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Comment by beaner | Hacker News Reader

The parallax explanation for the gofast video seems less believable when you view the video and consider the beginning of the footage, when the camera seems near-fixed and the object is flying quickly by it, and the operator has to actively track and lock-on to the moving object.

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The field of view of the camera is only 1.5x1.5 degrees[1], roughly 3x the size of the moon viewed from the ground.

[1] "NAR" in the upper left, and https://forums.vrsimulations.com/support/index.php/A/A_Forwa...

i dont understand how the background behind the 'balloon' could be moving so fast. I dont think it was a ufo, but I definitely do not think it was a balloon.

Imagine the balloon is 2km up and the plane is 8km up. The balloon is stationary and the plane moving fast. The plane centres a camera on the balloon and maintains the centre.

As the plane flies over the balloon it is going to need to move the camera to keep it centred. When it does this the balloon remains centered (stationary) whilst the ground appears to move under it. However its just that the angle the camera is at had to change to keep the balloon centered giving the allusion that the ground is moving relative to the balloon.

But in the moments when the camera is at rest while the operator is trying to focus, the ocean is moving slowly in the opposite direction as the object, meaning that the jet is flying in the same direction as the object. If the object were static, then upon lock-on, the ocean in the background would slow down or reverse direction. What we see instead is that the ocean background speeds up, meaning the object is traveling faster than the jet in the direction the jet is going.

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