TCW/LFL intent: frustrate/destroy the versus debate?

For polite and reasoned discussion of Star Wars and/or Star Trek.
ILikeDeathNote
Jedi Knight
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:31 am

TCW/LFL intent: frustrate/destroy the versus debate?

Post by ILikeDeathNote » Tue Feb 17, 2009 10:13 pm

The following is from The Clone Wars thread, in turn from this very board (EDIT: correction, make that the Review/Critique board):
Mr. Oragahn wrote: The more it goes on, the more I wonder how far we can really gauge this data. I mean, a comics is drawn, but it's supposed to be realistic.
With TCWS, it's not the same thing. It's a cartoon with really jerky stuff and some nonsense sometimes.
ILikeDeathNote wrote: The only way Lucas works is by trying to tell the story he's trying to tell. Now, granted, the prequels taught us that he might not always be able to tell it the way he meant for it to be experienced, but it's clear that Warsies forget it's a story first.
Mith wrote: Finally, the ships don't last nearly as long as we're told by some sources; the one Venator didn't last long before she took some heavy damage.
Mith wrote:You'll note my post there about how pathetic and childish some of these people are being. Even more so because they want to keep getting away from the main characters of Star Wars. I find it odd that these people love it so much...but hate the main characters =P
watchdog wrote:This reminds me of something I read years ago, someone asked an Army officer what he thought of the AT-AT's. His response was that they were everything you would not want in a troop transport; slow, shakes the troops up to much and big top-heavy targets.
Mith wrote:Of course they are. They're meant to indimidate civilians. That's it. Their military capabilities are just downright zero. Simply digging a series of large trenches would be enough to seriously slow down or even stop an AT-AT. Not to mention the horrid weak point of the legs.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:In the CGI movie, an AT-TE's cabin is destroyed by a direct shot from those small spider droids, and yet those bolts hardly put out impressive firepower at all. In truth, AT-TEs, at shorter distances, would go down very quickly against a barrage of low powered bolt, and their main advantage is their abundant armament and their long range cannon.
But the whole walker design is rubbish anyway. And that's certainly not to start a debate on tanks vs mechs, but obviously, in a galaxy where repulsors are so well spread and standardized, one would use them, only to revert to wheels or tracks in proximity of any planetary shield.
Mike DiCenso wrote:That gets into another issue all together, which is why AT-ATs or any "ground" SW vehicle would even bother having wheels, treads, or legs of any kind with repulsorlift tech so well established that Luke or anyone on backwater Tatooine could have a speeder that worked so reliably that no one gave it a second thought. The advantages of such a system are so obvious, too....
-Mike
l33telboi wrote:New episode again, and a few interesting details.

Dooku's flagship is a mere Munificent-class Frigate, and for some reason it's flying around on its own out on the outer-rim. A single Republic cruiser managed to disable it with ease.

And the Frigate apparently has hangars. Why is this interesting? Because the RotS: ICS says "Destroyers and frigates are not equipped with hangars or ground-attack armies...
l33telboi wrote:There didn't seem to be anything special about it. But even so, knowing how the entertainment industry works we'll see other Frigates with hangars as well, because you don't model something and then promptly never use it again. That’d be a waste of money.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Thanks, that's an interesting interview. This one part down at the bottom of page was really interesting:


Dave: I tried to talk about this in the commentary I do online. Henry and I knew this would be a big one for EU fans. I tend to think of the Episode “Lair of Grievous” as a look more into the mind of Grievous. How you interpret the story depends largely on what backstory you like. If you believe Grievous was shot down in a shuttle by Dooku and put back together, I think that story is there, it’s just that Grievous has invented this new “story” of choosing his alterations. If you don’t believe in the EU version of the story or didn’t like it, then perhaps this new revelation that Grievous was a warrior whose lust for power made him choose to be altered, suits you better. Again a great many of the truths we cling to depend largely on our own point of view. Grievous was a great warrior in both stories, he was a Kaleesh in both stories, the major differences depend on what you believe about his past. In the end I have to say this, many die hard EU fans pick and choose the stories they think are canon based on what they like and what they don’t like. They read a novel they like it and it’s ‘in’, they don’t like it, and it’s ‘out.’ Well, we get our like and dislike in the EU directly from George and he created Star Wars, I have to say that’s a pretty big trump card. Regardless, much effort goes into trying to word things or shoot things so that the existing EU can remain, if only at times from a certain point of view.

So basically this reconfirms that the EU is very subordinate to George Lucas' whims and vision, if he decides he doesn't like something, or doesn't want it to be included in the series.
-Mike
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Still, GL himself is not above contradictions, but the thing is they happen within his own... canon?
l33telboi wrote:Halfway through the first season, George was so excited with what we were doing, he came in one day with an outline and handed it to me, “Turn that into a script.” It was a story called ‘Count Dooku Captured.” From then on, George got into the writing \ scripting process in a big way. On season two, ALL of the story ideas came from George, except a couple that were originally written in season one by Dave and I (& Dini). I think season three is the same way.

But then Filoni repeated it when he said it was Lucas's idea to have a captured Dooku and Anakin interact.
Jedi Master Spock wrote:So here's where things get messy in the traditional LL heirarchy (i.e., G-T-C-S-N): If it comes from George, it's G-canon. So this would mean that most of the second season, part of the first season, and apparently much of the third season, has G-canon plot.

In general, when it happens in the same level, newer material retcons older material, and the novelizations themselves are pretty old (and the new Clone Wars series... well... very new).
ILikeDeathNote wrote:You know, thinking about some of the discussion going on in the other sites topic has made me think....


...now I know I'm just stating the obvious here, but I think the CW cartoon is just meant to sell toys. But of course, saying that out loud actually makes you think about it and all the implications.

Now, the episodes are still pretty good, mind you, but my point is, catering to either side of the Vs. debate doesn't exactly sell toys now, does it?
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Well the problem is that this CGI stuff takes ample liberties with realistic moves, scales and even consistency.

I got Jedi Crash and it's bollocks on all points. I can't even bother trying to understand how the EU and Interdictors are still supposed to work now considering that the only reason a jump from inside the atmosphere of a planet led to a star (just dumb luck) was that because no calculation had been made, since they even knew where they were going and how long it would take before they'd end in the sun, or more precisely pass through its gravitational shadow or whatever.

You've got a fucked up scale between a star, a ship AND a planet, it couldn't be worse even if they tried hard.
There's that cruiser that can't withstand reentry and loses an engine there, but can slam into the ground and not get completely torn like the inferior portion of the Invisible Hand was.

Add that to Bothawui and its miniature planet, to Padmé making all jumps in some episode, to fighters, starships and flames behaving like they'd do on a mix of atmosphere AND gravity, and that's it.

In all honesty, I'd nearly only rely on dialogue and official written fluff.
ILikeDeathNote wrote:To be fair, so did the OT and PT movies.
Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:That statement could not be more true.
Mike DiCenso wrote:It's a staple of the genre of Saturday matinee movies that Star Wars emulates so much.
-Mike
Airlocke_Jedi_Knight wrote:Purposely emulates. Those were Lucas' favorite movies.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:No, this is clearly a problem of the new show clearly not putting much care into certain aspects of the design.
ILikeDeathNote wrote:I'm surprised no one's brought this up.

The latest Clone Wars episode strongly suggests that Clonetrooper armor is completely ineffectual in protecting against an airborne pathogen attack.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:The style of the show which takes severe liberties at times, either with people's moves or else, and the gross physics errors, make this material rather dubious to use for nitpicky analysis like it's applied to the movies.

You can get the dialogue and the general points, and take them at face value, that works.
l33telboi wrote:Because Star Wars movies had no physics errors? The problem here isn't that it's CGI. The problem is that it's Star Wars. Fantasy in space. It never made sense, and never will (unless you look to authors other then George Lucas and massive re-design the franchise).
I recall in another thread the direct discussion of the apathy or perhaps even potential desire to destroy the versus debate by the showrunners and perhaps Lucas himself, but I cannot right now locate that thread. When I do find it, I will edit this thread and add the relevant quotes. Either way, I feel that the above quotes present considerable evidence that there is almost certainly apathy for the verses debate, and perhaps a determined effort to frustrate the verses debate.

I have a few opinions as to why Lucas and others at LucasFilm Licensing and their associated companies may in fact desire to destroy the verses debate community, but that is best left for another thread.

PunkMaister
Jedi Knight
Posts: 622
Joined: Sat Feb 14, 2009 1:25 am

Post by PunkMaister » Wed Feb 18, 2009 12:11 am

OK to be brutally honest I do not think that George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry or the creators of Stargate, Dr Who you name it ever gave or give a horse's arse about so called Versus debates communities. They care about the stories relating to their respective franchises and whatever is necessary to drive the plot. It is very likely that at this rate the venerable SW ICS, the bible of Sexton and Wong will become non canon soon enough...

ILikeDeathNote
Jedi Knight
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:31 am

Post by ILikeDeathNote » Wed Feb 18, 2009 12:17 am

PunkMaister wrote:OK to be brutally honest I do not think that George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry or the creators of Stargate, Dr Who you name it ever gave or give a horse's arse about so called Versus debates communities. They care about the stories relating to their respective franchises and whatever is necessary to drive the plot. It is very likely that at this rate the venerable SW ICS, the bible of Sexton and Wong will become non canon soon enough...
That's actually relevant to the point I was trying to make. However, perhaps the Star Wars fanon has become so rabid, Lucas feels the need to debunk their beliefs in order to return to this middle ground, lest they ruin it for the remaining fanbase. Basically, the crux of my rant where I argue that rabid Warsies feel they have a greater claim to intellectual ownership than Lucas.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Feb 18, 2009 12:39 am

I'd say there's more evidence that Lucas is just doing what he likes doing: borrowing a lot, and still fucking up some facts just to show who's your daddy.

Considering the new higher canon SW material being made, plus the future live series, it's possible that the versus scene will possibly allow less room to the EU.

Now, taking on points made by l33t.
l33telboi wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:The style of the show which takes severe liberties at times, either with people's moves or else
Hardly important. It's stylized CGI. I don't see why this would impact anything on the versus debate.
Obviously, when gauging something is dependant on the way it behaves, like an explosion or else, there's going to be limits. What you'll get is possibly a general idea of the rough magnitude of said explosion, but it's certainly not going to be even more accurate than a movie one, and this applies to everything.
and the gross physics errors, make this material rather dubious to use for nitpicky analysis like it's applied to the movies.
Because Star Wars movies had no physics errors? The problem here isn't that it's CGI. The problem is that it's Star Wars. Fantasy in space. It never made sense, and never will (unless you look to authors other then George Lucas and massive re-design the franchise).
No no, that's a bad copout. I listed some examples, including/and those: utterly flawed scalings so much it hurts, smoke rising in space as a ship's hull burns, Y-wing bouncing on the hull of a warship like if there was a gravity, the large ion pancake not even having the same speed between two shots, so much that it can cover 1 km in a fraction of a second, yet fails to move faster than sluggish bombers that can't even push their engines at full while they complete a 90° "climb", Padmé doing a wall jump in some corridor, Anakin's ship being hit by a small bolt while we saw Munificents fire only heavy guns, etc.

It's the style. Not even the illustration. Ghost in the Shell pretty much aims at a sort of realistic drawing. In SW' CGI, it's Pixar in space.
It does not mean the material has to be ignored, but it means you can't take some "facts" at face value the way you would if they came from the movies.

I say use a very special grain of salt for TCWS, that's all. The attention to detail is not as high as it is for the movies (which are not exempt of errors mind you, but nowhere the calibre of TCWS).

ILikeDeathNote
Jedi Knight
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:31 am

Post by ILikeDeathNote » Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:32 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:I'd say there's more evidence that Lucas is just doing what he likes doing . . . fucking up some facts just to show who's your daddy.
...isn't that just what I'm arguing is the case?
Mr. Oragahn wrote:
l33tleboi wrote:Because Star Wars movies had no physics errors? The problem here isn't that it's CGI. The problem is that it's Star Wars. Fantasy in space. It never made sense, and never will (unless you look to authors other then George Lucas and massive re-design the franchise).
No no, that's a bad copout. I listed some examples, including/and those: utterly flawed scalings so much it hurts, smoke rising in space as a ship's hull burns, Y-wing bouncing on the hull of a warship like if there was a gravity,
*shrugs* Meh. The only people who will be concerned with that are the people who insist Star Wars be remade into a "hard" sci-fi series. What's directly related to the verses debate is the apparent firepower and energy output of weapons and the damage the cause.

That said, it's still a very bad cop-out, I agree.
the large ion pancake not even having the same speed between two shots, so much that it can cover 1 km in a fraction of a second, yet fails to move faster than sluggish bombers that can't even push their engines at full while they complete a 90° "climb",
This, however, is relevant to the verses debate because it is relevant to the ability to disable or destroy enemies

What we have are contradictions in a weapon's ability to engage targets, and the contradiction is such that it can be interpreted as being quite able to engage small maneuvering targets or only capable of engaging near-stationary targets depending on which interpretation most supports the arguer's position.

This is also stupid and is exactly the type of frustration that this whole thread is supposed to be about.
Padmé doing a wall jump in some corridor,
Not entirely out of the realm of possibility, though someone versed in Parkour (or plays a lot of Mirror's Edge :p) would be a better authority.
Anakin's ship being hit by a small bolt while we saw Munificents fire only heavy guns,
*shrugs*
etc.

It's the style. Not even the illustration. Ghost in the Shell pretty much aims at a sort of realistic drawing. In SW' CGI, it's Pixar in space.
It does not mean the material has to be ignored, but it means you can't take some "facts" at face value the way you would if they came from the movies.
I think that's rather very intentional. Even the OT took a lot of liberties with its presentation and in some ways went out of its way to be unrealistic. It is after all, space opera, not a hard sci-fi series.

User avatar
l33telboi
Starship Captain
Posts: 910
Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:15 am

Post by l33telboi » Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:59 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Obviously, when gauging something is dependant on the way it behaves, like an explosion or else, there's going to be limits. What you'll get is possibly a general idea of the rough magnitude of said explosion, but it's certainly not going to be even more accurate than a movie one, and this applies to everything.
The explosions in the TCW are as realistic as the ones in the movies - which is to say: not at all. Every single visual sci-fi franchise makes the same mistakes. The explosion front slows down the bigger it gets, it looks nothing like an explosion should in space, etc.
No no, that's a bad copout. I listed some examples, including/and those: utterly flawed scalings so much it hurts
The creators of the PT have even said not to try to use the movies as scaling. Which became somewhat frustrating for fans when they tried to scale the droid fighters compared to the ARC-170s and noticed the droid fighters were significantly smaller then they should.
smoke rising in space as a ship's hull burns
A common mistake. *points to Galactica*
Y-wing bouncing on the hull of a warship like if there was a gravity
*Points to the buzz-droids in RotS* They even slid off the fighters as if there had been air-resistance slowing them down.
the large ion pancake not even having the same speed between two shots
*points to the sonic mine*

*points to any and every single surface to orbit transition in sci-fi ever*

*points to the CME incident in Stargate*

This is without doubt the single most common mistake in sci-fi. Things are made so that they look impressive, both from far away and up close. That means that when something’s close to the camera, they travel very slowly. And when something is far away from the camera, they travel much faster.
Padmé doing a wall jump in some corridor
She's a ninja. Obviously. This is sort of a valid point though, she shouldn’t be able to do so.
Anakin's ship being hit by a small bolt while we saw Munificents fire only heavy guns, etc.
You mean bolt size changes in relation to what they're near? Like the bolts on Wraith Hiveships and Ha'taks.

Look, the only thing that's changed here is you. You're expecting the show to follow some weird ultra-realism, just like you did with Stargate. But anyone knows that this is not going to happen. To say that the lack of this ultra-realism is somehow strange when compared to modern sci-fi is just weird though, because you can find errors like this in pretty much every show out there.
It's the style. Not even the illustration. Ghost in the Shell pretty much aims at a sort of realistic drawing. In SW' CGI, it's Pixar in space.
Yes, but unless we're trying to gauge how big Anakin's hair is, this is largely moot.

ILikeDeathNote
Jedi Knight
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:31 am

Post by ILikeDeathNote » Wed Feb 18, 2009 5:18 am

l33telboi wrote:Look, the only thing that's changed here is you. You're expecting the show to follow some weird ultra-realism, just like you did with Stargate. But anyone knows that this is not going to happen. To say that the lack of this ultra-realism is somehow strange when compared to modern sci-fi is just weird though, because you can find errors like this in pretty much every show out there.
I mean no disrespect towards Mr. Orugahn, but...l33tleboi is right.

This is probably the fifth time or so I've said it today, and the more I say it the larger of a revelation it seems and the more it bears repeating. I really do think Star Wars fans are trying to reimagine and remake the franchise into a "harder" sci-fi series, because somewhere along the way, people got the idea that "harder = better."

I think the frustrations of the verses debate have a lot of bearing on this. It's easier to gauge firepower calculations if things conform strictly to the laws of physics, so lazy and/or frustrated verses debaters now simply want the franchise to conform strictly to the laws of physics. In a lot of ways this reminds me of what Mr. Orugahn talked about with people who have tried to make a Stargate technical page, stopping when the physics of the show got too inconvenient for them.

Yes, I too have gripes with Star Wars and TCW, but most of my gripes are strictly from a storytelling perspective. I liked the OT and I don't have any real complaints to offer. TPM was manically paced and struggled to string together a plot. AotC was more successful, but was bogged down with Anakin being misguided and thinking that complaining about sand is a deep romantic expression. RotS was bogged down by...more emo whining being confused for deep romantic expression, and Anakin deciding that instead of using his own motivations, he'll just replace them with George Lucas' motivations.

But if George Lucas wants swordfights, space that acts more like an ocean/atmosphere complete with "space airplanes," and, hell, I dunno, how about even something truly absurdly ludicrous like spacefairing tallships complete with sails, billowing flags and wooden construction in his sci-fi space movies, that's honestly fine by me.
It's the style. Not even the illustration. Ghost in the Shell pretty much aims at a sort of realistic drawing. In SW' CGI, it's Pixar in space.
Yes, but unless we're trying to gauge how big Anakin's hair is, this is largely moot.
True.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Feb 18, 2009 3:57 pm

ILikeDeathNote wrote:...isn't that just what I'm arguing is the case?
No, your claim is that there's a voluntary attempt to break the versus fandom. An agenda.
I don't think so. It's just a possible side effect of post-SE Lucas milking his franchise without showing any interest at all, favourable or not, for the versus community.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:No no, that's a bad copout. I listed some examples, including/and those: utterly flawed scalings so much it hurts, smoke rising in space as a ship's hull burns, Y-wing bouncing on the hull of a warship like if there was a gravity,
*shrugs* Meh. The only people who will be concerned with that are the people who insist Star Wars be remade into a "hard" sci-fi series. What's directly related to the verses debate is the apparent firepower and energy output of weapons and the damage the cause.
I don't see why. Obviously, when you're not working from a book, nor from dialogue, what comes into play is visuals and sound. While we agree that sound in space is just used as an accepted what-if we could hear sound, and that fireballs are also a consensus, the movies have never struck me with such a level of disrespect for basic physics and even self-consistency, which are rather needed from the moment you want to gauge the power of a weapon, for example, based on what it does.
The more abstract the representation, the higher the degree of processing and interpretation needed to understand what really happened.

For example, you can go into a discussion about the nature of a given projectile weapon based on its aspect, as we did in SBC's ICS thread for the AT-TE's main cannon's projectiles.
However, considering how the effects are done in TCWS, you cannot pass the same observations and judgements. It's impossible. It is very difficult to mount an argument on the way something looks in those series considering the artistic style.
Same for explosions on ships. At times, they're barely better than what you'd get from a last-gen video game's cutscenes, where explosion effects are pasted here and there on a ship or structure, disappear, but leave the hull unchanged, while in the movies, this is much ought to occur, since we see lasting fires, debris and at the very least, scars or scorching marks on hulls.
Padmé doing a wall jump in some corridor,
Not entirely out of the realm of possibility, though someone versed in Parkour (or plays a lot of Mirror's Edge :p) would be a better authority.
Or Youtube would show you how this happens. There are limits to what even muscular and well trained parkour people can achieve, and Padmé is neither.
She simply makes a leap which struck me as unbelievable. I'll try to find this occurance.
If that happened in the movie, it could have only been accepted as a Force power of some sort, or superhuman ability, like the jump Jar Jar makes in the lake, and in the case of Padmé, this would have never happened.
I think that's rather very intentional. Even the OT took a lot of liberties with its presentation and in some ways went out of its way to be unrealistic. It is after all, space opera, not a hard sci-fi series.
The point is, the more liberties are taken, the less possible it is to make a versus debate. Versus debates require logic, consistency and a good amount of interpretability that fits with real world physics, even if the material is hand drawn or else.

Considering that TCW episodes are churned out at an industrial pace, the korean guys don't have much time to go into details, and this is where we're stuck.



l33telboi wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Obviously, when gauging something is dependant on the way it behaves, like an explosion or else, there's going to be limits. What you'll get is possibly a general idea of the rough magnitude of said explosion, but it's certainly not going to be even more accurate than a movie one, and this applies to everything.
The explosions in the TCW are as realistic as the ones in the movies - which is to say: not at all. Every single visual sci-fi franchise makes the same mistakes. The explosion front slows down the bigger it gets, it looks nothing like an explosion should in space, etc.
They make this error, but at least they also show some damage to the target. TCWS does not allocate much budget to the real-time modification of 3D models.
No no, that's a bad copout. I listed some examples, including/and those: utterly flawed scalings so much it hurts
The creators of the PT have even said not to try to use the movies as scaling. Which became somewhat frustrating for fans when they tried to scale the droid fighters compared to the ARC-170s and noticed the droid fighters were significantly smaller then they should.
That's terribly minor in light of the major fuck ups regarding Bothawui or the system in the last part of Jedi Crash. Those are major scaling mistakes, so much that you don't need to pick a ruler to start noticing something is wrong.
smoke rising in space as a ship's hull burns
A common mistake. *points to Galactica*
An occurance I'm sure I have missed, so where is it?
Is it old Galactica? I could understand. New one? Much less.

The SW movies had none of this. Knowing enough of Stargate, I can't find a single case like that either.
Only TCWS has shown campfire effects in space.
Y-wing bouncing on the hull of a warship like if there was a gravity
*Points to the buzz-droids in RotS* They even slid off the fighters as if there had been air-resistance slowing them down.
I noticed them, but at least you know that they were in orbit of a planet, and there's still an amount of atmosphere at such altitudes. Not to say that flying in the middle of a battlefield where ships have been sitting there for at least an hour and having their engines spit clouds of ionized particles continuously is certainly going to generate a sort of smog.
the large ion pancake not even having the same speed between two shots
*points to the sonic mine*
Minor and only noticeable when you pick a ruler.
*points to any and every single surface to orbit transition in sci-fi ever*
Explained as the ship accelerated or decelerated.
*points to the CME incident in Stargate*
Which is both a red herring and which I have openly and repeatedly described at absolutely wrong. I never pretended all effects were perfect either, but TCWS suffers at lot in that department.
Padmé doing a wall jump in some corridor
She's a ninja. Obviously. This is sort of a valid point though, she shouldn’t be able to do so.
Sort of?
Admit it's just plain impossible. Period.
It's only allowed because of the cartoonesque style of the show.
Anakin's ship being hit by a small bolt while we saw Munificents fire only heavy guns, etc.
You mean bolt size changes in relation to what they're near? Like the bolts on Wraith Hiveships and Ha'taks.
That's absurd. They certainly don't go down from a bolt that is several stories high to a bolt that's barely bigger than R2's lens.
Look, the only thing that's changed here is you. You're expecting the show to follow some weird ultra-realism, just like you did with Stargate.
Not only is that totally false and missing the point, but fuck hell yeah, in Stargate, I DO expect a live action series to be as close to reality as possible.
A cloud of super heated plasma which, alone, can destroy the surface of a world 1 AU away, and which manages to remain naturally as tight as a turbolaser or Wraith bolt is just bull. It's terrible science. Period.
It's the style. Not even the illustration. Ghost in the Shell pretty much aims at a sort of realistic drawing. In SW' CGI, it's Pixar in space.
Yes, but unless we're trying to gauge how big Anakin's hair is, this is largely moot.
No, that's wrong. The more a show lacks crediblity in relation to how things or individuals are ought to behave harms the credibility needed for vs debates. When the consistency flies away as well, when the scaling errors as so huge that you could spot them even standing a hundred meters away from a iPhone playing the movie, yes, that's bad as well and makes it hard to be taken seriously when trying to make points about the toughness of a starship's shields when it gets near a star, if that star is obviously not bigger than the Empire State Building and has a Class-M planet standing two dwarf-star diameters away.

User avatar
l33telboi
Starship Captain
Posts: 910
Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:15 am

Post by l33telboi » Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:34 pm

Mr. Oraghan wrote:They make this error, but at least they also show some damage to the target. TCWS does not allocate much budget to the real-time modification of 3D models.
Obviously, but I don't see that to be an all too big problem.
That's terribly minor in light of the major fuck ups regarding Bothawui or the system in the last part of Jedi Crash. Those are major scaling mistakes, so much that you don't need to pick a ruler to start noticing something is wrong.
The same types of errors are always present when dealing with large scale objects. Hence the CME example I already presented. Not sure what the problem with Bothawui is though. If you want an exact replica of the sun problem, look no further then the Wraith Hiveship who rounds a black hole.
An occurance I'm sure I have missed, so where is it?
Is it old Galactica? I could understand. New one? Much less.
New one, when the Galactica is on fire after being nuked. All in all, noticing that people treat space as if there was gravity or atmosphere there is nothing new though. You might've noticed that some shows even have sound in space, with fighters behaving like modern fighters, etc.
I noticed them, but at least you know that they were in orbit of a planet, and there's still an amount of atmosphere at such altitudes.
Way too little to provide an effect like that.
Not to say that flying in the middle of a battlefield where ships have been sitting there for at least an hour and having their engines spit clouds of ionized particles continuously is certainly going to generate a sort of smog.
Space doesn't work that way. Nothing ever stops moving. Not even smoke in space. Which means there can't be any clouds in space, unless they're held together by something, or big enough to take a very long time to disperse.
Minor and only noticeable when you pick a ruler.
I dunno. I noticed it the first time I watched the movie. But ok, let's take another example. The Death Star. When the planet blows up the debris is travelling at a signifant percentage of c. Yet when the MF jumps into the system, the debris is almost stationary.
Explained as the ship accelerated or decelerated.
The result becomes extremely silly. Take Dooku's escape from Geonosis as an example.
Which is both a red herring and which I have openly and repeatedly described at absolutely wrong. I never pretended all effects were perfect either, but TCWS suffers at lot in that department.
No more then any other show. Indeed it seems to make the exact same mistakes all other shows make.
Sort of?
Admit it's just plain impossible. Period.
It's only allowed because of the cartoonesque style of the show.
Granted.
That's absurd. They certainly don't go down from a bolt that is several stories high to a bolt that's barely bigger than R2's lens.
Are you kidding? Wraith Hiveship bolts vary from the size of a BC-304 to a barrel.
Not only is that totally false and missing the point, but fuck hell yeah, in Stargate, I DO expect a live action series to be as close to reality as possible.
Which IMO is just crazy. Because Stargate at no point ever suggested it was going to deviate from the standard visual Sci-Fi template. It's an unrealistic demand. And shouldn't surprise anyone.
No, that's wrong. The more a show lacks crediblity in relation to how things or individuals are ought to behave harms the credibility needed for vs debates.
No. All that matters is canon. What credibility a fan gives it doesn't factor into it.
When the consistency flies away as well
There are exactly 0 sci-fi franchises that are consistant in this respect.
when the scaling errors as so huge that you could spot them even standing a hundred meters away from a iPhone playing the movie, yes, that's bad as well and makes it hard to be taken seriously when trying to make points about the toughness of a starship's shields when it gets near a star, if that star is obviously not bigger than the Empire State Building and has a Class-M planet standing two dwarf-star diameters away.
Scaling issues this large are more then common. Take a look at the intro to Voyager, the one at the start of every show. Voyager is depictes to be about as wide as the rings around a Saturn like planet. In other words, the size of a moon.

Or what about the Death Star? It changes size every scene, and even visibly shrinks in one scene.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:39 pm

l33telboi wrote:
Mr. Oraghan wrote:They make this error, but at least they also show some damage to the target. TCWS does not allocate much budget to the real-time modification of 3D models.
Obviously, but I don't see that to be an all too big problem.
For obvious reasons, it becomes hard to pretend the ship is damaged. Look, it reminds me of that Battlefront sequence of an ISD bombarding a factory on Mustafar, from the PSP game.
Bolts keep raining, there are plenty of explosions and whatelse, but the building's 3D object remains there.
It's hard to say when and how this object got destroyed, exactly.
That's terribly minor in light of the major fuck ups regarding Bothawui or the system in the last part of Jedi Crash. Those are major scaling mistakes, so much that you don't need to pick a ruler to start noticing something is wrong.
The same types of errors are always present when dealing with large scale objects. Hence the CME example I already presented. Not sure what the problem with Bothawui is though. If you want an exact replica of the sun problem, look no further then the Wraith Hiveship who rounds a black hole.
It could be a small blackhole.
An occurance I'm sure I have missed, so where is it?
Is it old Galactica? I could understand. New one? Much less.
New one, when the Galactica is on fire after being nuked.
Sorry, what episode?
All in all, noticing that people treat space as if there was gravity or atmosphere there is nothing new though. You might've noticed that some shows even have sound in space, with fighters behaving like modern fighters, etc.
Already addressed.
I noticed them, but at least you know that they were in orbit of a planet, and there's still an amount of atmosphere at such altitudes.
Way too little to provide an effect like that.
I'm sure we could check with the horizon and that, at best, they'd be flying at the equivalent of a the minimum of a LEO.
Not to say that flying in the middle of a battlefield where ships have been sitting there for at least an hour and having their engines spit clouds of ionized particles continuously is certainly going to generate a sort of smog.
Space doesn't work that way. Nothing ever stops moving. Not even smoke in space. Which means there can't be any clouds in space, unless they're held together by something, or big enough to take a very long time to disperse.
That's not the point. No matter what you do, there will be a greater mass of such particles where reactors are found, and particles will ricochet against others when they meet, so probabilities of concentrations will still leave some in that zone.
We can also argue that the fighters flew through the trails of those warships.
Which they kept doing all along anyway, as I verified.
Minor and only noticeable when you pick a ruler.
I dunno. I noticed it the first time I watched the movie. But ok, let's take another example. The Death Star. When the planet blows up the debris is travelling at a signifant percentage of c. Yet when the MF jumps into the system, the debris is almost stationary.
The Death Star is a rather very special piece of equipment here.
Explained as the ship accelerated or decelerated.
The result becomes extremely silly. Take Dooku's escape from Geonosis as an example.
I don't know why people insist on this. Dooku has never been fleeing at supersonic speeds. Even blaster bolts would easily catch him. The dude took his time.
Which is both a red herring and which I have openly and repeatedly described at absolutely wrong. I never pretended all effects were perfect either, but TCWS suffers at lot in that department.
No more then any other show. Indeed it seems to make the exact same mistakes all other shows make.
An unfounded overgeneralization is not an argument.
That's absurd. They certainly don't go down from a bolt that is several stories high to a bolt that's barely bigger than R2's lens.
Are you kidding? Wraith Hiveship bolts vary from the size of a BC-304 to a barrel.
Until you can show me the same bolt that changes size so dramatically, I don't see how it's a problem that different hiveships can have different guns or different yields.
Barrel sizes in SW are far more determining of the dimension of a bolt than anything we saw in Stargate, which benefits from a lot of leeway there.
Not only is that totally false and missing the point, but fuck hell yeah, in Stargate, I DO expect a live action series to be as close to reality as possible.
Which IMO is just crazy. Because Stargate at no point ever suggested it was going to deviate from the standard visual Sci-Fi template. It's an unrealistic demand. And shouldn't surprise anyone.
Yes, let's just have people swim and breathe in space without a suit. Who cares about realism after all?
No, I think you're mixing the fact that there are some conventions that Star Wars, as a space opera, established decades ago, them being, in general, sound in space, atmospheric explosions in space, and ships banking in space.

The rest is pretty much determined by the care for realism and detail of each production house.
No, that's wrong. The more a show lacks crediblity in relation to how things or individuals are ought to behave harms the credibility needed for vs debates.
No. All that matters is canon. What credibility a fan gives it doesn't factor into it.
On the contrary, it absolutely does, for obvious reasons. Mainly, it does matter, in order to take a show with enough suspension of disbelief.

That's exactly ruined ALIEN RESURRECTION for many people, including me. An example being Christie' impossible cool bouncing shot at the beginning of the film.
When the consistency flies away as well
There are exactly 0 sci-fi franchises that are consistant in this respect.
Oh come on, that's just lame. I gave you an example that collects on its own a pantheon of errors, including such an inconsistency within one minute.
The point is that there are episodes in TCWS which feel rushed.
when the scaling errors as so huge that you could spot them even standing a hundred meters away from a iPhone playing the movie, yes, that's bad as well and makes it hard to be taken seriously when trying to make points about the toughness of a starship's shields when it gets near a star, if that star is obviously not bigger than the Empire State Building and has a Class-M planet standing two dwarf-star diameters away.
Scaling issues this large are more then common. Take a look at the intro to Voyager, the one at the start of every show. Voyager is depictes to be about as wide as the rings around a Saturn like planet. In other words, the size of a moon.
I never pretended Voyager was good.
It particularly got bad when it came to exploding planets, debris and other forms of molten ejecta.
But this only reinforces my point that an accurate, and thus realistic event will not break SoD.
And this is all what this is about. If the representation is very stylized, you just cannot take it at face value as you would with a live action source.

A CGI show where characters or ships or else, because it's a cartoon, are not managed the way they'd be in a live action piece, means you can't treat both sources the same way.
You can't judge the agility of a characted based on a show that is closer to The Incredibles than Final Fantasy, Spirits Within.

For TCSW, how can we start observing starfighter or warships movements and accelerations considering it's a show that keeps taking inspiration from Pixar and the 3 Stooges more than, again, FFSW.
It's totally uncertain, which is not the case with the movies, because for the movies, you know, at least, that you're supposed to believe there's no need to interpret things beyond what you see is exactly what you'd really get if you were "there" instead.
Or what about the Death Star? It changes size every scene, and even visibly shrinks in one scene.
The second one? Yes, it's ridden with errors, which makes it pathetic for some to pretend that evidence defines it at being 900 km wide or near that figure.
But again, observe the difference in size between various shots of the DSII, and at worst, the biggest size is like three or four times its lowest size.
The sun in Jedi Crash is simply the size of a large planet and even has a starship flying behind it.
It takes the win and beats any glaring scaling I've seen by a long shot.

No one really thought if it was normal that the Republic Cruiser suddenly appeared to be a thousand times bigger than Jupiter.

But let's end on a positive note and consider that things possibly changed for the better in later episodes.

Mike DiCenso
Security Officer
Posts: 5839
Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 8:49 pm

Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:02 am

ILikeDeathNote wrote: But if George Lucas wants swordfights, space that acts more like an ocean/atmosphere complete with "space airplanes," and, hell, I dunno, how about even something truly absurdly ludicrous like spacefairing tallships complete with sails, billowing flags and wooden construction in his sci-fi space movies, that's honestly fine by me.
If I want that sort of over-the-top thing, I'll go with the undisputed master of such things Leiji Matsumoto, who unabashedly gives us plenty of billowing flags, battleships in space, spacecraft that fly around as though in an atmosphere, and spaceships that look like trains.
-Mike

ILikeDeathNote
Jedi Knight
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:31 am

Post by ILikeDeathNote » Thu Feb 19, 2009 7:32 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:
ILikeDeathNote wrote:...isn't that just what I'm arguing is the case?
No, your claim is that there's a voluntary attempt to break the versus fandom. An agenda.
I don't think so. It's just a possible side effect of post-SE Lucas milking his franchise without showing any interest at all, favourable or not, for the versus community.
That much I do understand. Yes, there is a difference between an agenda and apathy, and I will have to concede that there may not exist an agenda. But I also feel that not only is there apathy from LFL, but that it's certainly relevant to this issue.
I don't see why. Obviously, when you're not working from a book, nor from dialogue, what comes into play is visuals and sound. While we agree that sound in space is just used as an accepted what-if we could hear sound, and that fireballs are also a consensus, the movies have never struck me with such a level of disrespect for basic physics and even self-consistency, which are rather needed from the moment you want to gauge the power of a weapon, for example, based on what it does.
The more abstract the representation, the higher the degree of processing and interpretation needed to understand what really happened.

For example, you can go into a discussion about the nature of a given projectile weapon based on its aspect, as we did in SBC's ICS thread for the AT-TE's main cannon's projectiles.
However, considering how the effects are done in TCWS, you cannot pass the same observations and judgements. It's impossible. It is very difficult to mount an argument on the way something looks in those series considering the artistic style.
Same for explosions on ships. At times, they're barely better than what you'd get from a last-gen video game's cutscenes, where explosion effects are pasted here and there on a ship or structure, disappear, but leave the hull unchanged, while in the movies, this is much ought to occur, since we see lasting fires, debris and at the very least, scars or scorching marks on hulls.
I do follow what you're saying, and I am also forced to concede your point that the live-action films do present better opportunities for realism than the CGI film/series.

But I challenge your notion regarding the degree of realism of the OT. IIRC, explosions for the OT were done either by blowing up models with firecrackers, or by superimposing explosions onto the film, and if I'm further not mistaken these explosions tended to be sub-scale as well. Since sub-scale effects dominated the OT, we're likely to see many potential discrepancies in accordance to real-world physics, so I don't think there's much of a difference between the CGI series and the OT in terms of adherence to the laws of physics.

As an aside, however, I will agree that many of the special effects on the CGI series were crap. They seem to be using a very piss-poor rendering program for grasslands, for example. Makes me feel like it's 1997.
Or Youtube would show you how this happens. There are limits to what even muscular and well trained parkour people can achieve, and Padmé is neither.
She simply makes a leap which struck me as unbelievable. I'll try to find this occurance.
That would be very helpful. I do not recall the scene on hand and I don't even know if it's from an episode or the movie, so for all I know she could either be leaping between the walls of a standard domestic hallway or leaping from one side of the Grand Canyon to the next.
The point is, the more liberties are taken, the less possible it is to make a versus debate. Versus debates require logic, consistency and a good amount of interpretability that fits with real world physics, even if the material is hand drawn or else.
...and we come back to the very reason why I made this thread in the first place. Yes, there probably is not likely an agenda behind this. Yes, there is probably a lot of apathy for it, though. And yes, this apathy and this tendency to take so many liberties go hand-in-hand.

If George Lucas and other show runners wanted to make things easy for scientific analysis, why would they take so many liberties? That does make me wonder.
Considering that TCW episodes are churned out at an industrial pace, the korean guys don't have much time to go into details, and this is where we're stuck.
...so I am to take it that the lack of respect for science in realism in TCW is because of subpar and time-constrained animation by Asian artists?

I do not know of Micheal Wong in any great detail beyond the general attitudes on this forum, and the little I bothered to read of his personal website, which I linked to in another post I made. But, despite what little I do know of him, I do have to rather agree with his attitudes regarding in turn attitudes towards Asian people - i.e., racism.

I'm sure TCW would be just as churned-out if the All-American team at Pixar California were slaving over it.
That's terribly minor in light of the major fuck ups regarding Bothawui or the system in the last part of Jedi Crash. Those are major scaling mistakes, so much that you don't need to pick a ruler to start noticing something is wrong.
I would like to point out that these grievous (hehe, get...oh nevermind) errors are fully independent of the show's budget.

Once again, it just makes me think in terms of how much of it is apathy and how much of it is deliberate.
The SW movies had none of this.
Admittedly, because we don't see much. We do see "licking flames" from the Executor's bridge tower and from another ISD-type command tower in RotJ. But of course, don't just take my word for it:

Image

I will say though that there is still room for interpretation based on that shot. I will provide these shots as well, should they prove to be useful for analysis. The second one, you will note, is a SFX shot, which might be particularly useful:

Image

Image
I noticed them, but at least you know that they were in orbit of a planet, and there's still an amount of atmosphere at such altitudes.
I doubt sufficient to cause such an effect; otherwise satellites with extensive solar arrays, heat sinks, antennae and other flimsy structures with very long arm moments would be royally screwed.

I'm not an astrophysicist, but I believe the main concern of atmospheric drag at that altitude is how they decay orbits, and then only after extended periods of time.
Minor and only noticeable when you pick a ruler.
Ummm...kay?

I think l33tleboi was pointing out the fact that the sonic mines only behave on a 2D plane, despite being observed exclusively in a 3D environment.
That's absurd. They certainly don't go down from a bolt that is several stories high to a bolt that's barely bigger than R2's lens.
Variable yield?
Not only is that totally false and missing the point, but fuck hell yeah, in Stargate, I DO expect a live action series to be as close to reality as possible. A cloud of super heated plasma which, alone, can destroy the surface of a world 1 AU away, and which manages to remain naturally as tight as a turbolaser or Wraith bolt is just bull. It's terrible science. Period.
*shrugs* That statement can only suggest that you in general have a very poor opinion of virtually every sci-fi series ever made.

I can say more, but the fact of the matter is that I already have. Please refer to my previous posts regarding fans wanting to remake series to be "harder".
No, that's wrong. The more a show lacks crediblity in relation to how things or individuals are ought to behave harms the credibility needed for vs debates. When the consistency flies away as well, when the scaling errors as so huge that you could spot them even standing a hundred meters away from a iPhone playing the movie, yes, that's bad as well and makes it hard to be taken seriously when trying to make points about the toughness of a starship's shields when it gets near a star, if that star is obviously not bigger than the Empire State Building and has a Class-M planet standing two dwarf-star diameters away.
This, however, is undeniably solid.

Although I would argue that it argues more for internal consistency rather than the need to truly adhere to real-world physics.


I will edit this post to include replies subsequent to the above post by Mr. Orugahn, rather than artificially racking up my post count.

...which I have elected to do now:
I dunno. I noticed it the first time I watched the movie. But ok, let's take another example. The Death Star. When the planet blows up the debris is travelling at a signifant percentage of c. Yet when the MF jumps into the system, the debris is almost stationary.
The results of a Google image search, which turned up images from the SWTC and SDN:

Image

Image

From the shots, it appears as if the vast majority of the planet's mass has either been outright vaporized or has formed small particulates - of course, extremely large particulates of many, many kilometers in size will appear as small from this scale. What's interesting to note, from the shot from SDN, is that there's a cloud-like mass occupying the space formerly occupied by Alderaan. It is difficult to determine the velocity of the cloud particulates from such stills, but perhaps this is the area the Millennium Falcon exited hyperspace from?

This, of course, would assume that most of the mass of Alderaan was ejected with the larger particulates, and that the resulting mass of the cloud is less than that of the Death Star, in order for Han and the Falcon's navi computer to believe that what had been Alderaan's orbital plane was a different position from where they thought, perhaps confusing the Death Star's gravitational mass for Alderaan's.

But this is far beyond the scope of this topic. I don't even know why I argued this.
No more then any other show. Indeed it seems to make the exact same mistakes all other shows make.
It does beg it into question, especially considering that Dooku's ship was (presumably) a light sail ship.
Which IMO is just crazy. Because Stargate at no point ever suggested it was going to deviate from the standard visual Sci-Fi template. It's an unrealistic demand. And shouldn't surprise anyone.
As they say on the image boards, QFT.

(that's "quote for truth")
No. All that matters is canon. What credibility a fan gives it doesn't factor into it.
Well...it does, if the fan's opinion becomes a collective opinion. We need look no further than Voyager or Enterprise to see how apathy towards making a series internally consistent just turns things into stupid.
Scaling issues this large are more then common. Take a look at the intro to Voyager, the one at the start of every show. Voyager is depictes to be about as wide as the rings around a Saturn like planet. In other words, the size of a moon.

Or what about the Death Star? It changes size every scene, and even visibly shrinks in one scene.
My personal favorite is the Starfleet outpost Deep Space 9. Scaling for it is so screwed up I think even Paramount/Viacom authorities have just given up, so the most definitive thing we can say about Deep Space 9 is that "it's big."
Mr. Oragahn wrote:For obvious reasons, it becomes hard to pretend the ship is damaged. Look, it reminds me of that Battlefront sequence of an ISD bombarding a factory on Mustafar, from the PSP game.
Bolts keep raining, there are plenty of explosions and whatelse, but the building's 3D object remains there.
It's hard to say when and how this object got destroyed, exactly.
Normally, I would say something about game mechanics and all that. But the frustrating thing is that this is not an isolated case, nor is it isolated to video games.

One thing I do like that in (the frustratingly difficult) Balance of Power expansion to X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter there is a very nicely done cutscene of an ISD actually firing its heavy turbolaser banks and obliterating an asteroid base with two bolts. A bright flash, and the base has vanished.

Now that's Star Wars (and the only real thing I liked from this excruciatingly difficult game).
I'm sure we could check with the horizon and that, at best, they'd be flying at the equivalent of a the minimum of a LEO.
Once again I do not know, but the diffusion of particles at the higher stages of atmosphere are great. Something like 94% of the mass of the atmosphere is contained in the troposphere and lower half of the stratosphere.
That's not the point. No matter what you do, there will be a greater mass of such particles where reactors are found, and particles will ricochet against others when they meet, so probabilities of concentrations will still leave some in that zone.
We can also argue that the fighters flew through the trails of those warships.
Which they kept doing all along anyway, as I verified.
Image

l33tleboi is right, especially if we are to assume that they're ion engines, which if I'm not mistake disperse very readily. Even with a mass of warships, it won't be as dense as even the higher levels of the atmosphere (which we have already established to be near-nascent) other than almost on top of the source.
An unfounded overgeneralization is not an argument.
...what is the argument again? You expressed your frustration towards Star Wars' lack of scientific respect, and made statements suggesting that you were demanding it to be more realistic and that such realism was a norm among sci-fi series, when l33tleboi is correct in that virtually none actually do so.
Yes, let's just have people swim and breathe in space without a suit. Who cares about realism after all?
No, I think you're mixing the fact that there are some conventions that Star Wars, as a space opera, established decades ago, them being, in general, sound in space, atmospheric explosions in space, and ships banking in space.

The rest is pretty much determined by the care for realism and detail of each production house.
Which is what we've all been saying, though how you apply this to any given sci-fi franchise seems rather bizarre.

Of course Star Wars is a space opera, but I don't recall any effort being made to claim Stargate an attempt at scientific realism. If anything it's - and I'm probably throwing a lot on the line here, and as a fan, it actually kinda pains me to say it, but - in the vein of pulp sci-fi. Maybe with some space opera elements thrown in (which at least owes a bit to pulp sci-fi).
On the contrary, it absolutely does, for obvious reasons. Mainly, it does matter, in order to take a show with enough suspension of disbelief.

That's exactly ruined ALIEN RESURRECTION for many people, including me. An example being Christie' impossible cool bouncing shot at the beginning of the film.
Well, I'll have to go "QFT" on this one too.
Oh come on, that's just lame. I gave you an example that collects on its own a pantheon of errors, including such an inconsistency within one minute.
The point is that there are episodes in TCWS which feel rushed.
*shrugs* Not only is it inevitable, but it's also a bit of a red herring. Just because they rushed it doesn't mean they set out to more faithfully recreate physics from the beginning. Not to mention, RotJ was rushed.
I never pretended Voyager was good.
lol, true
It particularly got bad when it came to exploding planets, debris and other forms of molten ejecta.
But this only reinforces my point that an accurate, and thus realistic event will not break SoD.
Internally consistent. Would the casual observer object all that much to what you just said? Is it really all that much more objectionable to truly egregious abuse of science, such as "Threshold?" Or even to truly egregious things like making a dignified and decorated Starfleet captain, not to mention the only female captain of a "title" ship, look as if she's constantly waging a never-ending minute-by-minute internal battle with bipolarism and malicious incompetence? Or, as brought up on the "SFDebris" YouTube channel (I understand the person behind that channel is from ASVS or SDN?) how the writers and B&B likes technobabble filler dialogue, or constant references to how anything that took place before the crew were born gets to qualify as "ancient?"

Although it certainly would not hurt a series to have a realistic portrayal of planetary destruction.
And this is all what this is about. If the representation is very stylized, you just cannot take it at face value as you would with a live action source.

A CGI show where characters or ships or else, because it's a cartoon, are not managed the way they'd be in a live action piece, means you can't treat both sources the same way.
You can't judge the agility of a characted based on a show that is closer to The Incredibles than Final Fantasy, Spirits Within.

For TCSW, how can we start observing starfighter or warships movements and accelerations considering it's a show that keeps taking inspiration from Pixar and the 3 Stooges more than, again, FFSW.
It's totally uncertain, which is not the case with the movies, because for the movies, you know, at least, that you're supposed to believe there's no need to interpret things beyond what you see is exactly what you'd really get if you were "there" instead.
Quoted for emphasis, as with the below.
The second one? Yes, it's ridden with errors, which makes it pathetic for some to pretend that evidence defines it at being 900 km wide or near that figure.
But again, observe the difference in size between various shots of the DSII, and at worst, the biggest size is like three or four times its lowest size.
The sun in Jedi Crash is simply the size of a large planet and even has a starship flying behind it.
It takes the win and beats any glaring scaling I've seen by a long shot.

No one really thought if it was normal that the Republic Cruiser suddenly appeared to be a thousand times bigger than Jupiter.

But let's end on a positive note and consider that things possibly changed for the better in later episodes.

User avatar
l33telboi
Starship Captain
Posts: 910
Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:15 am

Post by l33telboi » Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:38 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:For obvious reasons, it becomes hard to pretend the ship is damaged. Look, it reminds me of that Battlefront sequence of an ISD bombarding a factory on Mustafar, from the PSP game.
Bolts keep raining, there are plenty of explosions and whatelse, but the building's 3D object remains there.
It's hard to say when and how this object got destroyed, exactly.
They usually model damage into the ship or say "the ship is damaged!" when something like that happens. Personally I've never needed more detail then that for whatever analysis I've done. Either a ship is damaged or it isn’t.
It could be a small blackhole.
No, the size of the accretion disk doesn’t allow for such an assumption.
Sorry, what episode?
First miniseries. Though now that you mention, fire like that was also seen in the Razor miniseries.
Already addressed.
I'm just waiting for you to acknowledge it. You're saying that one episode showing unrealistic fire is something really significant, and I'm pointing out that far more significant things have been messed with since day one, namely sound in space as well as unrealistic flight in space. But you don’t seem to care about the implications of that.
I'm sure we could check with the horizon and that, at best, they'd be flying at the equivalent of a the minimum of a LEO.
A planetary radius away, perhaps? Around 6000km? By comparison, any significant atmosphere ceases to exist below 100km.
That's not the point. No matter what you do, there will be a greater mass of such particles where reactors are found, and particles will ricochet against others when they meet, so probabilities of concentrations will still leave some in that zone.
You're saying that the emissions from the vessels will have caused the upper atmosphere to become about as dense as it is at sea level? There's no way you'll ever convince me that's a rational notion.

They’re effectively in space, and the buzz-droids behaved as if being hit by atmosphere. That's about all there is to it. Oh yes, you can come up with whatever zany theories you want in order to explain it, but that kinda misses the point. The second you have to start explaining a problem, you have to admit that there is one. And you seem to mostly just gloss over these mistakes.
The Death Star is a rather very special piece of equipment here.
Doesn't change the fact that they repeatedly messed up the scaling on it. Indeed I very much doubt they kept scaling accurate on any of the vessels. Remember the MF which was 'obviously' too small when inside the Death Star as another example?
I don't know why people insist on this. Dooku has never been fleeing at supersonic speeds. Even blaster bolts would easily catch him. The dude took his time.
And yet, he managed to reach orbit before Yoda picked up his cane. That's the problem. Visuals show very slow speeds, but then suddenly he's in orbit. It’s a problem regarding visuals and events.
An unfounded overgeneralization is not an argument.
Alright then. Find me a show that doesn't make these very same mistakes and we'll see if it's an overgeneralization.
Until you can show me the same bolt that changes size so dramatically, I don't see how it's a problem that different hiveships can have different guns or different yields.
See, there you go again. You try to rationalize the problem which is what we should do. But in the case of TCW, you simply throw your hands up and declare that rationalization isn't valid. It's a double standard.

The problems you mention for the TCW exists in all franchises. But for some reason, you only seem to object to the TCW. I've seen this in you lately. You show genuine surprise everytime SG follows their already established weapons ranges and velocities (and stuff like that), instead of doing it in a scientifically accurate way. It's as if you're honestly expecting shows to be accurate.
Barrel sizes in SW are far more determining of the dimension of a bolt than anything we saw in Stargate, which benefits from a lot of leeway there.
Says who?
Yes, let's just have people swim and breathe in space without a suit. Who cares about realism after all?
I care about realism. It's just that I realize that hoping for it is absurd, and expecting it is even more so.
On the contrary, it absolutely does, for obvious reasons. Mainly, it does matter, in order to take a show with enough suspension of disbelief.
I'm sorry, but fan opinion does not affect versus debating. That's all there is to it.
That's exactly ruined ALIEN RESURRECTION for many people, including me. An example being Christie' impossible cool bouncing shot at the beginning of the film.
Not familiar with this incident. I’ve seen the movie though.
Oh come on, that's just lame. I gave you an example that collects on its own a pantheon of errors, including such an inconsistency within one minute.
The point is that there are episodes in TCWS which feel rushed.
And I think the second half of RotS was rushed and jam-packed with so much story that it should've been stretched over two movies and not one. Does this affect analysis attempts? No.
I never pretended Voyager was good.
It particularly got bad when it came to exploding planets, debris and other forms of molten ejecta.
In other words, it was exactly like the TCW. Only for some reason you say "I never pretended Voyager was good" when it comes to Voyager, and when it comes to the TCW you say it should be tossed out.
But this only reinforces my point that an accurate, and thus realistic event will not break SoD.
Personally, my SoD broke the second I saw a wizard with a laser-sword dueling an evil black knight on a death moon while a princess needed to be saved in the midst of a duel between white-clad nazis and teddybears.

...Hasn't affected my ability to analyze the scenes in question though.
And this is all what this is about. If the representation is very stylized, you just cannot take it at face value as you would with a live action source. A CGI show where characters or ships or else, because it's a cartoon, are not managed the way they'd be in a live action piece, means you can't treat both sources the same way.
It's done in just about every debate that involves anime. And anime is far more stylized then the Clone Wars.
For TCSW, how can we start observing starfighter or warships movements and accelerations considering it's a show that keeps taking inspiration from Pixar and the 3 Stooges more than, again, FFSW.
Same way we can analyze starship speeds in Heroic Age or Gundam 00. By looking at the screen and measuring the speed. Just like we would a live-action series.
It's totally uncertain, which is not the case with the movies, because for the movies, you know, at least, that you're supposed to believe there's no need to interpret things beyond what you see is exactly what you'd really get if you were "there" instead.
You're kidding right? You actually think the people behind the movies sat there with rulers and calculators to figure out how starships should accelerate and stuff? No. They've done the exact same thing in TCW as in the movies. Which is to make things look cool. That’s it.
The second one? Yes, it's ridden with errors, which makes it pathetic for some to pretend that evidence defines it at being 900 km wide or near that figure.
But again, observe the difference in size between various shots of the DSII, and at worst, the biggest size is like three or four times its lowest size.
Then you admit the error, but somehow you don't acknowledge that it actually is an error, because of the magnitude? Alright, how about an even bigger error? The blackhole in Stargate, for instance?
The sun in Jedi Crash is simply the size of a large planet and even has a starship flying behind it.
It takes the win and beats any glaring scaling I've seen by a long shot.
Just like the Wraith ships flies around the blackhole in Stargate? Or just like how the Imperial fleet rounds Endor in the movies?
No one really thought if it was normal that the Republic Cruiser suddenly appeared to be a thousand times bigger than Jupiter.
There's actually a scene in Star Trek where a BoP is depicted as nearly as large as the sun. Again, these errors are about as normal as you can find. It's not some form of super-duper strange event we're talking about here.

And from the looks of it The sun incident and Padme jumping appear to be the only two things you've yet cited as evidence for this groundbreaking new sci-fi formula that the TCW represents.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:23 pm

ILDN.
I'll be the first one to recognize that the OT effects are largely outdated and are not as crispy as those in the PT, as much as I know that there are staples of SF/SO entertainment.
You can pretty much add smoke in space, due to rocket trails. nBSG puts a filter on the sound in space, but allows rocket trails for stuff to be pretty when ships exchange missiles with abandon.
Then, in the OT (and in the PT), they did have explosions follow fighters and bigger ships, not stay behind like if they had hit an atmosphere.
We are talking about conventions, and it's much easier to break SoD in live action movies than in cartoonesque shows, as simple as that, and this is the crux of the problem.
These conventions are likely going to be found in CGI cartoonesque SF productions, and amplified by several degrees with new ones added on.
I'll repeat the most important point, because it essentially is all about this.
And this is all what this is about. If the representation is very stylized, you just cannot take it at face value as you would with a live action source.

A CGI show where characters or ships or else, because it's a cartoon, are not managed the way they'd be in a live action piece, means you can't treat both sources the same way.
You can't judge the agility of a characted based on a show that is closer to The Incredibles than Final Fantasy, Spirits Within.

For TCSW, how can we start observing starfighter or warships movements and accelerations considering it's a show that keeps taking inspiration from Pixar and the 3 Stooges more than, again, FFSW.
It's totally uncertain, which is not the case with the movies, because for the movies, you know, at least, that you're supposed to believe there's no need to interpret things beyond what you see is exactly what you'd really get if you were "there" instead.
On the exhaust, the two starfighters repeatedly overtake the massive warships from the stern to bow.
That ion clouds dispersing is not a problem at all, on the contrary. The particles will fan out, but momentum being a bitch, they'll do while also moving towards the starfighters. You have massive thrusters ejecting massive amounts of matter to move their mass forward.
Again, check the movie.

Notice that the buzz droid doesn't suddenly fly away like it would have done in a normal atmosphere when sitting on the wing of a starfighter moving at the speed it did.
We see variations in how the gases and particles move backwards. Sometimes, it's fast, sometimes it's not, like when the buzzdroid open themselves, the grey cloud of smoke expands at 360° before moving backwards to the fighter.
If George Lucas and other show runners wanted to make things easy for scientific analysis, why would they take so many liberties? That does make me wonder.
As GL ever said he wanted such a thing to boot? He's not betraying anyone as far as I'm concerned.
What if they don't care either way?

As for the Executor, it's sitting on two conventions. The way fireballs expand in space (and their presence to boot), and how hulls burn.

*Muses about the sheer amount of wasted time...*

ILikeDeathNote
Jedi Knight
Posts: 430
Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:31 am

Post by ILikeDeathNote » Thu Feb 19, 2009 6:01 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote: We are talking about conventions, and it's much easier to break SoD in live action movies than in cartoonesque shows, as simple as that, and this is the crux of the problem.
Image

That seems to be the exact opposite from what your attitudes suggest, since your arguments and complaints are firmly centered around how TCW ignores physics and that it consequently sucks.
These conventions are likely going to be found in CGI cartoonesque SF productions, and amplified by several degrees with new ones added on.
We can at least agree on that, as basic as that assertion is. But you seem to react to it as if it's some sort of crime against humanity.
On the exhaust, the two starfighters repeatedly overtake the massive warships from the stern to bow.
That ion clouds dispersing is not a problem at all, on the contrary. The particles will fan out, but momentum being a bitch, they'll do while also moving towards the starfighters. You have massive thrusters ejecting massive amounts of matter to move their mass forward.
Again, check the movie.
Image

Unless a starship's drive were directly pointed at a starfighter at a close enough range, no.
Notice that the buzz droid doesn't suddenly fly away like it would have done in a normal atmosphere when sitting on the wing of a starfighter moving at the speed it did.
We see variations in how the gases and particles move backwards. Sometimes, it's fast, sometimes it's not, like when the buzzdroid open themselves, the grey cloud of smoke expands at 360° before moving backwards to the fighter.
So?
As GL ever said he wanted such a thing to boot? He's not betraying anyone as far as I'm concerned.
What if they don't care either way?
Well the only people he could really "betray" would be people he directly employs anyway.
*Muses about the sheer amount of wasted time...*
*shrugs* It's only as much of a waste of time as the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate as a whole, yet here we are.

Locked