Ringo Vinda: An oddly tiny planet?

[Mike DiCenso]

In fairness, there probably isn't a single show or movie that remains 100 percent true to the scalings set for ships or anything, and are mostly concerned with Rule of Cool.

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Bird of Prey slingshots around the Sun to do a time warp, and either the Sun has shrunk in the 23rd century dramatically, or the Bird of Prey grew to planet-sized proportions!

Just watch the video clip here starting at 2:03 to 2:14.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

In fairness, there probably isn't a single show or movie that remains 100 percent true to the scalings set for ships or anything, and are mostly concerned with Rule of Cool.

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Bird of Prey slingshots around the Sun to do a time warp, and either the Sun has shrunk in the 23rd century dramatically, or the Bird of Prey grew to planet-sized proportions!

Just watch the video clip here starting at 2:03 to 2:14.
-Mike

Yep, that one is legendary.
I thought people cared less back then, but it hasn't changed much. There really is a very bizarre mentality at play regarding scales, frankly.
Why care with super rendering engines that take hours of calculation (and large amounts of cash) to obtain realistic images when you completely screw the final result with a total lack of credibility when it comes to the size of things?

[2046]

ST4 hints at a scaling problem but doesn't actually do it, as I recall. You don't see a wing come out from behind the sun or anything.

And I wouldn't say that they cared less, they just didn't build increasingly detailed sun models with flashes to hide the transitions. It got the point across.

[Mike DiCenso]

Its not when the BoP comes out from behind the Sun that there's a big problem. Its when it goes behind it. Watch again carefully, the BoP zooms around behind the Sun and the curvature of the Sun is far too extreme as the BoP is clearly shown going around it, and the BoP should've shrank to a point anyway. As it is, what is shown is a pretty grievous error and would scale the ship's wingspan to tens of thousands of km easily, or the Sun down to a few thousand meters.

So yeah, it counts.
-Mike

[2046]

I'll have to find a higher resolution, I don't see it from the Youtube vid.

[Mr. Oragahn]

ST4 hints at a scaling problem but doesn't actually do it, as I recall. You don't see a wing come out from behind the sun or anything.

And I wouldn't say that they cared less, they just didn't build increasingly detailed sun models with flashes to hide the transitions. It got the point across.

I'm more like thinking of today. If the idea is just to get to the point, then let's stick to Bab5 graphics and that's all. Or let's go back to Buck Rogers.

[2046]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65nSJrF-zgw

That's a higher resolution one . . . it does not go behind the sun, but disappears rather near it, which would be somewhat consistent with the whole time warp idea. It also disappears around the same time the camera stops trailing it at speed, so you could go that way with it also.

Further, if you watch carefully, background stars are rotating around, moving to the left at a high rate, which also affects the apparent trajectory. Of course, this star motion contradicts the seeming static angle of the sun itself, but perhaps that, too, is part of the time warp effect, and as they are approaching the sun they are already time-warping along with the sun's rotation at whatever angle . . . if the background stars are suggestive of, say, a third of a rotation, the sun might maintain a fairly constant look during that time.

(The sun rotates once every 25 days or so. Neat vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaBjfsoulao )

All in all, I'd say it was a reasonably well-done shot for the budget . . . I mean, the sun does look a bit crappy, rather like a glowing golf ball, but they did put some luminosity variations suggestive of boiling, and it got the point across. The main problem with the scene is that it is entirely too slow . . . at 1000c, for instance, the distance from the Earth to the sun should be covered in something like half a second. As it stands, the sun dominates the viewscreen (judging by the yellow glow on the bridge) for 40 seconds. It's kind of a replay of the chase from "Operation: Annihilate" (as seen in this crappy Youtube clip), though at least in the latter case we don't exactly know the start point.

Then again, the departure angle from Earth in ST4 shows that they initially headed away from the sun, so at least that's something.

In any case, what I don't see is any evidence for the argument that they put the KBoP behind the sun in any way.

[Lucky]

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Bird of Prey slingshots around the Sun to do a time warp, and either the Sun has shrunk in the 23rd century dramatically, or the Bird of Prey grew to planet-sized proportions!

Just watch the video clip here starting at 2:03 to 2:14.
-Mike

And what did you scale the Klingon Bird of Prey against?

Star Trek is one of the few settings where ships should be expected to appear to change size do to all the gravity manipulation going on.

[Mr. Oragahn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65nSJrF-zgw

That's a higher resolution one . . . it does not go behind the sun, but disappears rather near it, which would be somewhat consistent with the whole time warp idea. It also disappears around the same time the camera stops trailing it at speed, so you could go that way with it also.

Further, if you watch carefully, background stars are rotating around, moving to the left at a high rate, which also affects the apparent trajectory. Of course, this star motion contradicts the seeming static angle of the sun itself, but perhaps that, too, is part of the time warp effect, and as they are approaching the sun they are already time-warping along with the sun's rotation at whatever angle . . . if the background stars are suggestive of, say, a third of a rotation, the sun might maintain a fairly constant look during that time.

(The sun rotates once every 25 days or so. Neat vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaBjfsoulao )

All in all, I'd say it was a reasonably well-done shot for the budget . . . I mean, the sun does look a bit crappy, rather like a glowing golf ball, but they did put some luminosity variations suggestive of boiling, and it got the point across. The main problem with the scene is that it is entirely too slow . . . at 1000c, for instance, the distance from the Earth to the sun should be covered in something like half a second. As it stands, the sun dominates the viewscreen (judging by the yellow glow on the bridge) for 40 seconds. It's kind of a replay of the chase from "Operation: Annihilate" (as seen in this crappy Youtube clip), though at least in the latter case we don't exactly know the start point.

Then again, the departure angle from Earth in ST4 shows that they initially headed away from the sun, so at least that's something.

In any case, what I don't see is any evidence for the argument that they put the KBoP behind the sun in any way.

I thought the plot precisely had the Klingon Bird of Prey circle Sol?
Surely the effect actually has the BoP disappears while the trail shrinks.
Talking about getting the point across, it seems that they really wanted the audience to think the ship goes around the star, really.
Anyway, since the stars don't even change despite the suggestion that once the ship is on the left, it's in the past, we shouldn't be so inquisitorial about it. Well, that's a cheap cop out I know...

[Firmus Piett]

The exact same thing can be said about Kuat yet the very same sources that host the pictures say that world is 10,000Km in diameter. And I'm pretty certain this screwed up scale happens in a lot of other places throughout the clone wars, where what are obviously supposedly planets would be very small when scaled against starships. Furthermore the same issues crop up in other franchises too, such as the exterminatus clips from firewarrior or Dawn of War II.

I'm not saying you can't conclude there's a number of miniature artificial planets floating around the SW galaxy and apparently the 40K one too, but personally I don't think it's supposed to be the case... even explicitly so in the case of Kuat's stated ten thousand kilometre diameter. So do you disregard the screwed scale in favor of the supposed history and diameter of Kuat, or do you disregard the diameter and history and assume its an artificial mini-world.

Further evidence for abundant miniature at least partially artificial worlds would stem from the understated diameters that the EU routinely provides for worlds such as Endor, where normal gravity would not be possible. A realistic lower limit is 8 or 9,000 Km if I recall correctly. Considering the histories of these worlds, normal gravities and the evolution of life (any artificial gravity would had to have been there since very early in the Ewok's evolution) I feel the EU's silly numbers are just wrong there; the worlds must be large enough for the G.

And as a complete aside can someone please explain the 160Km counter argument for the DS-II to me in a nutshell? I've tried scaling it against even the unrealistic diameters and I come to at least >400Km.

[2046]

Kuat scaling is all EU, is it not?

As for the DS2 scaling, I have it as briefly as possible (for me, anyway) here:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWdeathstarsizes.html

It may be possible to get 400km via the hyperspace exit shot at Endor or something, but other examples contradict that (as well as other shots of the DS2 against Endor).

Without that and without Saxton's super-trench, there's just no way to get to such a size.

[2046]

Some further notes on "Jedi Crash"… basically we either accept the scale-down as true or we disregard space objects altogether. As for me, I already disregard the obviously inhuman CGI character kinematics, but dismissing space seems a bit much in my opinion.

http://dsg2k.blogspot.com/2014/08/jedi- ... ecqos.html

[359]

Well that hit just about every point I was going to cover in an abandoned text file outline I just re-found on the subject:

Distance traveled
Velocity of transit
––observed initial velocity
––observed final velocity
Event Specific Issues
––Could the ship accelerate under power?
––––Hit the planet despite control?
––Size of the star
––––Size of the star in planet sky
––Closeness of the Planet
Analysis
Conclusions

I also calculated the size of the star to about 10-ish kilometers across. Which, although not possible for a fusion star, would provide for a closer habitable done. I also went and looked at the size of the star in the sky, it is significantly larger than the sun is on Earth in the vast majority shots. However with each scene it does irritatingly get smaller, inconsistent visuals are even worse than poor visuals in my book.

I think that while TCW: "Jedi Crash" is disputable enough not to be worth anything to anyone, the Ringo Vinda event had so much scaling of the station against people, starships, and shuttles that ignoring the planet issues is acceptable for the sake of station scale. Although I do like to weight toward intent, so this still pulls me two ways.

But between the significant amount of measurable scaling of the station and the alternate of contradicting the Deathstar's implausibleness of being moon sized, not Earth's moon of course, I would go with the 83 km scalings for consistency's sake.

[2046]

Ooh, size of the star in the sky . . . good catch.

And yeah, I'm not comfortable having a ring around a full-size planet and then have folks being all like "120km wide space station!?!?!?! WTF?!?!?!" a couple of decades later.

Of course, if TCW's makers didn't realize that was a contradiction, maybe the same would be true of Han et al . . . that is to say, they apparently thought a skinny little ring around a planet wasn't a big deal, but somehow a big ball is. In which case, the true shock-and-awe factor is that it is a mobile planetkiller.

But still, that's not very emotionally satisfying. I prefer assuming characters are more intelligent and knowledgeable about their surroundings than we are.

[2046]

Random thought if I just wanted to be completely mean about it . . . if the ECQO was suddenly moving away from the planet due to the close pass of the Republic frigate, then it would have to be extraordinarily low mass, also. And, worse, it would create a Hippie Holocaust amongst the arrogant pacifist population, which I rather like because I hate arrogant jackass pacifism.

All kidding aside, though, that's not plausible even if it was a huge low-as-a-hydrogen-fart-density flashlight, methinks . . . unless perhaps the argument would be that there was engine thrust that somehow pushed it, but even then it doesn't make a whole lot of sense what with the whole crash thing. So, I'm thinking the shrinking-in-sky thing would have to be chalked up to camera issues.

In any case, the fact that the planet seemed to have life on it prior to the hippie invasion strongly suggests this ECQO is not a constructed item but instead a natural phenomenon.

There's another likely ECQO in the films, by the way . . . when Obi-Wan is escaping Utapau in the newly available fighter previously owned by Grievous, the star lighting the scene is clearly much too close. As I put it on my blog:

Similarly, the space shot that Brian makes claims about features a visible star way, way in the wrong place. For the planets to be lit by that, it would have to be what one might call an "extremely compact quasi-stellar object" (ECQO) in close orbit. Otherwise, the planets should look like the merest slivers. The only other alternative would be to argue that the field of view is profoundly monkeyed with in that scene, and even possibly being actively changed throughout it, which is a possibility but would then also render its use as an acceleration guide kaput. Given that the star moves much like the moons do, it seems it must be either an ECQO or a monkeyed scene.

Here's what I mean about the sliver . . . this is an overlay of Celestia looking at Earth with the sun in a similar position to the lower right compared to the Utapau ECQO at the upper left.


Click to Embiggify


. . . and here is the animated .gif of the star's moon-like motion:


Click to Embiggify

Put simply, it really shouldn't move along with the moons like that. The planet and moons ought to be so much closer that they wiggle about like ping-pong balls by comparison to a stationary, distant sun.

ILM did a much better job at the end of ST2, though the final pullback from Genesis for Nimoy's "final frontier" voiceover was a bit wonky. This can be attributed to artistic license and whatever weird camera tomfoolery was afoot to make it all funky-morphic.