A lot of people don't realize that there are motors on his backpack that power the wings. The movement of the arms guides the brushless motors using components seen in the Wii controller and only marginally assist the power sent to the wings.
Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
11–20 of 30 posts
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#12Previous night's discussion with something more than just "I can tell from some of the pixels."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3732385
It may be fake, but it isn't impossible.
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#13Absolutely fake. If this is not obvious to you, learn more physics.
Why don't you bless us with your obviously superior grasp of the laws of nature?
If it's so obvious, the math justifying your position should comfortably fit in an HN post.
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#14A lot of people don't realize that there are motors on his backpack that power the wings. The movement of the arms guides the brushless motors using components seen in the Wii controller and only marginally assist the power sent to the wings.
That, and the perspective as he runs on the "takeoff" is completely out of whack.
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
His results seem to suggest that the video wasn't CGI'ed, correct?
Well, no. They suggest that the camera shake wasn't added in after the fact with postprocessing of an existing image -- or at least that the image was fairly high-res and blur was also added after the fact. He doesn't rule out that the whole video wasn't computer-generated, nor that the dude was running into a greenscreen, nor for that matter a green cable that was digitally altered out, or anything like that. Some o…
There is a very real possibility that the wing was pulled by a cable. The kite adapted is actually one of those ones you usually pull behind a boat and which glides you up into the air.
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#16I had to follow back to the submitted article's author's earlier blog posts, a couple of degrees of linking back, to figure out where the "log-plot of the wingspan vs. mass for different birds along with the human with wings" came from. It came from the author himself, without a validation study, and "anyone can edit" Wikipedia. People who know their history of physics well will remember that Galileo showed that in g…
And in my oPinion, looks like a hangglider could do that no prOblem.
Calm down troll.
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#17Ignoring impossible feats of physics, the video is fake. There is a comment on the first Wired article which points out incontrovertible evidence of poorly done compositing around the 20 second mark with the guy on the left running "through" the wingtip without bumping it. Uncut, raw video from the side of complete take-off and landing (since there is supposedly someone taking video from the side) would be enough to…
You have no proof.
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#18Ignoring impossible feats of physics, the video is fake. There is a comment on the first Wired article which points out incontrovertible evidence of poorly done compositing around the 20 second mark with the guy on the left running "through" the wingtip without bumping it. Uncut, raw video from the side of complete take-off and landing (since there is supposedly someone taking video from the side) would be enough to…
That 20 second mark is pretty damning - the shadow cast on the wing by the guy on the left is visible before his body is in front of the wing.
Thanks for crushing my dreams.
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#19I had to follow back to the submitted article's author's earlier blog posts, a couple of degrees of linking back, to figure out where the "log-plot of the wingspan vs. mass for different birds along with the human with wings" came from. It came from the author himself, without a validation study, and "anyone can edit" Wikipedia. People who know their history of physics well will remember that Galileo showed that in g…
The electric motors--if using the heavy-duty outrunners mentioned in the last thread--are on the order of 2-4 kg each, for a total of about 10 lbs. The weight of the fabric/kite is on the order of 1kg (http://www.humanbirdwings.net/about/working-on-the-wings/).
The batteries appear to be lightweight li-poly packs, so really powerful for very light weight.
Re: Analysis of the Human Bird Wings
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, no. They suggest that the camera shake wasn't added in after the fact with postprocessing of an existing image -- or at least that the image was fairly high-res and blur was also added after the fact. He doesn't rule out that the whole video wasn't computer-generated, nor that the dude was running into a greenscreen, nor for that matter a green cable that was digitally altered out, or anything like that. Some o…
There is a very real possibility that the wing was pulled by a cable. The kite adapted is actually one of those ones you usually pull behind a boat and which glides you up into the air.
That's also something I haven't considered. Whether or not this was really done, if you wanted to create the same effect by faking it, you could do it at least in part by doing two different "takes" -- one where you pull the guy from the front and view with a camera behind him, and another where you pull the guy up from behind and view with the camera on his head. There is a blurry whitish splotch when he first gets air which could be a tree in the distance, but if you wanted to fake it, that could be a way to disguise the cable.
This would give a plausible way to fake the first and the last scenes, where you see the man from behind, as well as the "in the air" scenes where you just see from his perspective: you could in principle put him in a boom lift vehicle -- perhaps suspended from it or perhaps even just sitting in it -- and the image would look very similar.
The side-view shot would be much more difficult to fake.