Chronocidal

Wow... I hadn't seen the gear yet, and I thought you all were kidding. Seriously, over the summer I saw a $6 toy from Disneyland that had better landing gear than that. I'm guessing that Bandai has it's collective head so far up a Gundam's cockpit, they haven't actually seen a real aircraft before. Btw, takeoff/landing angles usually aren't quite that high... I think the F-18 generally lands with about 15 degrees angle of attack, and while I'm not sure about any military regulations, civilian FAA regulations require about a 15 degree rotation clearance to certify an aircraft to fly.

Good grief people, this isn't worth that much of a debate.. Considering the salute was straight toward the camera, you might as well say he was saluting the fans.

Well, just a thought.. they did say the Vajra were from another galaxy originally. What actually called them to ours? Or, are there swarms throughout multiple galaxies, and this group just happened to migrate to ours? I guess the problem is cause and effect related... Aimo is a Vajra mating song, so when they heard it, they came. But here's the catch.. where did humans get it from, if not from contact with the Vajra? Do we know for certain the Vajra and Protoculture aren't related? I guess it can be assumed, since if the PC knew about fold quartz to begin with, the whole story would've been a whole lot different. But.. I guess my thought is, what if the PC themselves were not restrained to this galaxy? Or, could they have come into contact with the Vajra in the past, and recorded Aimo somewhere that Mao discovered while looking for Sara and Shin?

Yub Yub, Commander. *ROFL* Sorry couldn't resist. btw, major props to anyone who gets that reference. Forget the ginormous shoulder pads, I wanna know how many times they had to wash and dry that uniform before it fit her. And don't give me the eva plug suit excuse.

O... M.... G. *falls over* I don't think I've ever seen so many bricks of pure awesome being shat in such a short period of time. I seriously had to rewind and rewatch bits of it multiple times to catch what was going on, and check myself to be sure I was actually seeing what I thought I was seeing. where to begin... (watches it again while typing to try to remember it all.. the Veoh raw is not bad, but I can't wait for a high quality one) K, first off, that was the most awesome medley of Macross music I've ever heard. And I completely missed it at first lol.. I got through about 3 songs before it registered that the music had changed Now what I want is a complete version of Diamond Crevasse done at that tempo though.. heck, I want an extended edition. The ghost fighters.. even without dialogue, it looked like Luca had programmed in his own AI system for the drones (System: Judah his screen said), probably to outwit the others. The Macross 11 fleet didn't look quite like Frontier, it was the type that had buildings poking through the dome, plus I recognized a few Mac7 looking ships around it (was it the Einstein that was tetrahedron shaped?). The Islands did look more like Frontier's, but the ships didn't look as big. OMG, Ranka fold-slaps Sheryl! K, looking at the attack on Galaxy.. wow. Quarter used the ENTIRE CARRIER AS A PPB KNIFE. Looks like they used it to slash at the cannon arm of Battle Galaxy a bit, then they moved in close, and used the gun arm for a surgical strike to rip open the main hull. I cracked up as Alto pulled Ranka out.. right at that moment, they threw in Sheryl singing a couple lines from "My Boyfriend is a Pilot" Also the salute Alto threw the two as he headed off was pure DYRL. And I just realized.. the little gold streak spreading the idea for the vajra to disobey Grace was Ai-kun. He flashed by so fast, I had to freeze frame it to see what it was. First time I just thought it was a ship. Looks like after the Quarter Daedalus attack (WIN!) the Galaxy's gun went all splodey, and Battle Frontier pulled a PPB punch on the torso. When Alto and Brera came up on Grace, there were bunches of cruisers there btw..… I only caught two clearly, but there was a lot of cover fire coming from them. Interesting music tidbit for those inclined: the chords of the DYRL theme and Lion are the same, at least for the ending bits of DYRL, and the chorus of Lion. Sheryl and Ranka were overlapping the two during the entire run toward Grace. Ok, I'm probably not the only one, but the instant Klan handed Alto Michel's rifle, I started laughing, thinking, "no…... LOL ... you can't be serious..…" But they were. And all through my head, I couldn't stop the echoes, of "BOOOM!! HEADSHOT!!" Interesting how they took out the head, and separated it.. probably not Bird-human related on purpose, but it made me think a sec. As far as who was singing Aimo... I do think it was supposed to be the Vajra themselves, but it was sung the same as when Ranka saw the vision of her mother (same styling, notes slurred in the same places where Ranka pronounces them more clearly). How this'll ever be explained, I'll wait for eagerly. It may have been a memory of Ranshe herself singing it. I'm positive the locket picture was of Minmay, and in her DYRL costume. Makes me think of two possibilities.. One, Bilrer may have actually been at the battle when she sang.. Or two (and this one will break my brain if it's true) Ranshe is his and Minmay's daughter. The bloodlines work, Ranka's 1/4 Zentraedi. How it could ever happen, I don't know, but there's nothing to disprove it that I know of, and it would explain his attachment to her. The SDF-2 may have been lost after their encounter, or Bilrer may be a survivor of whatever happened. Phew. Just wow. Personally, I'm not too worried about the triangle. To be honest, I don't think it could've been resolved well without one of them sacrificing themselves to save the other, which wouldn't have worked as well as this did. Now, the big question that remains… How did anyone ever actually learn Aimo?? The idea that it was a mating song between vajra swarms makes perfect sense for their reactions to Ranka.. but it still doesn't explain how it was discovered, unless they recorded it from vajra fold communications when they discovered them, and Ranka's singing it brought tons of them. Still lots of open ends.. lets hope the movie brings some more answers. But no doubt about it.. this episode was pure unadulterated Macross fanservice, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

*has crazy dreams of seeing these kits stocked next to all the bitty gundam kits in the local walmart* Given that I don't see myself buying the bigger 1/60 for a while, I'm probably going to try and gather quite a collection of these. The only thing I worry about (besides the landing gear, but I'd rather display it flying anyway) is that I have yet to see anyone get the wings to be level. I know it's part of the transformation, but the fact that even those incredibly detailed builds couldn't get the wings level in fighter mode has me a bit worried. I'll probably build it out of the box first, but I worry that I'll screw something up by hacking away at the wing joint to get them to lay flat.

QFT. Seriously people.. yeah.. we need a catapult to launch the planes... in space. The YF-19 I understood, it was for atmospheric service. Now, granted, the VF-25 looks like it could fly in atmosphere too, so I guess that's the justification (even though we haven't seen a sea-based carrier since SDFM). Space is much simpler.. sheesh, turn off the gravity, and you can launch them with a slingshot.

Or would that be Macross F: Death and More Death?

I keep seeing oodles of vehicles at my local wal-mart.. VF-19s, V-wings, anakin's modded blue/white striped jedi fighter, and one or two AT-TEs. None of the epIII style jedi fighters though. Been tempted to get one of each type, but I don't have the room nor spare cash right now.

Personally, I can't tell the difference at all between the new and old shots of the queen.. They're different colors yes, but I'd guess probably from different types of lighting and shading. Other than that, and a bit more detail in the newest shots, I see no difference at all. If you look at the contour lines, and the little spiky greeblies, the individual surface details also line up pretty much identically. I'd guess this queen is only the main control node since she'd integrated into the entire planet/ring network thing. No reason that same type of node couldn't be integrated into smaller networking groups. Like, you can have multiple computers all running on the same processor type, but they all rely on the network's main server for coordination.

Meh.. while it sounds an interesting concept, jedi games are getting.. well, overused to say the least. Battlefront 2 is nice if you mod it a bit (no you dingbats, the Y-Wing does not have a machine gun turret ), and the JK series was fun. But I'm still waiting (and probably will still be for years) for a decent sequel to Tie Fighter (XwingVsTie and Alliance don't really count in my book, although they were fun at times). You know, just for once, I'd love a SW game where I feel like a small part of a big story, and not the "omgwtfbbq pwnzor of the universe." Just for example.. I'd love to see a game that forces you to be WEDGE during Yavin. Eat that folks, you're not the hero, and you only get to cover his backside. Congradulations, you qualify to be a human shield. If there's anything that really continuously bugs me about these games it's the utter insignificance of anyone besides the player character. Lucasarts needs to take a few lessons from more rpgs, and come up with some real-time party based combat. Now, I haven't played KOTOR, but given how popular it was, you'd think they'd learn from that, and keep doing what worked.

Curse you Bandai.. I wanted a nice set of orthogonal views in the instruction sheets. heh.. not to mention my next paycheck, because I want about a dozen of these. On the plus side though... they just printed us all the fancy detailed transformation/internal structure diagrams for the VF-25 we could probably ever want. I'll just have to see if I can piece together a 3d model from non-perspective bits of the instructions.

I posted a mini-animation in the toy forum 1/60 vf-11 thread showing how I think the tails could work.. it's really rough, and just shows the outer leg panel, but it shows how it might work pretty well. Whether it'll work in real life is another story, but it's fine for a computer model.

Well.. while it looks fine in CG, I don't know how this type of joint would hold up in real life. The size of the hinges necessary would probably be about the same as the new 1/60 shoulder hinge that's become so infamous. Provided you can get the room within the leg to store the tail flat, you still need room for a sliding/rotating hinge, probably a round peg held into a track, and sandwiched within the leg. And that's before even thinking about the hinge at the tail root needed to rotate it to vertical. The root hinge would need to be as slim as possible to slide into the leg easily.

Did a little test earlier while thinking of how the tails could be bigger and still fit.. depending on the mechanism, you could get the tails to fit just fine with a combination of rotation and sliding motions. They'd have to rotate inwards till they were vertical, then slide and rotate in so they lay right up against the outer panels of the legs. The tails in some line art may still be a bit big for this to work, but if you rotate them correctly you can make them skinnier along the diagonal, and keep the overall height about the same.

The idea of folding the tails down after opening the legs might work, but not that way. The tails extend past the end of the leg areas, and are taller in most pics than the legs are thick. You know... it might complicate the mechanism a bit, but why can't the tails fold in with a combination of rotating and sliding? If the tails had a double joint to first cant inwards and then rotate/slide in, you can fit a much larger tail than with a simple pivot. This isn't done to any particular scale, so I don't know the material thicknesses you'd need for this to work, but if you bulge the legs enough, there might be plenty of space to fit the tails flat against the outer leg panels. This is also a much more complicated mechanism than a simple rotation, so it'd probably be rather fragile this way though. The combination of two rotation axes and a sliding joint probably could have failure written all over it. Not to mention the tails might get stuck inside the legs.

I think the top right one is a lineart of the Monster Girl nose art, or very similar to it. The other two look like Nanase's costume sketch for Ranka (Alice in Wonderland related theme oddly enough lol.. one more reference to the whole "through the looking glass" bit in the opening), and the Monster Battroid Ranka doodle that was seen on a missile during the last episode. And yeah, I don't think there's any way that page says "R.I.P." .. Aside from the missing period issue, I think that's supposed to be Sheryl's signature above the pic (although I'm not sure it looks quite like the one she wrote earlier on the eyecatch). What that looks more like is concept art for her costume, similar to the Ranka one. She's wearing the "Don't Be Late" outfit, you can see the hat and suspenders (though the top itself isn't quite visible.. makes me wonder if this is early concept art, before they changed it for a wider audience ) and the pants are cut the same way. We never actually did see how the change from the military jacket to the suspender-shirt went during the series. Even though it was holographic, she may have literally ripped off the outer layer at some point. Also, unless they're planning on ignoring it completely, yes, Alto just pulled off the greatest performance of his life, or he just started what will be. With all the attention they keep giving his brother (and how annoying he has been the whole time) I can't see them not finally bringing some closure to Alto's trying to reconcile his career issues (if they do, I'm gonna be upset they wasted all that time discussing his acting/flying choice). As thickheaded as he is, and as corny as it might get, I wouldn't be surprised by some great moment of inspiration where he has to reconcile his flying and acting skills in order to save the day (finally finding out why he flies, and how to be himself instead of acting all the time ) I didn't think of this till just now, but what you said makes me wonder who "Northern Cross" is about. I know it's sung by Sheryl, and I doubt its really more than a coincidence, but the "Crucified by destiny" line in the song could fit either one of them at this point.

Hmm... Well, I guess the big question is how detailed is the goal. I've worked with MS Flight sim for the past 6 years or so now, so I can tell you a couple things that might or might not work well for a sim layout. Going from your list: "The player never has a magical external camera." -I'd actually advise against this point very heavily, since no sim I have ever used lacked an exterior view of some sort (they may have existed, but probably not since the days of the old "big blue rectangle above the big brown rectangle" sims in the earliest days of computers). No, it's not realistic in the pure simulation sense, but flight sim people LOVE to make movies, and people love to watch instant replays of battles from the outside, or just fly around for fun. Besides, what good is a full transforming Valk sim if you can't even go "Oooh, ahhh!" at the mecha pron? You can't tell me anyone is going to be satisfied with the fleeting glimpses of enemy mechs flying by your cockpit. "Player is able to see the pilots body operating the controls." -I've never seen this work well for one reason: phantom-neck syndrome. Yes, you can model the body in so that you can see it... but unlike a real head, sim viewpoints are usually either fixed or variable points that rotate about the camera's center point. You look down too far into your lap, and you're going to be looking down into your own neck. Yes, you can limit the view, but keeping the pilot's shoulders out of the view means there is a large range where the head won't be able to move. I don't think I've ever actually seen a sim that does this either. Everything I know of just uses an invisible pilot, with the controls animated as if someone was operating them. "Missile targeting and shoot down capability" -While this would be nice, I'm having trouble seeing how you could ever implement it. It would have to be automated somehow, because.. well let's face it. If you're trying to make this an actual sim, and not a sim/fps hybrid, you're going to be aiming the gunpod with a joystick, and clicking on the missiles to shoot them down just wouldn't feel right to me. The only way I see this working is if the whole gunpod works similar to an AH-64 Apache, where the pilot's targeting control is linked to the gunpod, and it autotracks whatever he selects (or in realistic terms, looks at). On that point though, controls may be an interesting issue.. I can't think of any existing system that would offer good controls in all modes to be honest.. and short of building a custom HOTAS system, it's gonna take some creativity to come up with workable controls. Control stick is kind of a given, and there's not much you need to setup for that. Same for the rudder/foot controls... provided you have a set of pedals for the computer, most of these include both rudder and braking functions. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly, didn't the pilots step on the rudder pedals to make downward thrust in battroid/gerwalk? Link this up to the brake pedal axes, and you could have a nice setup. What would be better is if you could move the two pedals independently, but that would be.. well, complicated at best. The throttle is the biggest problem I see, since the VF-1's throttle is actually a 3 axis joystick.. it slides forward and back for throttle in aircraft mode, then rotates 90 degrees to become a second joystick in gerwalk/battroid. For this.. I'd almost suggest trying to allow support for multiple joysticks. That way you could have a spare left hand joystick to switch to when needed, instead of relying only on a throttle.. Gah.. it's so late, I need to be sleeping. Anyway, I've thought a lot about how to get these things working in MS Flight sim.. and actually, a good fully variable Valk in FSX may not be as hard to do as we all think (I've recently learned a system that actually lets you directly override the physics engine, and program your own flight model into the sim.. been using it for a repulsor lift system on an X-Wing, but I'm sure it could be adapted for a Valk as well). The biggest issue with FSX is the fact that you need to vary the collision points for the different modes.. and I have no idea if that's possible. I don't know how much I'd be able to contribute to this project, short of maybe doing some models/textures. But I'd be happy to lend a hand when I can.

I'd actually forgotten about that scene for a while... I remember looking at that flashback early on, and thinking it had to be huge, since it looked like there were rows of windows visible on the station. The thing that crushed it didn't look like the queen though.. or at least, it didn't look like the massive green vajra we saw earlier. It looked more like a jumbo lobster. Actually, I don't think we've yet seen any evidence that the queen is even mobile.

One other slightly disturbing thought..

Well, holy crap on a stick. *waits for next week* Can't wait for the subs now.

I don't know if these pics are new or not (I didn't see them anywhere here yet) but they show some good closeups of the VF-25. 1/100 VF-25F

I'm pretty sure I've seen flying radio controlled VF-1s, so yes the design can fly under the right conditions. But I'm not betting anything beyond fighter mode would be possible with our current technology, and the planes would never be as durable as they are in the anime. For instance, no way you're going to crash the thing through several buildings like Hikaru, and come up with anything resembling a working machine (much less your life I would guess). While they put up with large forces, aircraft aren't meant to sustain physical collisions. Now, in the battroid's case.. it walks, runs, jumps, tumbles, and rolls. Without some sort of star trek style structural integrity system, nothing's gonna hold that together. We just simply don't have the mechanical ability to make something that will move anything like an anime mech, and be strong in any sense of the word. The force on the joints would be massive for the types of motions mechs go through. The closest we have to anything like a VF-1 right now is the F-35 VTOL version. Yes, the engine on it bends and moves around almost like the VF-1's legs in gerwalk. But notice, they're not landing on that nozzle, the only part of the engine bending is the exhaust pipe, and that whole structure is no where near as heavy as the entire engine (like the VF-1's lower leg has in it). Given enough time, I don't doubt that a twin engined version could achieve something like gerwalk mode with enough computer control, but I don't think there's any way we could make it land on the "feet."

One other thing... I don't remember if he's aware that Grace survived (dunno how anyone could miss the carnage she left, but he may have missed the memo), but assuming he does know, he's probably quaking in his hair about what she'll do to him if they meet again. He probably wants all the defense he can get.

Well despite the speed of that scene, there was obviously time for Ranka and Brera to both get their helmets on, since Ranka wasn't wearing one at first either, and she doesn't have cyborg vision (that we know of anyway ). About the virus thing though.. holeee crap. I think my brain just pulled itself out of joint. Just for the moment, lets assume the viral evolution thing is correct, and the way the PC forcefully evolved different species was based on manufactured viruses. Makes good sense; the evo-virus modifies genetics, changes are passed on to the next generation. The question is just whether the old generation can survive the changes long enough to reproduce and make healthy beings who are immune any bad side effects of the virus. I actually had to go look up the process of viral infections to get a grasp on this, but I'm getting the idea of what type of virus a V-type infection is, at least in terms of this show. It seems like a virus that's not meant to just infect cells and reproduce, but rather modify them, and continue to spread. Many viruses infect healthy cells, make the cell produce a bunch of viruses, then the cell self destructs like a viral frag grenade, spreading newly manufactured viral material to other cells to similarly destroy them. However, there are other types of viruses that don't destroy the host cell, they only modify it. I think they're referred to as enveloped viruses, and what they do is turn the host cell into a virus production factory that produces new virus material that leaves the production cell by natural cell reproduction methods. What I'm wondering now is whether the PC might have engineered viruses designed to affect very specific changes in a host's DNA. Like say you wanted to make someone's hair grow a new color ... every cell within an organism contains the full DNA for a living being, so if you could pinpoint the specific bits of DNA that control the production of hair, you could change things just enough to alter the balance of materials produced within the follicles, or maybe even cause the follicles to produce artificial compounds that would give unnatural hair colors. So, this virus would infect a cell, and do two things. First, it would alter the specific bits of DNA necessary to make the change you wanted. Second, it would alter that specific cell just enough so that it began producing more of the virus and more altered cells of the same type, both by natural cell division, and by budding (the type of reproduction in many bacteria where a new cell just breaks off of an old one). Now, until this hair color virus actually reached the cells that produce hair, you wouldn't see any effects. But assuming the new DNA gets transferred correctly, once the cells around the hair follicles get modified by the virus, the chemical makeup of the hairs produced would be different. It wouldn't even need to be color, you could alter thickness, strength, go from curly to straight, any number of things that depend on the chemical structure of the hair. The virus would need one more thing though: a self termination instruction. Say if the cell modification was entirely successful, and every cell in the target's body was modified with new DNA, then there's a lot of energy to be saved by not producing the viral infection agent anymore. And here's what I'm wondering... Ranshe obviously had the Virus, and Sheryl does now as well. So does Ranka, but she's the second generation, and it's not killing her. I seriously wonder if the continued production of viral material after all the cells in the body are modified could saturate the body to such a point that it would actually self destruct. The cutoff switch to producing that material may be linked to reproduction.. say the production code doesn't get transferred into newly formed cells, or it's modified, so while Ranka carries the virus in her cells, it's not overproducing, and not making her sick. Now, the thing with the virus both Ranka and Sheryl have.. it modifies something that makes it so people can produce fold waves. Exactly what the source is is up for grabs, but as the virus progresses, Sheryl is getting better at it, and Ranka, since she's a second generation of the virus, is naturally good at it. Heh.. funny thought... if the Vajra network is like a giant brain, they're used to having thoughts transmitted both ways, in coherent patterns. Ranka isn't connected the same way. She's basically sending interference into the network, like junk mail with no return address. Basically, Ranka's singing is the rough equivalent of the Vajra hive mind hearing voices in its head. So, the question now is where the virus came from. I get the impression that if it is an evo-virus from the PC, it might not have been meant for humans.. and I'm not sure it was meant for the Vajra either. What if it was an experiment by the PC that went wrong (or maybe right)? A unified consciousness sounds an awful lot like the PC may have been trying to evolve themselves for once, instead of other species. Edited to add one more thought... There's one more thing I wonder about.. the story they gave Sheryl said that once the virus makes it into the brain, it'll kill you. I wonder if that's the whole truth or not, and what the cause of death actually would be. For instance.. We haven't seen anyone actually die from the virus (and I hope we don't). We've seen the hydra go mad, and start attacking things, but I wouldn't call that death. Just a thought, but what if infection of the brain actually means that you suddenly get plugged into the Vajra neural network? It'd probably be similar to trying to connect an old IBM 386 to a 3G network. Once the virus is allowed to modify enough of the brain, I wonder if you'd be getting the whole hive mind downloaded to your brain instantaneously. Granted, without being prepared for it, the shock of that might indeed kill you. But what they didn't explain was why the Hyrda went insane first... would the final stages of infection cause symptoms of insanity in humans too? Imagine suddenly being connected to the entire hive mind, with no idea of where it's coming from. It'd probably resemble schizophrenia, or maybe multiple personality disorder at the very least. So here's the question.. If anyone has actually died of the v-type virus, it may be from neural overload, or just becoming completely disoriented and shocked from the connection, and unable to live normal life. As determined as Sheryl is, she may be able to survive this, but I kinda doubt that. Here's the wacky far-fetched bit though... I remembered someone calling Ranka an "adapter" of sorts, which would allow a link between the G.A. collective consiousness (ie, humans) and the vajra hive mind. What if Ranka becoming linked to the hive mind would give a focal point of sorts to that mind? She'd be like a single consciousness allowing translation into terms that individual human minds could understand. In other words, her presence in the network may be the one thing that saves Sheryl from self destructing in the final stages of the virus. Whether or not she knew it, Ranka has been developing her own connection to that neural network from birth, and was born with the ability to connect to it. I still think that mental thing between her and Sheryl during the concert was a sign that they could actually already connect, even with Sheryl's early stage of the disease. Rather than a sudden connection, for Ranka it has been a gradual process, something that didn't make her go insane, or kill her from the amount of info overload. Btw, I don't pretend to know much about medicine, the virus stuff is all just picked off a basic decription I found of how they generally work. If anyone has better ideas about the source of the virus, or how it works, I'd love to hear.