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Drone Swarm Creates Star Trek Logo In London Sky
garymortimer writes "As a harbinger for the Paramount film 'Star Trek — Into Darkness', starting in May in Europe's cinemas, last night a swarm of 30 mini-helicopters equipped with the LED lights drew the Star Trek logo into the skies over London. The choreography for the show was developed by Ars Electronica Futurelab from Linz (Austria). Quadrocopter maker Ascending Technologies GmbH from Munich (Germany) provided the aircrafts."
If the Doctor had to intervene before they actually created the whole Enterprise, and if Daleks were at the root of it?
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Cause, they look barely visible at 1080p, with or without the background lights.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Fascinating.
All I can say is, "Bad Robots!"
Cause, they look barely visible at 1080p, with or without the background lights.
I blame the smog.
Be seeing you...
provided the aircrafts.
Plural of "aircraft" is -- "aircraft".
Don't try this in Boston
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Who edits this stuff?? (the video, not the submission)
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
They should have done it in San Francisco!
\x72\x6D\x20\x2D\x72\x66
In related news, The Pirate Bay is now formally refusing to take further donations for its airborne drone server plan. A London spokesman for the website said, "We've got more than enough capacity and redundancy now!", as he laughed mischievously and looked up towards the quadrocopter-filled sky. Paramount did not take our calls for comment.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Figures...the emblem is backwards.
Cameras often have trouble capturing things that are plainly visible to human eyes.
Having just crawled out of my rock I didn't know there was a new star trek movie. Thats really cool...checks trailer... boo... crawls back into rock.
Note to producers: Star Trek != Expendables and nobody is impressed by senseless CGI overload.
The best startrek ever no contest was star trek iv ...the worst ever will be this film.
It shoul;d have been shaped like the Enterprise and flown in the "forward" direction, not that would be cool.
Slashdot needs to do something about this. How many posts are that long and have 20 links in them? Shouldn't be that hard to filter such posts.
I flagged the post. I encourage others to do the same.
But a little disturbing and creepy too. The swarm behavior they program into these things is amazing, and gives me Terminator flashbacks. It looks like intelligent behavior.
Every time you post a comment to his fucking nonsense, you're giving him food. Check out the links directly below the top paragraph, the bolded one liners. Some of those are posts from a few days ago. Flag it, hide it and move on, he's obviously in pain.
... whatever
Just what we need. More advertisement. We do not have enough of it it, so please fill the sky with it.
We all saw the formation flying quads before in lab environment and what do they decide to do with this knowledge? Advertisement! ..."
I am sure that when we will have effective robots, they will not be used to do anything you think they can do, but rather walk in the streets, tap your shoulder and when you look, they say "Hey mister, did you hear about this great new product.
It will then follow you around till you placed an order. At that moment the next one comes along.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Your eyes hopefully have better resolution than 1080p.
Leonard Nimoy will be happy!
I'd imagine that people had no trouble seeing them. Have you ever tried to take a picture of the night sky with a digital camera? Most of them, especially the cheap P&S or cell phone cameras that people would actually be likely to have on them, have a hard time picking up the stars too, even though they're plainly visible to anybody who bothers to look.
The Only interest I have in seeing this movie is when it comes out on one of the Satellite TV channels so I can DVR it and skip through it to watch the space scenes. The acting, script & sets are literally painful to me. Its like watching a two year old play with matchbox cars, flying them through the air like their jet fighters. Sure it may have moments of interest, but they are few and far between. For goodness sakes half of the sets were commercial/utility sites with a few computer consoles added (brewery, electrical substation).
...and I didn't see it. Works flawlessly ;-)
Some very simple measures would shut this crap down, including just clipping 0 score comments down to 6 lines (expand to see more), and -1 comments down 2 lines (expand to see more). And if enough mods rank a post down, show nothing of it at all.
obscures the skies, these will be our constellations. ...interrupted every five minutes or so when the drones re-form themselves into an ad for hemorrhoid cream.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
At least normal billboards don't fall on my head when they malfunction. Cool swarm behavior though.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Depends entirely on where you are.
Most urban locations have so much light pollution that the amount of stars you can see if hugely reduced. On a clear summer night out my back yard, most of the stars are washed out in the background light, and only the really bright stuff is visible.
I should think in a city like London, the amount of visible stars wouldn't be all that much.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If you dont want to tolerate it, set your threshold to hide -1 comments. Thats the whole point of comment moderation thresholds.
I don't really see how individual flying pixels can be considered a "swarm." They simply have an "absolute" position programmed into them, and flew to where their code told them to go. Now, if one flew up there, and the rest followed it by observation / communication with each other, now we have the beginnings of a swarm. When they're autonomous AND have the ability to demonstrate complex behavior as a group, using a simple set of communication parameters and minimal constraints, THEN we're really seeing something special. When they demonstrate consensus, then I'll be impressed.
Until then, though, they're flying pixels. Not a swarm.
The problem with that is that too many idiots get mod points and inappropriately mod down good posts before many people get to see them. Setting your threshold to hide -1 comments means you will miss many that should never have been modded down in the first place.
It's not like it's hard to identify and ignore if you want.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Cause, they look barely visible at 1080p, with or without the background lights.
I blame the smog.
Cor blimey me ol China, there's a right pea souper tonight, chim-chimminee, stroike a loight, up the apple and pears to the rub a dub dub.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Then deal. Or, make your own news aggregation website.
Jesus, the sense of entitlement some people have...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Slashdot needs to do something about this. How many posts are that long and have 20 links in them? Shouldn't be that hard to filter such posts.
I flagged the post. I encourage others to do the same.
They did do something about it. They provided you with on "Offtopic" mods. You should try filtering on that.
Yes because Slashdot cannot be improved in any conceivable way and anyone who complains about it, or problems with other people's workarounds, or suggests improvements should just be told to "deal".
It's hardly a major change to cause the "Read the rest of the comment" logic to be more restrictive for 0 and -1 comments. A -1 could show a few lines and nothing more. If someone wants to click on some psycho's mindspool and read it in full they can do so.
Most of them, especially the cheap P&S or cell phone cameras that people would actually be likely to have on them, have a hard time picking up the stars too, even though they're plainly visible to anybody who bothers to look.
Well, besides those shots not being taken by a "cheap P&S or cell phone", and the photo where you actually see the lights being clearly overexposed or photoshopped to make the lights visible (the entire sky is glowing from the photo-manipulation) - I was asking has anyone ACTUALLY seen that stunt, live.
Not, if it would be visible, perhaps, maybe, at certain conditions, with binoculars, from a certain angle, if you are 7 feet tall, standing on a hill... whatever.
Has anyone actually witnessed it take place?
Cause to me... that looks like a failed performance.
Cause, if you gotta zoom in and overexpose and whatnot just so the camera would catch that light (as opposed to a human eyeball with no zoom capability, and highly limited night vision) - they could have just as well done the whole thing on a computer, and upload that to youtube instead.
Then again, quadcopters equipped with invisible lights, performing for an audience of none, WOULD BE a publicity stunt very in the spirit of the movie.
All hype, no substance and no actual relation to the established canon or plot.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I haven't upgraded my CGA Eyes yet.
320x200 Black, White, Cyan, and Magenta is good enough for me, If I feel ambitious, I can switch to Black, Yellow, Green and and Red.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not to be off-topic from the story, but really.. just set your viewing threshold from -1 to 0. Comments that were flagged for abuse won't even show up. That is what /. did for all of us.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
And I forgot to add the relevant comment to the story, but it's more like an annoyance with the movie's title... Isn't it, "Star Trek Into Darkness" ? No hyphen..? Man, that's an awful title. I wonder if they printed the posters with a typo and said, "Frack it... let's just change the title."
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Wow, you mean the medium grey-ness? Is that what passes for darkness in cities these days? No wonder you all sound like you need a fucking nap.
lulz