Category Archives: Video

Here’s a video of the test-evacuation done on the Airbus 380, currently the largest airliner in the world. At about 50% bigger than the rival Boeing 747, the aircraft can house up to 853 passengers in the full economy class configuration spread over the plane’s two decks. And since it’s a whole lot bigger, they needed to test the evacuation as per safety regulations. Some of the conditions to meet are:

– Only half of the 16 exits would be opened. The other half are considered “blocked”, and cannot be used. Neither the crew nor the passengers know beforehand which exits are blocked.
– Out of the participants, 35% must be over 50. A minimum of 40% must be female, and 15% are female and over 50.
– Happens in darkness. Only the emergency lights are on.

So 873 (including crew) people have to be evacuated in they need to get out in no more than 90 seconds, including the time required to deploy the inflatable slides. They did it in 77 seconds. From the video, the participants seemed to be rather calm, and knew what to expect/do. Maybe they’ve got the staff and families to participate, or maybe there are rehearsals (?). Maybe all those over 50 are aged 51, and are Boston marathon participants.

For those of you who bowl, you’d know that when the pins are “Split” (i.e. after the first roll, two or more pins are left standing with a substantial gap between them, so it’s very difficult to knock them all down in the second roll). Now, what if the split is…across lanes?

It’s a bowling trick-shot – not quite what you’d encounter in your normal alley outings – but it’s still quite cool to see! If you prefer the real deal, it looks something like this.

I’m not sure if this is a production advertisement or perhaps a viral marketing video – whatever it is, it is really cool! While I’ve seen Chinese peasants practicing calligraphy with a mop and water, the scale of this is definitely much larger. Watch as the guy paints a picture many times his size – and when others join in the fun as well! I really wonder how he maintains a sense of proportion and perspective over such a large canvas though.

Another amazing pure-CG visual effect with what is perhaps the most difficult to work with – water. See it flow, splash, bubbled, bend, in pure 3d goodness (no composite frames at all). By Scanline VFX, who worked on films like Poseidon.

Man, recent developments in games and 3D effect technologies just doesn’t stop amazing me – check out the trailer above on Crysis, an upcoming game that has already netted numerous awards on its technical excellence. And if you think that it’s just marketing trailer, and that game play would be of a significantly lower quality, you may be convinced otherwise after looking at this video of their level editor for an earlier Crysis version.

All elements real, destructible, dynamically mapped, dynamic shadows, parametric skeletal animation, I could go on and on – but if I do, I’d start to wonder why does my simple one-frame product render still take up so much time!

[Crysis website – yet to launch]