I'm just trying to set the record straight, you claimed that, "I can find no inconsistencies", There are many of these inconsistencies and I've never flown a real aircraft but I have worked with Photoshop for 5 or 6 years now, I've never claimed to be an expert and am not even close to that level of work. Having a trained eye does not mean I'm an expert, although I did shoot high expert every time in Marine Corps, :d.
You also said, "the computing power necessary would be the kind only possessed by Pixar or ILM", again this is totally wrong, this can be done on my PC which is not even close to the strength of Hollywood PC's.
Another statement you made was, "It is interesting that the plane shown in the video is exactly the same plane shown in the promo stills on Andersson's website.", also, "The plane in the video is the same plane, from beginning to end." Again these statements are false, not the same plane, different shapes, one has a control panel, one does not, one has a white stripe down the fuselage with black and orange, the other doesn't. When there are this many inconsistencies, and these are just a few, it makes the whole video a fake, hoax, joke, whatever you want to call it, it is plain insulting to try to fool people.
I don't think anyone has claimed it is not possible, shoot, anything is possible. This is a mix of real life and CGI, no doubt whatsoever. We are clearly reaching the state in CGI where it will be almost impossible to tell the truth from fakery to reality and this is scary indeed, especially when I see people so sure it is real.
Yes, one thing I learned is that this kind of thing can be done on a regular PC, but since most of us don't dabble in this kind of thing that would not be common knowledge. So we had an opportunity to bring that out along with many other things. Nine pages and we really had a chance to finally bring out some details about what's possible with today's editing programs.
Those statements about the plane being the same plane were based on visiting the site and examining the images, but not doing any careful A/B comparos. The folks who know what to look for in CGI and image editing would be the logical ones to do these comparisons and at long last, about Page 7, we finally got someone to take the time to find such a comparison. That's forensics. I didn't know where to begin looking for the comparisons because the video transitions and editing points were not as obvious to me as they would be to someone familiar creating this kind of product.
Now, I freely admit that I made those statements to draw out the folks who would feel they could prove me wrong. And that's just what I was hoping for. I wanted to be shown just HOW the clip could have been made, in detail. As someone else just mentioned, this stuff is real interesting and it's been an education for me. Inquiring minds want to know.
The morality of perpetrating a hoax is debatable, of course. This is what I guess is being called "viral marketing" and it works! But the truth is, the video is so compelling that its value goes far beyond just an advertisement. The flying, even if it's an RC plane, is just terrific. Heck, it would be terrific if it were CGI, but at this point I believe the flying is real, but an RC aircraft, spliced to a CGI (or perhaps a real) plane on the ground.
CGI is getting good, but the level of skepticism is so high now -- especially after this video -- that it'll be useless to try to fake evidence or hoax people because the first thing that will happen is everyone will claim it's a fake. If it's an important legal issue, the experts will line up in court and have to explain, frame-by-frame, why it's a fake and how it was done. I would still very much like to hear how this one was done, or at least get someone's best analysis.
The darn thing is so good I still like to watch it. It's a great movie.
One last thing I just thought of regarding CGI; if you look at the chase scene in the last Indiana Jones movie, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and compare it to the one in the first (Raiders of the Lost Ark) it is so obviously fake that it has none of the "edge-of-the-seat" feeling of the first. The first movie has a real chase sequence and it is frightening to watch. It's much, much better because it's real. "Road Warrior" is another example of a great chase scene. Someone brought up the notion that older folks, not used to CGI fakery, could not detect it as readily as younger ones or those familiar with it. It seems to me that a generation raised on CGI would not be able to tell the real thing from CGI either. The physical motions in CGI are not the same is in real life and the eye used to the actual physics can see the difference. That's one reason I think the first part of the KillaThrill video is an RC aircraft; it behaves naturally.
The CGI crew who did "Flyboys" claimed they got it right but didn't. Compare that flick to "The Blue Max" and the difference is as obvious as day and night. Real-world physics are capricious, as are real-world pilots, and the computers will never be able to catch all those little bits of orchestrated chaos. (See Jeff Goldblum's discussion of the Chaos Theory in Jurassic Park, the first film to really exploit CGI).
.)
