p1t1o

@Nikolai That is excellent.

Speaking of snow, this excerpt from the wiki, describing the landing, is quite interesting: The delay of 46 seconds caused the spacecraft to land 386 km from the intended landing zone, in the inhospitable forests of Upper Kama Upland, somewhere west of Solikamsk. Although flight controllers had no idea where the spacecraft had landed or whether Leonov and Belyayev had survived, the cosmonauts' families were told that they were resting after having been recovered. The two men were both familiar with the harsh climate and knew that bears and wolves, made aggressive by mating season, lived in the taiga; the spacecraft carried a pistol and "plenty of ammunition", but the incident later drove the development of a dedicated survival gun, the TP-82. Although aircraft quickly located the cosmonauts, the area was so heavily forested that helicopters could not land. Night arrived, the temperature dropped to −5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit), and the spacecraft's hatch had been blown open by explosive bolts. Warm clothes and supplies were dropped and the cosmonauts spent a freezing night in the capsule or Sharik in Russian. Even worse, the electrical system completely malfunctioned so that the heater would not work, but the fans ran at full blast. A rescue party arrived on skis the next day as it was too risky to try an airlift from the site.[8][9] The advance party chopped wood and built a small log cabin and an enormous fire. After a more comfortable second night in the forest the cosmonauts skied to a waiting helicopter several kilometers away and flew first to Perm, then to Baikonur for their mission debriefing. You just know the vodka was flowing around that fire

Ha! It practically confirms that graphics quality IS more dependent on the art assets than the engine itself! Activating smug-mode. So I suppose the question becomes: what game has the best assets? Personally I think the aircraft in DCS are some of the finest objects in gaming at the moment.

Inspired by another thread which got me thinking - what game (other software doesnt count, as there are probably physics simulations that are designed to run on petaflop arrays that would not only produce beautiful images but would kill the numbers put out by any top-of-the-line home based system) has the most advanced graphics? Im not talking about what you think is subjectively the most "attractive" or pretty game, but which ones crunch the most numbers, in the cleverest manner, to produce what can be shown to be, the most "advanced graphics". Anybody have any ideas? I remember "Crysis" was advertised as having highly advanced graphics as its engine supported graphical techniques that were not yet available on current graphics cards. Any anecdote of interest is also welcome, as I suppose hard numbers might be difficult to come by. Side-topic: its my opinion that graphical complexity in games has plateaued somewhat, now limited more by artistic creativity and available man-hours than software or hardware, hence the rise of "procedural" techniques. (Mods: I put this in "Science" as it is related to software and hardware capabilities more than it relates to aesthetics, but feel free to move it around at will)

Ah ok, it does look pretty, but I thought it might be breaking records for polygons rendered per second or something.

Just curious, is the claim of "highest graphics game ever made" an opinion or is it based on something measurable?

Are you saying that the reason that Germans are stereotyped as efficient and no-nonsense is down to the conservation of energy? Thats so meta!

Some pics of the Voskhod 2 launcher here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_9035/index.html

I can tell you that the explosive charge in car airbags is inspired by a pack of biscuits. The explosive is a stack of discs, this helps modulate the speed of the reaction.

Whilst this would work in a perfect world, it has little military utility (I presume this is a military context, I will continue as if this is the case), simply because its only camouflaged from one side. And whilst it is easy to say "Just cool the aircraft and dump the heat trough the radiator" this is difficult to achieve in reality due to the intricacies of thermodynamics. The project rho page should describe these issues in more detail than I can here, but some stand out points - 1. A radiator can only cool down to ambient temp, if the radiator is being heated by air friction/compression, this affects how much heat can be dumped. 2. Merely moving heat from one place to another requires energy, which generates waste heat, which increases the cooling load, which requires more energy, which produces more waste heat etc. 3. Does the radiation coming off your radiator shine back onto any part of the aircraft? I already know - yes it does. 4. Want to fly fast in air? Throw IR stealth out the window, the air around your aircraft will be hot enough to detect simply from being squished out of the way by your aircraft. 5. Want to fly slow? Is there enough air going over the radiator for your uses? 6. There will be an angle from which the radiator is visible, and it will be like a beacon. The more you restrict its visibility, the less efficient you make it as more heat shines back onto the airframe. 7. There are no perfect insulators or perfect conductors, no perfect radiators or absorbers. 8. A supply of cryogenic coolant can help to make your heat "dissappear", temporarily, whilst the fluid lasts - making cryogenic liquids generates a lot of heat, so thermodynamically speaking you are "leaving the heat behind" at the facility where it was produced, allowing you some heat-transfer-free cooling but it is still subject to all of the above limitations and you have to dispose of tons of hot coolant somehow and can you even carry enough of it to be useful in practice? 9. This ones a biggie. The more heat you want to dump through the radiator, the more air needs to pass over it and the higher its surface area needs to be. Which means it must be more draggy. There will be a direct relationship between heat dump capacity and drag. Drag means more frictional heat and requires more thrust, which means more heat. More heat means more radiator which means more drag which means more heat - see where Im going? Its down to minutae of the maths to tell if there is or isnt a workable equilibrium possible. There may not be. So now you're thinking "OK so thermodynamics makes it hard to achieve perfection, but surely we can make it cold enough to make it so hard to detect that it will offer some advantage?". Maybe, with great engineering and design effort (and likely a fair amount of novel research) you can make an IR-stealthy aircraft...if you can persuade your enemy not to look at it from the wrong angle. Which is not a joke, early (radar) stealth aircraft were much less stealthy from certain angles so intelligence resources and planning - this can involves anything from desk work to ground attacks on supporting facilities, even special forces behind enemy lines - is used to minimise the risk and maximise useful stealth. Speaking of radar, have you given any thought to the radar cross section of giant radiators? Besides, it is quite possible to fly an aircraft with near total invisibility today, without dealing with IR at all - fly very close to the ground and put terrain between you and enemy sensors. Naturally this doesnt work without good intelligence and planning - and can be defeated with good intelligence and planning. Trust me, if IR stealth was viable, they would already exist. IR is an important technology in air combat, nobody has forgotten to counter it. Sorry if that sounds a little pessimistic, thats thermodynamics for you, it doesnt let you do anything fun...

I work in the warning label industry so I was looking around for a humorous way of responding, but in doing so I found that apparently some shredders are specifically designed for things like old electronics, which makes the warning make more sense. https://www.whitakerbrothers.com/intimus-flashex-digital-media-shredder-schflashex

Yes this was something that occurred to me too, scramming does not equal instant safety. To be honest, in the end I think that nuclear reactors are too heavy to make them the best choice for in-atmosphere travel. Not only are they very dense, but they miss out on all that lovely free oxidising potential in the air.

But to scram one that has crashed catastrophically out of the sky? It doesnt have to meltdown to be a radiological disaster.

Its not oil, its "mineral ore". Makes a bit more sense that way

This is possible, in fact it is done, but perhaps not quite in the way that you imagine. It is limited in effect however, reducing probability or range of detection rather than hiding the craft entirely. The intricacies of thermodynamics make it so you can reduce your signature quite easily, but its extremely difficult to approach zero emissions. About the only way to be *almost* invisible to IR is to have a large tank of liquid helium and actively cooling your vehicle and venting the heated coolant through an expansion nozzle, though this is only really relevant to spacecraft. Have a search through the forums for discussions on stealth in space (its quite a hot topic sometimes) and have a read here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php Pictured: the IR baffle on the engine of an Apache helicopter. It entrains a large amount of ambient air and mixes it with the exhaust before ejecting it.

No, its just that people are awful. It reminded me of how it really grinds my gears when someone is serving me food (maybe my fiance is making dinner, for example) and they go "Is that enough food?" and Im like "Yup, tons." and they're all "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Sure? Let me just give you some more so its really hard to keep on the plate." "No thanks" "Just a bit then?" Or "Do you want some mushrooms/tomato/cabbage/other thing I really ought to know by now that you dont like?" "No thanks" "Are you sure?" etc etc etc And the related: "Do you want any XYZ?" "No thanks, Im not a huge fan of XYZ." "But you havnt tried MY XYZ?" Oh really? And did you use olives that inexplicably taste completely different to every other olive on earth? Or did you somehow manage to change the texture of bananas? I assure you, no matter how you cook YOUR cabbage, its still gonna taste like garbage covered feet. BECAUSE I DONT LIKE FRICKEN CABBAGE OK? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME PAIN? NO? BUT ARE YOU SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURE?????????? HAVE YOU TRIED MY PAIN ITS LOVELY!!!!

The fate of all my lego: Buy - build - enjoy for a while - deconstruct and merge with giant pile of random lego. I presume its the same for everyone? Does anyone ever build those "alternative" models that are sometimes illustrated on the box?

That 2nd last picture omg!

In the spirit of console gaming, construct a kerbal mario kart track on the Mun.

Thats true and not true. For example, I'd trash Tron:Legacy into pieces, anyone would, on scientific grounds, but as a fantasy movie I think its great. I would say a lot of people would enjoy trashing the science in any movie, regardless of how good a movie they think it is, because that is the fun of a thread like this. And if it so happens that a few movies that are actively trying to be "sciency" get torn apart as well, then that just icing This thread basically *is* the trashtalk bandwagon. If you're not talking trash, you're in the wrong wagon. Your favorite movie will still be good, no matter what people post here, isnt getting offended by a few deliberately pedantic comments kinda childish? Instead of bandwagons and trash talk, why not chime in with why you think such-and-such a film is still a good film despite whatever perceived inaccuracy?

Actually if they walk into a lake, they are helping, in a darwinian fashion. Its the ones that walk into me that need re-training. I mean, you smash a phone out of a little girls hand once and everyone is all "how could you?" and "youre a monster". (jk )

Cars used to be deathtraps compared to todays vehicles and we fixed that. Walking into people because your're staring at your phone whilst walking, or walking/driving into a lake because you cant take your eyes off the GPS display, are examples of behaviour that is stupid regardless of generation. Walking into a lake because your phone is too alluring is todays equivalent of cars with no seatbelts and unlaminated windscreens. It needs to be rectified.

I may have perused it once or twice, yes... I agree, this particular part of the internet I think is a safer, saner place than most.

You might find this link interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network

Nope. You dont walk into a nerd's nest by choice and complain that everything is too nerdy. Go and make your own "complain about bad sci fi but only just the right amount" thread. Peace