Conference noted::sf

105.0. "The Last Starfighter again" by XENON::GAUDREAU () Mon Jul 16 1984 16:07

The last Starfighter - Some thoughts ...


*** SPOILER ***









   I just saw this movie on the 15th at the Brandt theatre.  All I can say is
WOW!!  The computer graphics in the movie are fantastic.  The article at the
end of this note will explain why too!!

   One thing I thought peculiar, and haven't been able to check out as yet is
the character GRIG.  Grig is the lizard like being that helps Alex out in the
Gun ship.  Odd thing is, he reminds me a LOT of that character in BATTLE BEYOND
THE STARS called a "Sithule" (the lizard like creature with claws for hands who
runs the Zyme collector and has Kelvin helpers).  They look a little like each
other but they sound EXACTLY the same, too me at least!!

   About the video game which the Star League called the Excalibur Test.  Rather
Earthlike for a name, eh?  When Alex broke the high score, why didn't the
machine take his picture or something?  Centauri had to ask, so the machine
didn't help things along.  It could have also recorded the needed info for the
beta unit.  When Alex was being chased by the "Hit creature", the machine erased
its disguise, why didn't it just blast'em??  Lastly, when will this game come
out?  I want to play and play...


 Joe
 -=-




=============================================================================== 
Date: 12-Jul-84 01:45 PDT
From: William Daul - Augmentation Systems Div. - McDnD
From: <[email protected]>
Subject: THE LAST STARFIGHTER (COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD July 1984)
To: [email protected]
 
Scene on the cover article on page 62. The following is copied wthout
permission.
 
   3-D Images for the Film Industry
 
   Behind Digital Productions' Closely-Guarded Doors
 
   By W. Mike Tyler
 
   The largest producer of computer-generated 3-D images, in terms of
   sheer volume, is located in an obscure section of Los Angeles.
   One might not even notice Digital Productions' presence if it were
   not for a huge water cooling tower, or the extra power lines
   coming from a nearby utility pole.
 
   John Whitney, Jr. and Gary Demos founded Digital Productions in
   1982.  Together, they developed a process known as Digital Science
   Simulation(tm) for creating totally computer-generated images for
   the film industry.  This month, the firm will add motion pictures
   to its list of TV commercial accomplishments when Lorimar
   Productions releases THE LAST STARFIGHTER, a full-length feature
   film containing 21 minutes of computer-generated images.
 
   Behind Digital Production's closely-guarded doors is the most
   sophisticated hardware and software ever assembled for the sole
   purpose of creating computer-generated imagery and simulation.
   The facility is capable of producing 12 minutes of film per month,
   where the average frame complexity is 250,000 polygons.  At 24
   frames/second, that is 17,280 individual images (4.3 trillion
   polygons).
 
   To accommodate this intensive computational load, Digital
   Productions has acquired a Cray X-MP computer (hence the need for
   the cooling tower which extracts heat from liquid freon
   circulating through the Cray's PC cards).
 
   In addition to the Cray X-MP, Digital Productions has a full array
   of data entry, encoding, and movie previewing workstations.
   Ramtek RM9460 imaging/graphics display systems give technical
   directors the ability to view fully rendered images before they
   are committed to film.  The amount of data that can be displayed
   is 1280 x 1024 pixels x 24 bits per pixel, or approximately 4
   mega-bytes per frame.  Interfacing to the Cray X-MP via a DEC VAX
   11/782, these previewing stations provide immediate feedback and
   allow the technical directors to experiment with a variety of
   different display attributes.  The hardware also includes a 2560 x
   2048-pixel by 10-bit/color film recorder and a high-speed custom
   interface to the Cray IOP.  Both were designed and built be
   Ramtek.
 
   From a systems perspective, Digital Productions' designers are
   interacting with a graphic database--representing 3-D shaded solid
   objects, something common to many CAD system designers.  However,
   the scope and scale of their system sharply departs from your
   everyday CAD operation.  This has to do with the special
   requirements involved in the production on images for film.  Most
   significant is the need for raw computational speed.
 
   Quality film production work for a single 35mm frame requires a
   film recorder resolution of 3000 x 4000 pixels and 10 bits for
   each color.  At 10 floating-point calculations per color, per
   pixel, it would take 8.64 billion calculations to produce one
   second of film (3000 x 4000 pixels x 3 colors 24 frames/sec. x 10
   calculations/color pixel).
 
   In creating realistic computer-simulation scenes, lighting and
   rendering algorithms require one to 10,000 calculations per color.
   Thus, anywhere from 864 million to 8.64 trillion calculations are
   needed to produce one second of animation.  The Cray, at 200
   million floating-point instructions per second, takes anywhere
   from three seconds to 10 hours to generate one second of film.
    Since adjacent frames contain common image features, programming
   shortcuts exist for reducing the overall number of calculations.
   Large-format 70mm movie film resolution (4600 x 6000 pixels/frame
   x 30 bits/pixel, or approximately 100 Mbytes of data) ups the
   computational requirements even further.
 
   How economical is all this?  In the case of THE LAST STARFIGHTER
   production costs were significantly lower than filming scale
   models of the Armada ships and performing post-processing to make
   them look real.  When comparing industry firsts, THE LAST
   STARFIGHTER includes over twice the amount of simulation that
   appeared in STAR WARS, and was produced in approximately one third
   the time, at about one quarter the cost.
 
   CONCLUSION
 
   There are fundamental parallels between Digital Productions'
   supercomputer environment for film-making and high-performance
   systems for mechanical CAD design or engineering simulation.  All
   have a common purpose: design productivity.  Each has its own
   intensive computation burden.
 
   But not everyone can afford access to a Cray-class computer.
   However, these application needs have spawned a new generation of
   graphics peripherals with special-purpose computation accelerators
   to tackle the dynamic display of complex 3-D solid objects.
   Ramtek's new 2020 products fall into this category.  The major
   improvement brought by this class of device is the 3-D design
   takes that formerly took anywhere from tens of minutes to hours
   can now be done in seconds.
 
   +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
   Mike Tyler is manager of the product management group at Ramtek
   Corp.  Prior to this, he was employed by Computer Science Corp.
   Mr. Tyler graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from the
   University of Maryland.
 
------------------------------

	I finally saw this film last weekend - entertaining, heavily loaded
	with deja vu from Star Wars and other pop SF films, and with excellent
	effects.

	The effects, though, reminded me very much of TRON and Automan -
	as a casual observer, I didn't see much pioneering going on here.

	I liked the film - but I'm really turned off that what this really is
	is not so much a movie, but instead a two-hour advertisment for a new
	video game from Atari.

	I feel sorry for them - the video game market is dead - and it strikes
	me that this movie is a last-ditch effort to get those quarters falling
	again.

							Max

Two observations:

(1) It's funny, but the special effects did *not* remind me of TRON at all.
TRON's computer-generated images were more of the "grid pattern" variety,
while THE LAST STARFIGHTER's images were solids.

(2) On the other hand, I understand exactly what you mean about it looking
like an ad for video games. My biggest disappointment in coming out of the
film (which I *did* like, despite the flaws), was that I felt like I had
watched a video game rather than a movie.

--- jerry

"Excalibur test" didn't refer to the Starfighter game, but rather to the
similarity of this ploy to the trick which had been played, a long time
ago, on a guy named Arthur ... this was slightly better detailed in the
book.

	/dave

and Arthur said (more or less) :
   "King?  What do you mean, 'Your the new king'?  Is that, like, ultimate power
over man and beast, armies, and such?  But I don't want it..."
   and Merlin said unto Arthur (Just like Centauri) "My boy, think of the
possibilities, the opportunities, the WEALTH, the power.  Think of your country,
do YOU want to let them down, why, you could help them, make them better than
they are.  Everybody wants to be king, it's an honor boy, you just HAVE to
accept it!!"
   and Arthur did reply "Hogwash, don't pull that Freudian ego stuff on me!!!"

 Joe
 -=-

    Sorry folks but there is only one computer generated scene that
    I could find major fault with.  The entire family enjoyed the flick
    and I didn't even think of it as an ad until now (in fact, I still
    don't).  Somehow it seems that I usually end up liking stuff that
    most other people don't (I couldn't stand Star Trek until after
    it had gone into syndication yet I loved Battlestar Galactica.)

    	So what was the "one computer generated scene" that you found
    "major fault" with?
    
    	Larry
    

        I dunno about .5, but the scene *I* found major fault with was
        when Centauri and Alex return to Rylos after the attack. There
        is no sign of rubble, and the exposed ends of the fortress are
        geometrically smooth.  The center might feasibly have been cut
        out and vaporized by energy weapons... but it was supposed to
        have been blown to smithereens by "meteors".
        
        With all that shading and anti-aliasing, you'd think a couple
        of fractals wouldn't have been too much to ask...
        
        Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the movie.  Robert Preston
        and the Cray were fantastic, and the story was interesting.
        In fact, I just watched my copy of it last night, purely
        by coincidence...
        
        	/dave

    	The 'objection' in .7 can, I think, be explained - the fortress
    wasn't disarmed until they had destroyed all of the 'meteors' except
    one.  That one hit dead center - the launch bay.
    

        One amazingly *neat* little rock, wouldn't you say?
        
        	/dave

    	Maybe - but I would think that the complex would have been HUGE,
    and a dead center hit would not neccessarily destroy the 'wings'.
    

        I never said it should have destroyed the wings.  I said
        it should have left jagged edges and rubble, not a clean
        geometrically precise cut perfectly perpendicular to the
        plane of the outpost.  OK?
        
        	/dave

    OK