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Comment by bh42222 | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely fake. If this is not obvious to you, learn more physics.

It looks as if the author -did- look at the event with a fairly in-depth analysis, and the results were plausible yet inconclusive.

His results seem to suggest that the video wasn't CGI'ed, correct?

Well, no. They suggest that the camera shake wasn't added in after the fact with postprocessing of an existing image -- or at least that the image was fairly high-res and blur was also added after the fact. He doesn't rule out that the whole video wasn't computer-generated, nor that the dude was running into a greenscreen, nor for that matter a green cable that was digitally altered out, or anything like that. Some of these would venture into "faked" as opposed to CGI -- a cable which did not need to be shopped out might be an example, although whether you could have a nice construction crane nearby to operate it would be a worthwhile question, since the video doesn't give it much place to hide and the larger it is the more dangerous it would be to hang someone off of it and then move it from point A to point B.

There is a very real possibility that the wing was pulled by a cable. The kite adapted is actually one of those ones you usually pull behind a boat and which glides you up into the air.

That's also something I haven't considered. Whether or not this was really done, if you wanted to create the same effect by faking it, you could do it at least in part by doing two different "takes" -- one where you pull the guy from the front and view with a camera behind him, and another where you pull the guy up from behind and view with the camera on his head. There is a blurry whitish splotch when he first gets air which could be a tree in the distance, but if you wanted to fake it, that could be a way to disguise the cable.

This would give a plausible way to fake the first and the last scenes, where you see the man from behind, as well as the "in the air" scenes where you just see from his perspective: you could in principle put him in a boom lift vehicle -- perhaps suspended from it or perhaps even just sitting in it -- and the image would look very similar.

The side-view shot would be much more difficult to fake.

Why don't you bless us with your obviously superior grasp of the laws of nature?

If it's so obvious, the math justifying your position should comfortably fit in an HN post.

Why are there no birds even close to the weight of adult human males? Why do birds have a huge keel-like breastbone on which equally huge and powerful flight muscles attach? If energy required to take of scales geometrically with weight, how much force would an adult human need to generate to take flight and which muscles, attached where on the human skeleton, would be used for this?

you can tell by the pixels right? if its so obvious you would be able to explain your problems with the video in a succinct manner

Flapping wings do not simply vibrate vertically. Wings are hinged so they can greatly reduce the amount of air they push back up on the up stroke and to generate significant amounts of lift it takes a really dramatic motion. You can see how bad the motion is by compare flapping motion 35 seconds in vs an actual bird.

Also, trying to generate the type of energy required for flight with your arms is significantly harder than your legs.

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