Roboteching in Real Life

I stumbled across a really interesting missile a couple days ago. I love a good roboteching missile, but am always saddened by the fact that anything as aesthetically pleasing as something from Macross likely won’t exist anytime soon. For a great many reasons, practicality of such a device being the primary one. Well what do you know, such a thing does exist.

Introducing the 9K121 Vikhr, NATO designation AT-16 Scallion. During the Cold War, Western intelligence picked up that the Soviets were creating some sort of “laser beam riding” air to surface missile. It was presumed to be similar to the AGM-114 Hellfire, which at the time was also guided by a laser. Until the end of the Cold War though, it really wasn’t clear exactly what the Soviets were making as the pictures of the missile showed no seeker head.  In actuality, the Soviets developed something much more creative and unconventional.

The Vikhr missile is in actuality guided by a laser based system. However, the missile doesn’t just home into the reflection of the laser on the target like a traditional laser guided weapon might. Instead, sensors mounted in the tail, facing backwards guide the missile towards the center of the laser beam. It is a less complex system requiring less intricate electronics, and is extremely resistant to countermeasures because that would require something to get in between the launcher and the missile.

To capitalize on the low cost of the guidance system, the missile is steered in a very unique way. The static fins in the back cause the missile to spiral through its entire flight. To steer the missile one moving fin is used to adjust the radius of the spiral such that changing the radius at different areas in the spiral causes a change in overall direction. The end result is a very cheap missile to manufacture. You could build five of these for the cost an equivalent Hellfire missile. Pilots are also encouraged to launch them in pairs.

Another neat feature of the system is that because they are guided while in flight, it is possible to launch many of the missile at the same time at a convoy, and as each pair hits one vehicle in the convoy, you simply drag the laser over the next vehicle, and wait for the next pair to hit, rinse and repeat. In one extended salvo it is possible to knock out a good amount of targets just by repositioning the laser while the missiles are in flight. The laser and missile also can track slow flying aircraft such as attack aircraft and helicopters, coupled with a built in proximity fuse, it makes the Vikhr a rather versatile weapons system.

I’ve only been able to find one video of the real missile in action. It is a very cool video.

Now this is what I call a squadron!

Both these picture look way better in motion. The stuff kind of blends together in stills.

Ever since classes ended I’ve actually had time to work on my animation. I got so much done its unbelievable. I’m currently at ~1:45 of footage, making this the longest video I’ve made since that snowy thing I did in high school. After that big rush of getting stuff done, I’ve taken a break from the hardcore, “schedule your sleep around it,” animating that I was doing last week, so I’ll get back to working on it soon.

I’m still working on it!

First person view! Off-axis symbology is the regular Freelancer HUD, while the pitch ladder and all that is projected on the canopy glass in front.

In this animation, the Rhino freighters got promoted and upscaled to gunboat size ships. You can see one of them in the distance in the shot above.

Halo Legends

I had the chance to watch Halo Legends last night and I really enjoyed it. Halo Legends is a collection of short stories done by various Japanese animation houses. It’s basically Animatrix and Gotham Knight except for Halo.

Origins

Origins is a summary of the entire Halo timeline, beginning long before the humans even reach space. It finally clears up a lot of what has only been implied in the games and its books. The first part deals with the Forerunners, their struggle against the Flood, and their eventual Pyrrhic victory. The second part is the history of the human civilization, their rise into space, and the war with the Covenant and Flood.

Origins is my second favorite of the bunch and probably the best overall. It has really high production values and is actually surprisingly moving.  The mind boggling scope of the Forerunner operation to save the entire galaxy from the Flood is incredible. It really captures that sense of awe and wonderment from the first games when you first discovered the Halo rings. It’s stated several times in the Halo fiction that the Forerunners sacrificed themselves to preserve the future of the various civilizations that inhabit the Halo universe, but you never see it like this.

In its second part, it goes on a typical Japanese anti-war tangent. It’s done very well though, going through history showing various conflicts and weapons, from swords in Greece to V2 Rockets in Germany, culminating in the detonation of the atomic bombs in Japan. Considering the context of who made this, its especially startling to watch the atom bombs. From there it actually becomes pretty inspiring. Showing the space race, and our movement outwards into space. Colonizing new worlds, a time of peace where so much progress was made. After all the war and death of both the Forerunners and our own conflicts, it really was heartwarming to see. Which then sets you up for disappointment when you remember all the conflicts that took place just before the Covenant arrive.

From here, not much new information is shown, but its all presented really well. In fact, better than the games I would say. I wish the games were actually like how they showed the war against the Covenant and Flood.

It bears special mention that part of what made this story so great is the music. It’s all classic Halo music, but been obviously re-recorded in much higher quality than the games originally were. You can’t take a screenshot of the music, so you will have to take my word for it that it definitely was what seals the deal and makes this story so great.

The Duel

By far the most stylized of the shorts, the Duel tells the story of one of the previous Arbiters of the Elite. It shows how the title of the Arbiter went from being honorable, to a mark of shame.

This is going to be one of those love it or hate it shorts. The whole story is told through a crazy and experimental style meant to look like a moving oil painting, which it really does. It is a bit of a surprise in that its entirely CGI. On the surface the story is pretty simple, but it is backed up with lots of little details that explain certain parts of how the Elite race thinks and their relation with the Covenant. This is also the first time you see their home world in any real detail.

The story is action packed and full of over the top sword play. It’s sort of what I imagine what would happen if you mixed Halo with Samurai Jack. It also takes quite a few creative liberties on the Halo universe. The Hunters are portrayed as enormous 3 story tall monsters for example, and the Elite society definitely feels very Japanese. The die hard Halo fans will probably be upset about details like that. I do take issue with the female Elite design though. There has never been a female Elite shown, so it was entirely up to the creators to design one. I think she looks far too human. In particular they don’t have the distinctive split jaw that Elites are known for, instead they have a simple small human mouth.

Overall I enjoyed its over the top 300-esque presentation of the subject matter, but your mileage may vary. I tend to like over the top, told after the fact, and obviously embellished sort of thing.

Homecoming

I actually was looking forward to this one because the concept behind it is so interesting. It is something that you really don’t usually see talked about. The Spartan II program, which created the eponymous Spartan super soldiers, and the heroes of the Halo games, was a very morally gray program. There was a lot of underhanded dealings involved in the creation of the Spartan soldiers. Kidnapping children, intense training beyond anything ever done before, and artificial augmentations to their bodies of which most did not survive or were permanently injured by.

I have to say though, I was disappointed by the animation in this one. Compared to everything else you see in the collection, it just seems cheap and reminiscent of a weekly TV show. Production I.G., which had done such works as Ghost in the Shell, the Deadshot segment in Gotham Knight, and more recently The Sky Crawlers, is responsible for this segment. It really makes you wonder what happened here. The sound design was also really weak compared to the other shorts.

Animation and presentation aside, I liked the story in this one. I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll just leave it as a Spartan soldier coming to terms with her previous life before being abducted into the Spartan program. Of all the shorts though, this one relies most on what would be background information that the average viewer just wouldn’t know. If you already knew the details of the Spartan program, this works really well, but I imagine that a lot of the subtler points could get lost. They compensate for this by dropping lots of little details of the program into the various lines that get said, although they are easy to miss if you aren’t paying attention.

Odd One Out

First off, this is not canon. The last time these animators got together, it was to work on Dragonball. It shows.

Oh boy, this one was really fun. It’s about Spartan 1337, yes you read that right, and his awesome heroics. The Covenant are super villainous swine, who send giant monsters to fight super powered soldiers and humans.

I really don’t even know what to say about this one. I went in expecting over the top super heroics brought to you by the people that made Dragonball, and I got over the top super heroics brought to you by the people that made Dragonball. I think I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.

This was incredibly awesome.

Prototype

Prototype is about a squad leader who has garnered the nickname of Ghost because feelings pass right through him. He is a cold, calculating leader that reportedly lost his previous squad in a prior battle. The research facility he is currently tasked with defending is being overrun and to cover for his troops he defies orders and dons an experimental exosuit that was supposed to be destroyed to prevent capture. What follows is a visual feast of detailed, fluid, and beautifully lit animation as Ghost displays the suits numerous capabilities and weapons.

The studio in charge of this one is Bones. I know them as the animators of Eureka Seven, a mecha anime best summed up by TV Tropes as “A heartwarming story about sky surfing robots dodging missiles.” Needless to say, I positively adored the series. Bones don’t disappoint here, and each jaw dropping feat performed by Ghost and his suit is topped by the next one. They even manage to sneak in a Roboteching missile in a couple short sequences.

I’ll be honest, I’m having trouble writing up this section because I keep watching parts of this over and over. There isn’t much to talk about because its a pretty simple story and not much goes on besides the awesome action the suit provides. On animation alone, this is my favorite of all the shorts. It’s such a pleasure to watch.

The Babysitter

This one deals with the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers and their one-sided rivalry with the Spartans. The ODST are the baddest, most insane division of the marines, known colloquially as the Hell Jumpers. They’re the first ones to go into a fight, typically riding a drop pod from low orbit into the ground. Due to their gung ho nature they see the Spartans as rivals and claim to be able to do anything a Spartan can do.

The ODSTs are assigned to assassinate a Prophet that is going to be in the area. They land on the planet undetected through the cover a meteor shower, a long hike from where the designated sniping position is. Along the way they encounter resistance in the form of a small squad of Grunts, Jackals, and their Brute commander. The story in itself isn’t terribly original. The hotshot sniper of the group is not actually the shooter of the mission. Instead, he is the back up for a Spartan. Visibly annoyed, he takes every shot he can to mock the Spartan on their team, and it’s pretty obvious from the get go that by the end he will learn his lesson.

Despite that, this is actually one of my favorites of the shorts. It’s a well told story, with excellent pacing and music. I believe pacing is one of those things that goes a long way in whether or not something is great. The animation is also very smooth with fantastic scenery and backdrops along the way. The whole short is very cinematic well produced.

The Package

The final segment of Halo Legends, The Package is nothing more than a technical showcase. The Covenant has captured something of value to the humans, and they want it back. Unlike the other stories this one focuses only on Spartans, including the famous Master Chief himself. This one is also unusual in that it is entirely CGI. The style of it is reminiscent of the sort of style cut scenes you would see in a Square Enix game, though thankfully a little more hard edged than that.

The first part of this is a space battle thats a cross between Star Wars and Macross. It’s five little fighters (which have S-Foils) versus an entire fleet. There’s also several gratuitous Macross Missile Massacres. Out of all the segments, this is definitely the one with the highest action to everything else ratio, with a near nonstop barrage of fire, dodging, and explosions.

Master Chief flipping, dual wielding, and unloading on some Covenant. That’s what the second part of this is all about. After leaving their ships, it’s all about Spartans doing what they do best. They sprint through the ship taking out hundreds of Covenant along the way. There’s quite a few funny little references to the games themselves in here as well. A couple times you see a first person view of the Spartans, showing the same HUD you see in the games. It also finally reveals just how the Chief reloads a gun when he dual wields just by dropping it off screen.

When I first saw pictures of this duel, I wondered why the Chief didn’t just shoot him. In a humorous subversion, thats because he did just that. His first reaction to seeing a sword wielding Elite standing alone in the hallway? He shoulders his rifle and empties his entire magazine into him. Like the Package, there really isn’t all that much to talk about here. This is a very action focused, high production value CGI animation.

I know a lot of Halo fans will probably decry the entire collection as just being a sell out or milking the franchise. Others will nitpick the details to no end and complain about inaccuracies with previously established fiction. Certainly if one were to do that, there is no shortage of them. There are also plenty of people who hate it simply because it is an “anime.” Eh, what are you gonna do?

Me personally, I really enjoyed Halo Legends. As to be expected not all the segments of it were top notch, but when its at its best it really is a fantastic addition to the Halo universe. With the Halo movie seemingly out of reach nowadays, this is the closest thing we’re going to get to seeing Halo on the big screen. It’s definitely worth a watch if you have any passing interesting in the Halo franchise.

Up to about 30 seconds of footage already

Clouds!

Messing around with the newer version of Lightwave I find that its extraordinarily faster than the older one. After some experimenting and sudden inspiration I’ve decided to start a new project.

First thing first, I needed an environment. One of my problems is making believable ground. It’s very difficult to do right, and very expensive the more “right” it gets. Not to mention the actual talent that it takes to get photo realistic terrain in the first place.

So I had an idea. Taking my cloud experimentation to its logical extreme, why not make the clouds the ground? What I’ve done is made a ground, but put a cloudy texture on it. That alone would lead to really silly looking flatish surface. What do games do to prevent their grounds from looking like that? Grass. So on top of the cloudy ground, there are a bunch of cloud sprites that give it depth. It took several iterations, but its now at the point where they blend almost seamlessly.

On top of that, due to clouds cloudy nature, I can even build “terrain” out of it. I could easily make mountains and valleys simply out of stacking sprites into the sky.

Back in Time (Part 1)

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time will forever remain in my mind as one of the greatest games of all time. Simply put, the game had a pretty profound impact on me when I first played through it. It was the first, and one of the very few games in which I forgot I was playing a game. At the time, when I picked up the controller to play for the day, it may as well have been for real.

It is impossible to give a single reason as to what exactly cemented this game in my mind forever. For my sake, I’ve always wanted to just write down everything that to contributed that. I find myself thinking about why this is true many times, as well as explaining it to others. I also think it is an interesting topic to explore, as many reasons for my reverence are actually not directly tied to the game itself. Instead, many have to do with external factors that controlled the context (age, time, previous experiences, etc.) in which I played the game.

I’m going to split this up into several parts. It really is a pretty large and in depth topic for me.

The Gameplay

Ironically enough, this is actually probably the least important factor as to why I love the game. That’s not to say that  the gameplay was not outstanding. This game is actually one of the highest critically acclaimed games of all time, garnering perfect scores from a startling amount of the gaming press. It created many conventions and gameplay mechanics that exist to this day. Most important of which is the lock on camera that allowed you to actually focus on the combat rather than worrying about the camera position or where your character was facing.

More than that though, the game was very open ended. While there was certainly a rigid and linear story to follow, there was so much more than just the main story. The world was large and detailed. There were various villages, towns, and settlements, each with their own flavor and inhabitants. There were stores to visit, even small games such as shooting galleries that were in some towns.

Why its important:

Me personally, I had never really played a game like this. It was so open ended it really let you explore the world, and rewarded you for it. It also didn’t really fit into any recognizable genre. It wasn’t as narrow minded as every other game I had played before hand. It wasn’t specifically about racing cars around, it wasn’t specifically just about blowing up giant robots, it wasn’t specifically about platforming.

Rather, you just played as a boy named Link. He starts out as a pretty boring kid, but soon finds himself wrapped up in an epic adventure that encompasses the entire kingdom and its future. The closest genre would be an RPG, however unlike RPGs, the player had much more direct control over all their actions. I also had never played a real RPG before I played Ocarina of Time. This sort of open ended, free roaming, do what you want, was all new to me. In essence you are Link. (Hence the name of the character, being the link between the player and the game world.) A whole new world was opened up for me to explore as I pleased.

Which leads me to the what will be the next part, the world the game created, Hyrule.

Modern Warfare 2 and Me

Random Thoughts on Airships

If airships come back, my belief is that it would only happen in two ways.

One, I imagine they would probably be hybrid airships. The problem with traditional rigid airships like the awesome zeppelins in WWI and Crimson Skies is that they are very susceptible to wind, and landing them is much more difficult than it looks. Although it’s not quite the same, if you saw last weeks Top Gear, it illustrates this point.

Hybrid airships on other hand actually do not naturally float in the air. Without upwards thrust of some kind, they actually wouldn’t even make it off the ground. Hybrid airships instead use their lighter than air gas to significantly offset their weight. Making something the size of a 747 weigh only a fraction of it. To take off they use downward facing motors, but once airborne and in forward motion, an aerodynamic lifting body type design will generate sufficient lift that when combined with the lifting gas completely offset the ship’s weight and it flies.

Two, airships are not a replacement for commuter aircraft. Commuter planes like a 747 are extremely fast and simply put, are the quickest way to travel around the world. The roles an airship would play are either in the cruise/tourism industry, the same line of work done by luxury liners of the sea, or as large airborne transports to supplement large sea based cargo ships.

Compensating for Something

I found a new toy that allows me to export EVE’s models. I’ve always been of the opinion that stuff in EVE is built stupidly large. So naturally the first thing to do is find out just how big EVE’s models are compared to something I’m more familiar with.

From left to right:

EVE Drone
Freelancer Fighter
EVE Fighter
Freelancer Freighter
EVE Frigate
Freelancer Cruiser
EVE Cruiser
Freelancer Battleship
Freelancer Battleship
EVE Battleship