Battlestar Galactica II (No Joke)

[geoschmo]

[quote]Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:

The ships in most SciFi from Star Wars to Buck Rogers to BSG behave as if they have an atmosphere.

*Sigh* Ok, one more time.

It's not atmosphere, it's inertia. You can't stop on a dime and change directions at 90 degree anlges. Well your ship might be able too, but you will be paste if you try it.

B5 combat has that appearance some times because of the camera angles they choose to use. Close in, moving in formation. From that perspective small shifts in vector or speed will be exagerated.

The others you mention all primarily use a more stationary or distant camera perspective. From there these manuvers would appear more curved, because they are actually curved in reality. You just can't see the curves when you are right up close to the action and moving as fast as the other ship.

Neither is any more inherantly correct or incorrect because in actuallity if they were viewed from the same perspective they would appear the same. You are being tricked by the different perspective. For the most part anyway.

One thing that you see in B5 you don't see in the others though is the ships flipping and rotating around a lot. That has nothing to do with direction of travel though. In that case there is no reason a viper with a cylon on it's tail couldn't simply turn 180 degrees and fly backwards. Except it would have to cut power it couldn't keep up it's acceleration and would be overtaken very quickly.

The ships in B5 do look more like space ships and less like airplanes than the others though, that is certainly true.

Geo