It could be, although it's exceedingly difficult to find any meaningful numbers for distances that aren't terribly vague, and what you do find is almost always for something other than karts (semis, F1 racecars and bikes).

I still think that the open, small, only semi-streamlined form of the karts would tend to make the effective distance less than what we saw in most of this video. The lower speeds than F1 cars would tend to improve the slingshot tactic, since the effect of wind resistance increases with the cube of velocity. Which again, doesn't seem to explain the drastic slowdowns when they're not at top speed anyway.

Nothing was moved or interacted with in the entire clip, so it leads me to believe that all of the lighting and shadows were simply pre-calculated and baked on as a texture. In the same manner, the reflections are most likely environmental cube maps, rendered in 3D animation software with all the settings turned up and then saved as an image. If something besides the camera were moving then I would be impressed.

tldr: Actually, games do this all the time, but usually only for water surfaces!

The reason for this is that the way you render a proper reflection is to "flip" the camera to the other side of the reflective surface plane: looking down on a lake, you'd render the water reflection from the point of view of the camera looking up from under the water surface, flipped over. This is called "planar reflection". In order to do this, you render your entire scene again, so it's not cheap. Also, the reflection only works for that one plane: if you had two altitudes of water (or two differently angled mirrors) they'd be on different planes and so you'd have to render a reflection for each one.

You can't render curved surface reflections this way, though. For example it doesn't work on a car (what plane would you flip the camera over?). For that, the trick is called "cubic environment maps". I won't go into the details, but it only really works well for faking reflections on objects since it shows the correct view from a single point. You can create them dynamically for things like racing games, but they require 6 scene renders (one for each face of the cube) for each environment map.

Half Life offered both techniques for water reflections, so one could fire that up and compare them that way.

This demo seemed to use environment maps for the mirrors and I suspect all of the other shiny surfaces.

Note that these techniques are to get detailed reflections: specular lighting (where you don't reflect an image, but instead mathematically simulate simple light bouncing) is easier and cheaper, since it's just math to get a color and strength.

You could do planar reflections for every mirror, but it's a full scene re-render for each one so your frame rate would tank or you'd have to take out other features. Compromises!

Game graphics is all trade-offs and smoke and mirrors: it's our job to fake things and make you think the game is doing sophisticated simulation when actually it's doing as little as it can to get as much as possible.

I read a really great explanation of n-dimensional space a while ago... trying to find it but the basics were:

If I have a point, that has 0 dimensions (note: not a point on a plane, just a dot).

if that point position changes, I have 1 dimension (a line)
if the line position changes, I have 2 dimensions (a square)
if the plane position changes, I have 3 dimensions (a cube)

Easy so far right? but if I take a view of time, then that cube (in fact, all of 3 dimensional space) is a dot again.

if the cube exist for 10 seconds, it has moved through time. Now we have a line in four-dimensional space.

Now here's where it gets tricky. Let's go back to the point and the line.
When we have 1 dimension, I can move the point along a line, but I cannot change the line. Think of it like a train on a single track. It can go back and forth, but the track doesn't change. If I want to change where the train goes, I need to move the track.

Same with the line. To move a line I need two dimensions.

And same with time. To change time, we need FIVE dimensions. With 4 you can only go along the time line (hell, we can only go one way). But if you want to change time, then time must be on a plane... a 5th dimension.

This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

I for one, would like to welcome our new cube-shaped feline overlord.

Your video, Magician gets out of Speeding Ticket with Rubik's Cube Magic, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Ok, so how does knowing how to solve rubik's cube excuse him from speeding?
Cops are arbitrary dicks.

Sugar cube = 4 grams

Another thing he kinda glossed over is this is ADDED sugar. Sugar that is only present to make a thing sweet. Not including the sugars present in the REAL ingredients of any of those items.

Love Derren Brown. This was by far the tamest of anything I've ever seen of his. (By that I mean lacking any real excitement. I kept waiting for something big.)

I didn't care about the fake surgery stuff. Lame, but just making a point about how fake it is and trying to have something to excite the overly sensitive. Whatevs.

I imagine the fake contacting dead relatives thing was maybe using things like a lot of YouTubers have done and just searched for people on social media who share their profile publicly. Easy enough to find people who are tweeting/facebooking/instagramming about going to a Derren Brown show then searching through their past posts to dig up good dirt about people who passed. If that's not along the lines of what he did, then I'd really like to hear some possible alternate methods.

Really no idea about how he did the invisible "aeroplane" trick.

Loved the finale and really have no clue how that was done either.

And if he didn't somehow force the dice, either he really did memorize those books with his dickbrain (I bet the boys in school gave him that name for a different reason - teehee) or the guy was a stooge and lying about what he was reading. Why wasn't there a camera there to show what he was seeing in the books?

Pre-set Rubik's cubes? Whe didn't we get a look at them before he "solved" it and while solving it, why was his back away from the audience and cameras?

Jurassic Prank - Cube Truck Edition has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals on that post.

It's not heresy to chill whiskey fast, in fact he does it right. It's heresy if you let it sit with ice cubes longer than few seconds.

If you take a shot of whiskey, it can be cold but if you want to enjoy it long, take only enough to cover your tongue at a time, it should be just below room temperature, 15-18C. When you do it like this, you get that sweet sweat from the cubes as a last thing as the water is not really mixed with whiskey, it is smooth as hell like that.. Few drops of cold water after whiskey is one of the best things in life.

Personally, i enjoy my whiskey dry with a glass of ice water on the side. Let the whiskey reach your stomach before taking a small sip of water.. Best thing in the world.

His idea is still a good one, making ultra pure ice cubes (or spheres) for perfect cocktails. You wouldn't be drinking enough pure water to worry about, and it would mix with the alcohol before you drink it anyway, so it would not be pure H2O anymore. The lack of taste and impurities would allow it to cool and dilute your drink without changing it's taste, exactly what you want in a cocktail ice cube. Even better that, if used without alcohol (or something impure), they're technically poison! Call them 'death cubes' or 'virgin ice' and you'll have trouble keeping up with demand!
Oh....wait....isn't that already a product?

Your video, Fascinating Transformer-Cube, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 214 Badge!

I grew up drawing shapes like Parallelograms, and Trapezoids.

A piece of graph paper made me draw squares then, cubes and I've use graph paper to doodle other shapes including this S shape.

I really think he's over thinking it. It's just a random shape with absolutely no meaning.