30 March 2012

Flying with bird-like wings


A 31-year-old Dutch man has successfully flown over a hundred meters from a ground-level start. According to UPI, "he controlled the 55-foot wings using two Nintendo Wii controllers, the accelerometers from an HTC Wildfire S smartphone and Turnigy motors..."

The embedded video is part 14 in a long YouTube documentary series -- all of which are apparently fake, according to readers of this blog (see the comments).  I'll leave it up because it's still cleverly done.

Addendum:  More re the fake video at Life's Little Mysteries, including a comment that "the experts point out that the animation cycle of Smeets flying through the air seems to be modeled on a clip of a flying monkey in the Wizard of Oz."

8 comments:

  1. Scott ThrowerMarch 30, 2012 at 10:46 AM

    He revealed himself to be a fraud shortly afterwards.

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  2. wallywallywoxinfreeMarch 30, 2012 at 10:49 AM

    It was actually a big discussion around the "interwebs" for a while with a bunch of people weighing in on it. He's just a CGI artist though, cool publicity though

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  3. JKMarch 30, 2012 at 10:52 AM

    He also admitted to authoring the complete works of Shakespeare.

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  4. rlp122March 30, 2012 at 3:45 PM

    If you look up any of the close up pictures of the wings, it is easy to see that they are basically two sticks of 3/4" PVC pipe overlapped and a bit of twine holding the nylon on. Nowhere near the perfection needed for actual flight.

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  5. Aritê gunê AkasaMarch 30, 2012 at 9:27 PM

    That and he isn't using an actual flapping stroke. Moving the arm up and down at the shoulder joint wouldn't cut it. The shoulder, elbow, and wrist should flex and extend on top of the wrist and shoulder moving in a circular motion.

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  6. AnonymousMarch 30, 2012 at 10:14 PM

    I don't understand how this is still making the rounds on the interwebs. It's so clearly fake. Physics say no.

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  7. AnonymousMarch 31, 2012 at 3:36 AM

    Yes, it is very good CGI (although not perfect), but the fact that it is fake isn't what bothers me. It's the acting surrounding it, the 14 part "documentary", the crying guy, all of it clearly staged to deceive the audience. I find this kind of attitude dishonest.

    There are plenty of people on youtube making great videos with CGI, and making it abundantly clear that they ARE fake (with making-of videos and whatnot). If this guy had done that I might praise him, but the "let's see how many people I can fool" attitude just pisses me off.

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  8. Marcel RuijtersMarch 31, 2012 at 3:55 AM

    The name is Floris Kaayk. He is a young, extremely gifted animator. His work is worth a search!

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