www.ditl.org

The site

A rather interesting site for those of us who enjoy considering the science behind the things we see in movies, whether done well or poorly.

One of the less obvious examples comes from Independence Day; the mother ship wouldn't need to expend any effort to eradicate the human infestation from Earth since the output from her engines which would have been needed to slow such a massive ship would have by itself devastated the Earth's surface!

Some things, particularly the well-known issue of sound in space, is just a necessary 'error' for the sake of movie drama; try to imagine Star Wars without the space "sounds" and it simply doesn't work.

Sound in space is just one of those things you accept in a movie, like humanoid aliens who speak English. Though BSG did a pretty good job of showing battles in space without sound.

nBSG was also one of the only shows/movies to show a more accurate (if not entirely accurate) conception of maneuverability in space.

One reason I loved Firefly from the beginning was the lack of sound in the first episode. It made the nerd in me smile.

kostmayer wrote:Sound in space is just one of those things you accept in a movie, like humanoid aliens who speak English. Though BSG did a pretty good job of showing battles in space without sound.

nBSG did have sound in space. It was just muffled as though it was taking place underwater. Which I thought was a nice compromise.

Sionnach Glic wrote:

kostmayer wrote:Sound in space is just one of those things you accept in a movie, like humanoid aliens who speak English. Though BSG did a pretty good job of showing battles in space without sound.

nBSG did have sound in space. It was just muffled as though it was taking place underwater. Which I thought was a nice compromise.

I suspect test audiences didn't like the lack of sound. And wouldn't you still here things in the cockpit due to: 1. The cockpit being pressurized, and 2. Sound being transmitted by vibrations through the viper/ship frame itself?

Well, you would only hear sounds coming from within your own ship.

Lazar wrote:Well, you would only hear sounds coming from within your own ship.

That's what I meant. Guess I didn't make that clear.

Aye, but you wouldn't hear things like ships exploding, or rocketing past you.

You'd hear it if something impacted your hull.

It was B5 that first showed silent space battles. Any noises you heard there where part of the music.

In its early series it did, but the SFX later developed to show weapon sounds. I've spent god knows how long watching them since christmas

IanKennedy wrote:It was B5 that first showed silent space battles. Any noises you heard there where part of the music.

The ships behaved a little more like ships in space would as well, rather then flying round like aircraft.

I've always been fond of starfury dogfights because of that.