being
the pilot of a flying trash can with two lasers attached to it. Also keep in
mind that a common tactic of an X-Wing or Y-Wing pilot was to fully charge
forward shields and just ram the poor guy in the TIE fighter. No need to
debate who survived.

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oseibonsu
Is it possible to download the 3d model in a format that could be used with a
3d printer?

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showwebgl
Soon! We are working on it.

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jrabone
What's the licensing situation with such models? I seem to remember Lucasfilm
(<http://www.lucasfilm.com/divisions/licensing/>) being pretty active ($3
billion in licensing revenue in 2011), but presumably they're not interested
if there's no money involved?

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showwebgl
Today, without download option, we are just considered like YouTube: a service
hosting files uploaded by users, on which we have no control. When we launch
download & commercialization of models, we will indeed have to find a
licensing deal for copyright content.

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mhandley
All I get is a "100%" loading indicator, then the spinning pizza of death and
repeated "unresponsive script" warnings for several minutes until I gave up.

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larrik
Very nice.

I thought the 4 stripes on top were actually windows, though (since you can
see through them in the movie, such as in this photo I found:
[http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/ThePropDen/cee7e16...](http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/ThePropDen/cee7e16f.jpg))

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felixthehat
Amazing work, great model. really clean. Reinforces that IE is really messing
up by not supporting webGL. Works smooth as butter in chrome for me.

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sukuriant
How large is the file? It's taking a VERY long time to load.

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showwebgl
It's not that big, 2.8 mb, but keep in mind that more than 300 people are
browsing it right now :)

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peterwwillis
WebGL doesn't work for me, guess i'm screwed

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showwebgl
Which browser? You should ideally use chrome or firefox, or activate WebGL
from developer mode in safari.

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peterwwillis
I'm using Firefox (latest) and at one point tried to enable WebGL. I'm not one
to keep trying to fix something just to make a web page work, though.

Does WebGL even work in software rendering mode, or do you need to have
hardware rendering enabled? I have no idea if it is or if my drivers support
it (Windows) but I would hope we're not forcing everyone on the web to have
direct rendering now.

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philjohn
IIRC Firefox disable WebGL if you are on certain, known buggy, versions of
your GPU driver.

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pierreant_p
Awesome model !

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TheAmazingIdiot
This is useful how? This is no better than a read-only image, with right click
'disabled'. It does look pretty.

I'll just head to thingiverse or clones. Those sites let you <gasp> download
the models.

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Unregistered
The model actually comes from here

<http://www.blendswap.com/blends/vehicles/vader-tie-fighter/>

where it is download-able

