Recent content by John M. Carr

  1. J

    Time travel thought experiment game

    *cough* TARDIS *cough* :D
  2. J

    Can Self-Learning Lead to a Career in Physics and Math?

    Hello. I'm John, and I'm 25. Until recently, I was a part-time college student, and now I'm not. The degree I was going for, Computer Technology with a programming emphasis, was something I seemed to be proficient at, but it was also something that I have pretty much zero passion about. I...
  3. J

    Hello I'm an electrical engineer and a physicist

    That does sound like a good combination. *waves at Sara* Hi!
  4. J

    Interstellar: A Visual Masterpiece with Disappointing Writing and Physics

    Certainly not me. I'm taking the visuals on their own for the moment, but not the movie itself, because I've seen clips of them and I have some experience working with CGI on a hobby/amateur basis. From what I've read so far, though, I'm going to love the movie. Of course I pretty much turn my...
  5. J

    Interstellar: A Visual Masterpiece with Disappointing Writing and Physics

    You're missing the point, not by a little, but completely: none of their software is meant to make things look as visually real (in the artistic sense) as what the folks who did the VFX for this movie had at their disposal. I'm not speaking to the direct scientific utility of the visualizations...
  6. J

    Interstellar: A Visual Masterpiece with Disappointing Writing and Physics

    Okay, then. You do know they had to customize their rendering engine before they could render anything, right? As in go into the API and rework things by hand. Why do you think Kip Thorne sent them the raw equations? Raytracers do not come with "GR-awareness" on their own--you have to specify...
  7. J

    Interstellar: A Visual Masterpiece with Disappointing Writing and Physics

    100 hours rendering time for some frames on top-of-the line equipment is rather expensive.
  8. J

    Interstellar: A Visual Masterpiece with Disappointing Writing and Physics

    Yeah, but the visuals they used for Interstellar took a staggering amount of time to render and data storage. As someone who's dabbled in 3-D modeling and animation from time to time, my mouth literally dropped open when I heard the figures.