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My wife is the same. She won't watch a TOS episode because 'it looks silly'. Whilst I can appreciate what she means, the effects were of their time and let's not forget, back in the 60's, those effects won big awards!!! I bet in forty years time, we'll watch TNG/DS9/VOY and point and laugh too!

I know it's been argued a millions times over but no TOS, no Trek. It started it all and will forever be the first image in most people's minds when somebody mentions Star Trek along with Captain Kirk, Mister (or Doctor) Spock, Beam Me Up Scotty etc etc.

As Wayne Cambell once said, "Ah, yes. It's a lot like Star Trek: The Next Generation. In many ways, it's superior but will never be as recognized as the original."

thelordharry wrote:My wife is the same. She won't watch a TOS episode because 'it looks silly'. Whilst I can appreciate what she means, the effects were of their time and let's not forget, back in the 60's, those effects won big awards!!! I bet in forty years time, we'll watch TNG/DS9/VOY and point and laugh too!

*Future self looking at holoTV as he downloads pirated VR into cranial implant* "God, how did we get along with 2D images?"

Hell, mechanical computer mice without scroll wheels seem as barbaric as Vikings nowadays...

I know what you mean, to think that just a few years back we were spying on your bathrooms and bedrooms with IR instead of todays digital scans... so many funny moments...

We are around the stag where our effects are almost life like. I dont see how you can get much better than that.

I have to agree, SFX can only progress so far until they hit the wall that is real life. After that, it'll probably just get cheaper, allowing for more SFX, but not better.

We are at a point where you can *almost* make a believable CGI character now, but even the best that has been done along those lines is still not quite right. There were certainly times when I spotted Gollum as CGI for instance, though they were very much in the minority.

I suppose the ultimate test will be when they can make a CGI movie that people can watch and not know it's a CGI movie. Think Beowulf-style but with characters so real that they look just like anybody else. We're a decade or so away from that kind of capability, I think.

More importantly, the only way we have right now to make CGI characters look realistic in their movements is to have a real person do the movements and then map them onto the CGI character. Which means even a CGI movie needs real actors, real sets (albeit only very simple ones), oodles of technicians and such - which makes it expensive even if the computer time became cheap. Making CGI characters do genuine looking movements purely with a computer is something that lies a significant distance in the future, assuming it can even be done at all - it's not really a matter of throwing processing power at it, it's more an artistic thing.

I dont think we're that far away from having computer making realistic human movement. Al they need is a database of actual human movements. Then they can study those to creat any movement they like.

Silly references to holograms and implants aside, we are indeed very close to realistic CGI on the screen. Eventually, they'll have to move away from the 2D screen altogether to make the next major jump (I didn't just make up those things off the top of my head)... but any such radical shifts aren't at all imminent.

Teaos wrote:I dont think we're that far away from having computer making realistic human movement. Al they need is a database of actual human movements. Then they can study those to creat any movement they like.

And then we can finally have Vincent Price fistfight Bela Lugosi on a church rooftop in a movie.

Interesting..........but Lon Chaney Jr. would jump in for the win.

Fight Club with Chuck Norris anyone?

The most realistic CGI I've seen yet was in Transformers. Yes, machine characters are probably easier to do than human characters, but Optimus Prime and the rest of the crew looked amazing, IMO.

Oh, for sure. That movie was QUITE well done.

kostmayer wrote:Fight Club with Chuck Norris anyone?

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound...
Yes these are just a few of Chuck Norris' warm-up routines.
Chuck Norris' chest has no hair, because hair doesn't grow on titanium.
...Hey, I've just made post #700!