MSW

There should be two sections rotating in opposite directions to offset the drag. That is a potentialy good idea but why? there is no up or down in space, why go through the trouble in the first place? How? Even elementary physics tells us that anything rotating introduces a force vector that resists changes. How else does a bicycle balance? Gyroscopes? Inertial Navigation System? If anything, rotating the ship would cause the ship to stay in its path more, assuming a dead on course was plotted, of course. We provide the balance system on a moveing bicycle If there was nothing onboard the ship, if everything was locked down...and the ship was rotated and sent on a flightpath in space, then yeah it would likely arrive without haveing to correct it's course...but when you introduce moveing parts inside the ship (specificly the crew) this introduces other problems... An object set in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by outside forces...which is why when you shift from one seat to another in a boat, even if the stearing is locked strait ahead, your movements will introduce slight changes in it's corse...it's the same thing only worse in space as there is no gravity to act upon the ship, and no water to act upon the shape of the boat... Like a cell phone set on vibrate "dances" across a table...the movements of the astronauts within the shuttle, brushing aganst the wall, pushing off of them, introduces slight shifts in the ships direction...and the crew doing the same onboard a rotateing star ship will also effect it's path over time because the very movements of the crew onboard can slightly slow or even speed up the rate of rotation which in turn would cause a destableisation in the flight path (not to mention that the ship is rotateing to produce an artifical gravity...if all the crew gathers together for lunch in one area of the ship at one time...it would have a simular effect as adding say 5 lbs to only one helicoptor blade..not good if you want to remain in control of the craft)

Here you go...source images came from HLJ website...

rotateing cockpits like those on the B-wing would be useless in space where there is no up or down...not to mention that space going bombers (TIE bomber) are completely pointless... Also the big rotateing sections of some ships to produce gravity (the Earth destroyers on B5 for example) are completely unrealistic...There are a number of reasons why...but the two most obvious ones are that the pivot point the section rotates around, even if teflon coated bearings are used, will produce friction, which in turn will tray and drag the rest of the ship to rotate as well...so you end up useing lots more fuel to try and keep the rest of the ship from rotateing as well as continualy use energy to keep that section rotateing...the other big problem with such ship designs is that the rotateing section will induce some instability into it's flight path, causeing it to veer offcorse and requireing continual course corrections (this of course occurs even on the space shuttles as the astronauts move around inside, brushing against the cockpit walls and such...there was some great video shot on one of the shuttle missions that illustraites this effect...astronaut is shown holding a conventional 35mm camera...he lets it go, and it just floats there...he grabs it again, takes a picture, realises he has now run out of film, and hits the button causeing it to internaly roll the film back up...he then lets it go, and the internal dynamics of the little film rolling mechanisam causes the camera to quickly dance about and drift off before the astronaut can grab it again) My point is that in the movies, video games, and other avenues of pop media....even the most "realistic" seeming space ships are anything but

I just want to point out something really obvious ... the way battles are fought changes...it sounds really stupid for men to climb into heavy armor with near zero visability and limited mobility, mount a horse, grab a lance, and charge into battle...it sounds really stupid for men to dress up in what we would call elaborite costumes (but they called uniforms) and march around in nice neat little rows on the battlefield all while cannons are fireing at them...but it wasn't so long ago that battles were waged in this manner What seems uber realistic today might not seem the chivarly or honorable thing in the future...as much as a TIE fighter lacks visability, so too did the helments of the knights of old...a starfighter designed for some form of "honorable lanceing tournament" could be very plauseable and realistic in that enviroment, yet look unrealistic or even silly in the context of another... You never know...give the vast size, vacumme, and lack of gravity in space...battles may end up more resembleing bumper cars or smash up derby then anything yet seen in movies, videogames, or on TV... And given that a high pressure stream of water can slice through steel like it was butter...it seems quite plauseable to me that such cutting torches could be used very effectively in space (no atmosphere and gravity to slow the stream)...A short burst of a super high pressure hairline thin stream of liquid on a passing ship could concievibly slice it in two, all without useing much more then a half-liter of "ammo" (ammo that doesn't need bulky storage devices and reloading mechanisams...afterall many motorcycles store the engine oil within the bikes frame to save room and reduce mass...less mass = less inertia = a starfighter that can change direction, accelerate, decelerate both quicker and useing less fuel to do so) Besides in space, without atmosphere, without something to reflect light (like smoke) lasers, and beam weapons would be invisable...makes then kinda hard to dodge

I loved the designs from the first two games...especialy from VO:OT ... But the new designs in VO:M do absolutely nothing for me

I love this series, but it does go a little too over the top at times...but it makes me curious about some of the other brave series...specificly J-Decker, which looks retty cool to me with it's police theme...anyone catch that one? If so then how was it? hopefully just a pinch or two more serious then GGG...

CRUISE CHASER BLASSTY Dunno what that is? then check out my avitar

Very cool! Now if we could get some other old lost animated films and shows on DVD too... Anyone remember Starchaser: the legend of Orion (at least I think that's what the title was)...released back in the early 1980's...it was silly fluff...but cool in it's own way...kinda wish it came out complete with the 3D glasses as I had seen it in theaters back in the day (it is a 3D cell animated movie) Also waiting for Galvion to get the DVD treatment...maybe one day

I had the kits for Lana and Charles back around 1986...pretty decent kits at the time, included metal inserts for the feet so the models would stand easyer, also included two heads...one of the helment, the other just of thier face...Lana's chest armor did come off and charles included a removeable backpack...both kits were fairly poseable with a limited set of polycaps...However, the sculpt suffered a bit from haveing to suit the injection molding process, and detail was a bit soft...but they were still some very nice kits I need to find one of those Southerncross: this is animation books...SC isn't a great show IMHO, but there is something really cool to me about the mecha and armor design

tis pretty cool...load time sucks though, and that is why the program is so small...basicly seems like they reduced the textures and 3D meshes into mathmatical formulas...and when you run the program, it cycles through those formulas generateing the required textures and such... Just a simple example: say you have a 2D image of a black and white checkerboard...starting from the upper left corner, each odd numbered pixel is black with the even numbered ones being white...and lets say this image is 1024 x 1024 pixels in size...so even if the developers used a .JPG file format to store the image is would still be around 13k in size...however through some clever programming a the game could run through a little routine that generates this texture (basicly a loop that colors all the odd pixels black and the others white)...now once this routine is compiled into machine language, the section of the code to generate this image may only be about 65 bytes in size (you could fit nearly 205 such routines into 13k)...however this canl seem to take longer to "load" by running through the routine instead of just loading up a JPG because the processor is involved in the coloring of each and every pixel (where loading up a pregenerated image like a JPG can take advantage of low level BUS memory transfers and such)...hopefully that makes some sense

Now you are just whining.

Don't let little old me hold hostage your drive for self improvement! Get on it now. Oh...And for future refrence, it's "learn to master the art of wit"

You really should follow your own advice...

And often cost in the region of $150,000 just to machine a set of plastic injection molds...add in half a million or so for the actual injection-molding machine (which can be as large as a city bus), a couple grand for a supply of the materials...and you are all set...course you may also need to contract with an electricion inorder to get electrical power to the machine (some of them run on odd power requirements...208 volt systems...rather then the common 110 and 240 systems ) ...course you may also run into problems with the molds keeping cool, and so may need to contract a plumber to set you up with a water supply system to feed internal cooling passages that will need to be machined into the molds...also a computer material mixing station would prove most helpful if you want to do any "molded in color" parts... Yeah, all of that would be really nice...but you would have to sell a lot of kits...and I mean a LOT!...just to break even on your costs to produce the molds (let alone pay for any of the other needed equipment)...

aluminum is also quite soft and prone to scratching if improperly handled...also the chemical componets in resin may prove damageing to aluminum with repeated exposure...maybe even premature oxidation (yeap, even aluminum "rusts")... If you are planning on casting many parts, it can be most helpful to develop your molds in such a way as to be easily replaced...typicaly this is done through "skin" molds...basicly each half of the mold is further broken down into two pieces...a larger solid outer shell (fiberglass, plaster, etc..) and a inner easily replaced "skin" of silicone... gives a brief description: http://www.resincasting.co.uk/moldmaking.html

:yawn: yeap...that went right over your head

I'll try to make this as simple as possable...just focusing on the Emaan universe, but it will still fly right over your head ... Scenario 1: Emaan universe exists, Mimsy exists, the space-time bomb never detonates and thus nothing is effected in this universe...Mimsy and some male Emaan get together and she has a child, grows old and dies...this is the "normal" timeline Scenario 2: again Emaan universe exists, as does Mimsy...but the space-time bomb goes boom...Mimsy gets sucked to other universe...life continues on...the would be father to Mimsy's child in Scenario 1 doesn't get transported to another universe and so he hooks up with some other woman..and they have a child Scenario 3: same as scenario 2, but Mimsy returns pregnant with Kei's child...Male whom was left behind has child with other woman Each scenario results in a completely different set of children... things can't return to the normal timeline if the bomb goes off, and if the bomb never detonates, there would be no TV series ... end of story!

there is no point in argueeing with Keith ... he is ALWAYS correct in his own limited universe Kei doesn't show up for something like 20 years AFTER the space-time bomb detonated...at that point in time Mimsy is soon to turn 18...even if the Emaan age 1 year for every 4 human years...Mimsy would have been like 12 when the bomb detonated (else if she aged at the same rate, she wouldn't have even been born yet!)...however at the end of the show, when she is returned to her world, she is still the exact same age And so everything supposedly returns to normal If Kei and Olsen were TRULEY successful in stopping the space-time bomb from detonateing, then there would NOT be a Orguss TV series to even discuss

Yeap...sure was...and it went right over the heads of his little followers The Academy Awards have always and will always be a gayness award...it's a little golden statue of a naked bald gay man playing with himself ... can't get more gay then that, and Maddox here thinks DotD deserves Hollywood's uber gayness award

Me thinks I should have modeled her on the Honda RC51 and named her Arcee Thanks for the comments...Virtual-On is one of my many influences, but wasn't exactly intentional...actually got the idea while doddleing away on my Motoslave modeling project... I would have modeled her on the Yahmaha R-6, but thats my baby, and she is perfect the way she is...maybe an R-1 though, cause there are some model kits of that bike :idea: Anyway here is a real rough and very quickly done transformation schematic on Blurr...basicly, looking at the bike, the big frame section that runs from the hand grips down and back to the rear wheel...this is sorta the divideing line, the legs are above it, the head and arms below it...it's prolly not to clear in the image but the body work (forming the shoulder armor and back of head "hair") and front wheel pulls forward slightly then rotates 180deg around in the center section of images...Kinda strange that her head and butt are touching in bike mode ... I drew up a quick fott parts detail there to show how that all works...basicly the front section of the foot rotates around 180deg...then the whol foot rotates 180deg...then the ankle folds the foot up into the back of the tail section of the bike...basickly the heal part is the license plate bracket and tail light on the bike, with the toe section haveing the turnsignal light and the rest hidden under the tail section...makes sense? here you go, sorry it's so sloppy...done real quick with the watcom

I gave my new Watcom tablet a workout in Painter 8 (both the drawing and coloring) ... Not great by anymeans, still trying to master this thing Anyway... here is my interpretation of Binaltech Blurr A Suzuki GSXR-1000 (bike mode image swiped from Suzuki's own website) robot mode inspired in part by Arcee ...but I named her Blurr (almost went with Gixxer ) Transformation isn't too complex, and basicly a 1/24 scale toy could be produced without too much trouble (but 1/12 would be better) ... Hasbro/Takara are you listening?

just to name a few... Gunbird 2 Mars Matrix Ikaruga (import) And of course BANGAI-O

My opinion...if we all spent as much time on developing our scratch building/ sculpting skills as we do discussing, searching, and saveing up for these model kits (either originals or recasts) ... well... we may very well find that we don't need them because we can scratch build / sculpt them ourselves course too people are often damn lazy...it's easyer to bitch about not haveing any "leet" artistic skills then it is to use that time to develop and practice them

Looks like the "brute force" engineering method was happily employeed to produce the bike ... It looks like it would work...but all those drive chains = lottsa throttle lag... that wierd angle on the rear control arm looks unsafe, possably makeing the bike nearly uncontrolable...and the front stearing set-up, while workable, isn't going to give the rider much front wheel feedback...Course too there is the problem of it's rather massive width and overly long wheelbase Man, that angle on the rear control arm really looks dangerious...crack the throttle, wait as it takes up the slack in the three sets of drive chains...and as the wheel starts to push the bike forward, it also uses the leverage created from the rear control arm to lift the rear of the bike (course all the weight of the engine and such being way up front doesn't help)...not to mention that hitting the stop levers with that funky control arm angle would allow the rear tire to slow faster then the rest of the bike, allowing the bike to lower the rear end when stopping...it's not a bike it's a freaking elevator ... The first few generations of bikes with drive shafts had this "elevator" effect, though no where near as pronounced as indicated by the engineering shown in this Akira bike...

here are some B&W images of discontinued resin model kits of some of the mecha (I have these first two kits but not the third): http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljpage.cgi?WAVKV-01 http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljpage.cgi?WAVKV-02 http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljpage.cgi?WAVKV-03 There were a few other kits..most of them could be seen in the pages of late 90's (98-99, IIRC) issues of Hobby Japan and the like...