The High Heel Problem
simonschreibt.de
simonschreibt.de
I remember playing an early 3D game that had a similar problem when they added support for alternative animal mounts. Most of the physics, structures, etc. were built with a standard horse model in mind, so the dragon mounts, etc. introduced all kinds of goofy looking clipping issues.
Slightly related, but whenever I see high heels in video games I'm reminded of this comic by Double-XP:
When animations are hardcoded based on an original character's dimensions, do you try to scale your mod's girl-sized models to the original character sizes? Do you try to remake all the animations? Or do you just focus on making the funniest possible content? The latter approach is taken here, and it's an absolute joy.
(As one might expect of GTA dialogue, this likely isn't the most SFW of demos, so caveat emptor.)
And they recently told their consumers to go fuck themselves, as they won't ever make a sequel and instead continue pumping lazy "content packs" for a buggy game that's obviously running on an outdated and very tired engine.
But trying to make my own 3D game from scratch is more often than not in a standstill, because doing the art is difficult and so is getting good at it.
Even something as simple as wanting to scale down my country's geography into 7x4 km chunked terrain presents problems - while the geological features are there, even with work on making the finer details look more realistic, I'd still need to make rivers that flow realistically from higher altitude above sea level down to it and then merge with the sea, which is easier said than done.
Don't even get me started on the idea of modelling, rigging and animating characters with complex finite state machines and whatnot.
Of course, a part of it is probably just managing scope and expectations (this project might take a decade without going full time to release something mediocre, even if learning a lot in the process), but it's pretty cool just how many details there are to the craft.
I have thought about trying to recruit one of my more artistic friends to make a game together, but then I'm bothering a whole other person to do a project that will never see the light of day haha
It's quite fascinating to me that you can become so powerful while having such a lame insecurity at the same time.
If they do it only at public events where they're constantly being photographed in groups of people, it's smart image control. A leader is a symbol, and different height differences project different messages visually. That doesn't mean you need to be the tallest, but being the shortest in every photo may give voters a perception that works against you. It's not vanity; it's reality.
Actors stand on apple boxes all the time in film and TV shows, because the director wants a specific height difference between characters to arrange a shot just right, that isn't the actual actors' height difference. Not lame insecurity -- it's producing the image that communicates what you want.
Sarkozy was mocked all the time for being short and insecure about it, nobody ever noticed that François Hollande was small until they appeared together after Hollande's election: he was in fact smaller than Sarkozy but nobody had ever noticed that before.
No, it's just plain insecure and ridiculous. And the ridiculousness actually hurts their image.
The high heels haven't hurt Putin politically since he's a dictator but it's ruined the careers of other politicians like Ron DeSantis.
When Zelenski was criticized by a reporter during the meeting with Trump for not wearing a suit, his comeback was that he'll go back to wearing suits ("costumes" though I hear that may have been a mistranslation on his part) when the war is over. The reporter was trying to frame his attire as disrespectful to the President, Zelenski's response made it clear that he'd have found wearing a suit disrespectful to his people who don't have the luxury of returning to civil life until the war ends. Make of that what you will but it signalled confidence and empathy. It came off as authentic. Trying to compensate his height with footwear would have had the opposite effect and conflicted with this.
DeSantis on the other hand tried to appear "tough" and decisive but was ridiculed for his footwear because it was so obvious and so exaggerated that it made him appear extremely insecure about his height. But I think it would have looked even worse if he had been in Zelenski's position (and wearing a uniform) because of this contradiction.
I wear heels daily (because I like them and find them comfortable - no problems with my height with or without them), and I strongly doubt that that's going to turn me into a tyrannical world leader any time soon.
For kids this isn't a problem, they can squat all the way down without issue. But as an adult, regaining that lost mobility is a process!
But, try this: elevate your heels by an inch. Then try 2 inches. You'll find that you can more comfortably squat down the more your heels are elevated. It also impacts center of balance and the angles at which your back is at while squatting.
Lifters also have another purpose: they provide stability by connecting your feet more "solidly" to the ground. Other gym shoes (cross-trainers, running shoes) have padding in them... which is awesome for running but that squishiness can translate to instability when you're literally doubling or tripling the amount of weight.
Consequently, some lifters who have the ankle mobility will lift without shoes. Given the state of most gym floors, that's a no from me, dawg, but hey to each their own.
Luxury!
These can be steel, titanium, thick plastic, etc. The integrity and trustworthiness of the stiletto relies on these often very thin pieces staying undeformed and rigid wrt each other despite human mass scale forces bending, twisting, rolling and threatening to break the heel and shank join.
Modern materials! I didn’t realise stiletto heels are post-WWII tech.
Apparently it was steel heels (Français) or steel arches (Ferragamo) that enabled the shoe. I wonder if there was more overlap with aircraft or ammunition manufacturing…
Now that I think about it, a nitinol arch compositing would afford lightweight yet flexible support and grounding authority, particularly if you could composite towards a stiffer alloy at the stick end.
[Please don't ask me how I find these people]