
John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace "wins" Lunar Lander Challenge [video] - JabavuAdams
http://thelaunchpad.xprize.org/2009/09/2009-ngllc-videos-of-armadillos.html
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tvon
Until the last few seconds, I thought I was looking at a ~2' high model.

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_ck_
How about the nerves of steel on someone running up to seven foot high flames
right next to a fuel tank?

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aw3c2
Flames like those do not hold much warmth or danger.

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8plot
Congratulations to John and the Armadillo team!

Commander Keen FTW!

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pc
Is it my imagination, or are there very short samples from Commander Keen
playing in the second video? (E.g., about 5 seconds in.)

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modeless
Those are the standard sounds made by some brand of walkie-talkie (Motorola I
think) to mark begin/end transmission. Now that you mention it, they do sound
an awful lot like the sounds Commander Keen made with the PC speaker.

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llimllib
What exactly was the challenge? The X-Prize page that should do so
(<http://space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge>) gives no idea of what the
competition is or what the 2 levels of competitions are.

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rdj
If I recall correctly, and am seeing what I think I see in video #2, the
purpose of the challenge was to lift off from one pad, move a certain distance
and land safely on a different pad.

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xsmasher
Anyone know why it doesn't tip over? Gyroscopes? Model rockets have fins to
keep them going straightish, but this lander doesn't and it's not going fast
enough for them to matter anyway.

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modeless
It uses thrust vectoring. The engine is on a gimbal and is constantly moving
to keep the vehicle upright and on course. The fact that you can hardly see
the movement means the sensors and software are doing a really good job
keeping it stable.

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Readmore
That footage looks really fake doesn't it?

I mean, I have complete faith in John Carmack but if that had come from Iran I
think we would all be calling it fake.

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tybris
People associate anything involving space flight with fake. Usually because
they can't comprehend it.

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Readmore
It has nothing to do with comprehension it has to do with the footage looking
like it was created with Maya.

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tybris
It looks fine. You're just skeptical because you can't imagine it being real.

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10ren
Is the oscillation at the end of the first video due to back-blast? It looked
like it was increasing, as if in positive feedback.

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tybris
One small flight for robot.

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geuis
I definitely find it hard to doubt the veracity of the project, being that the
team and Xprize foundation are both well known. However, I had to watch the
videos a couple time and there's just something about them that seems... fake.
Its really hard to put my finger on, but very subtle details like the shine
off the metal and the structure of the flame seem like high-grade CGI. Another
thing that bothers me is the shaking of the camera itself as the vehicle is in
the air. I've done some work in the past few months with After Effects and one
of the nice features is called "wiggle()". You can attach wiggle to cameras,
null objects, and even lights and simulate a very realistic camera shake. The
movement of the camera in both videos seems like it was done like this.

I'm probably dead wrong, but I feel its important to at least state such
thoughts publicly. I guess that we're finally getting to a meeting point
between high-grade camera systems and cgi effects that they're starting to
blur enough to fool the eye, or last confuse it. Guess its similar to the
uncanny valley effect.

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JabavuAdams
You're doing it wrong. Look at what's hard to simulate, not at what's easy to
simulate.

Metal shading is easy to simulate, so look elsewhere. Look for the engineering
details that a non-rocket-engineer animator would get wrong or not know about.
I guess, though that you don't know about these.

Instead, you could look at the density of information and secondary effects in
the shot. Typical CGI shots, as engineered intentional artifacts, lack the
level of detail and chaos / serendipity of reality.

E.g. the spalling of the concrete, the smoke/steam dissipation, the fully
volumetric flame with mach-diamonds.

CGI smoke is rarely done right. If you've seen enough particle systems, you'll
start to recognize their signature. CGI flame (your comments aside) doesn't
usually correctly capture the features of a rocket exhaust plume. Note the
colour changes and mach diamonds, as well as the subtle thrust gimballing.

Also, look for non-rendering details. E.g. the rock in one video that's just
canted on its side, being supported by the back-blast of the plume. If this
were CGI, then someone would have had to decide to do that. But, who would
think of that?

Every CGI shot has a budget, and usually only enough work is done to "sell"
the shot, within budget. If you look frame-by-frame at most CGI animations,
you'll see that it's just a veneer of reality. Usually when you compare to
photo or video reference, you notice all kinds of missing effects.

What may be confusing you re: the metal is that the oxidizer is LOX, which is
super-cold, and causes frost to form, altering the metal's reflectivity.

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geuis
Thanks for debunking me. Everything you pointed out is absolutely correct.
Also, I didn't know about the oxidizer, which is very cool to learn.

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_ck_
It's almost like playing "Lunar Lander" in real life!

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electronslave
Given that John Carmack is a massive Republican jerk, part of me wants to say
"socialism (and Jet A subsidization) rules!" The rest of me wants to steal the
rocket and fire myself into lower earth orbit.

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stcredzero
You'd have to stage those. I don't think there are enough units, and there are
probably significant difficulties in making many additional copies. It would
be evolution in action.

