Never believe your eyes again

Meet the Mill Blackbird

What is it? Essentially a mobile green-screen platform that can stand in for virtually any car on screen. Virtually indeed - it's designed to stretch its wheelbase by up to 4 feet, its track by nearly 1 foot, and adjust its driving dynamics to mimic any car. Later, CGI vehicle skins are added over its framework and on screen it comes to life as any car of any era. It's already being used in auto commercials, movies and tv shows. Never believe your eyes again - you'll have to trust your ears to determine what's real and what's fake.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OnBC5bwV5y0

As i said on reddit, downvoted cause i want to see real cars do real burnouts

well.. maybe we will never see them again destroying nearly priceless machinery to make a movie

I saw that on Reddit yesterday and I think it is very cool, mostly for what mad_machine said.

Whoa

Interesting. I wonder what the actual performance of the blackbird is like. It says it is an electric car, but how many and how powerful are the motors? What is the 0-60mph time? What can it do on a skidpad?

This is the way the world is today. Things you 'see' on tv, movies or the internet are in a large part fake/concocted/virtual/make believe.

I wonder how long it will take someone to make a car similar to that for real life, where you can make your car look or sound like something else at the touch of a screen. Maybe we can all drive holograms someday.

Maybe we can never drive again... Maybe all things are done by robots while they harvest us for energy after we black out the sun to destroy their main source of power. (Matrix) Maybe we don't have real sex, instead we strap on vr head sets and do gross things with our significant other. (Time cop)

Maybe some of us hide out in abandoned piles of junk and underground and keep the old ways alive.

How long until they make a CGI spouse? Think of the possibilities. Stretch this, widen that... park it in the garage when you don't want to listen to it.

Also, it's false advertisement to tell me that "Buick" in the commercial can bob And weave like a Miata. I'll sue.

And why can't Hollywood get real? My gawd if I see another cgi car movie I'm gonna nuke a whale. The best car chase scenes have always had the REALEST stuff. Bullitt is a pine example. The movie plot sucks. The chase scene MADE that movie! Why? Because that sh!t was REAL! Lemans? Real. Fast and furious? Garbage cgi BS. Especially the third one!

In reply to Trackmouse:

It's been a while since I watched it, but I thought Tokyo Drift was one where they tried to cool it with the CG. Also I want that Monte.

I find it odd that this is even necessary to begin with.

I mean they can blanket cover this with CGI imagery, why do they need an underlying rig to go actually drive in locations? can't they just shoot locations without it? there's only so many vehicle dynamic moves. they can make leaves move with cgi, etc.

I guess i find it hard to believe they need this big money vehicle to get ground shadows and movements right, but they have no problem mimicking reflections, vehicle curvatures, lighting attributes and color tones overtop.

I guess my point being this just seems a stop gap until every piece is cataloged for fakeness.

this just seems a stop gap until every piece is cataloged for fakeness.

A great commentary on American pop culture in general.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/NCndL1Pv1qE

Wow. That's actually pretty impressive.

They said something about adjusting the handling and driving dynamics emulation by adjusting the suspension, width and length of the vehicle. I'd actually be pretty interested to see how closely that rig can match various setups on the fly and what goes into it.

Trackmouse wrote: Also, it's false advertisement to tell me that "Buick" in the commercial can bob And weave like a Miata. I'll sue. And why can't Hollywood get real? My gawd if I see another cgi car movie I'm gonna nuke a whale. The best car chase scenes have always had the REALEST stuff. Bullitt is a pine example. The movie plot sucks. The chase scene MADE that movie! Why? Because that sh!t was REAL! Lemans? Real. Fast and furious? Garbage cgi BS. Especially the third one!

Uh, Tokyo Drift? You mean the one with no cgi in it?

What next, fake breasts or something?

Javelin wrote:

Trackmouse wrote: Also, it's false advertisement to tell me that "Buick" in the commercial can bob And weave like a Miata. I'll sue. And why can't Hollywood get real? My gawd if I see another cgi car movie I'm gonna nuke a whale. The best car chase scenes have always had the REALEST stuff. Bullitt is a pine example. The movie plot sucks. The chase scene MADE that movie! Why? Because that sh!t was REAL! Lemans? Real. Fast and furious? Garbage cgi BS. Especially the third one!

Uh, Tokyo Drift? You mean the one with no cgi in it?

Go watch the final race between "hillbilly" and "Dee-Kay" on the "downhill-y0!" There are several cuts that are cgi. The majority of shots are real cars, but, you know, "it would be too dangerous to have real cars and drivers tandem drifting down a mountain side"

Real is raw. That's why ken block gets millions of hits. Even non car enthusiasts love that RAW, REAL rush. The fact that somebody does those things in a vehicle amazes people. If a movie came out where they said they did the whole chase scene in one take, no edits, and no cgi, and left it raw I would own that movie and it could easily top bullitt or lemans.

Trackmouse wrote: ...Real is raw. That's why ken block gets millions of hits. Even non car enthusiasts love that RAW, REAL rush. The fact that somebody does those things in a vehicle amazes people. If a movie came out where they said they did the whole chase scene in one take, no edits, and no cgi, and left it raw I would own that movie and it could easily top bullitt or lemans.

I hope you saw the Blues Brothers. The chase scenes were done at speed in the streets of Chicago. The only fake part was that they replaced the glass in city hall with hollywood glass. I doubt they did many takes considering the amount of police cars they destroyed.

It only has to make one pass down the Angeles Crest highway, and the auto industry is set for the next 20 years