TITLE: Blue Screen
NAME: Dave Merchant
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: kosh@nesys.com
WEBPAGE: www.nesys.com
TOPIC: Imaginary Worlds
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: bluescrn.jpg
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.1a Watcom

TOOLS USED: 
    Photoshop for JPEG conversion and image map creation

RENDER TIME: 
    13 hour 53 min 33 secs

HARDWARE USED: 
    P400, 128 mb RAM, NT4.0

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


The clock on the wall and the Blue Screen Of Death(tm) tell the story...

A gala New Years Eve extravaganza at Virtual World theme park goes terribly
wrong, as the Y2K bug takes out the main control computer.

15 seconds into the new millenium, the VR ships begin to punch through the
domed screen, and activate their energy weapons. The audience, strapped into
the ride's seats, has no chance to escape.

The VR system operator has just discovered that the Emergency Stop button
is interfaced through the control computer, and is therefore inoperative.

It will all be over in a few seconds, as the VR ships destroy the image
processor which projected them, but by then, it will be too late.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This image is my contribution to the West World genre, an imaginary world
become real. If you've never seen it, go rent it.

The scene is all CSG.

The theater dome is 90% transparent, with most of the ships on the outside,
shooting through it. The change in intensity of the beams can be seen at
the dome surface, The ships at the right are part way through the screen,
as the reflections on their faceplates indicate. Properly, the energy beams
should bend at the dome's surface, due to parallax, since the projection
is centered on the third row center of the audience, while this viewpoint
is from the control console. However, the correct view looks 'wrong', and
would confuse the scene. Note the various shadows on the screen surface
and lobby walls.

The ship firing out over the camera was a late addition, as the scene was
too flat without it. It sort of messes with the composition, as you would
expect when a pair of antiproton beams are firing just above your head!

The flames are the result of messing around with the new media/interior
functions, and presented considerable difficulty, since the containers
for the various clouds produced artifacts when they intersected.
Each flame object has a red-orange light source inside it. I really wanted
more billowing smoke, but ran out of time to experiment. The full use of
these new features will require some more experimentation.

The faint stars are a standard POV sky-sphere.

The hydraulic cylinders are articulated via vector math, and can be
animated. There is sufficient range of motion to dock the ride to the
loading ramp. The dual hoses to each cylinder indicate that they are double
acting, and can thus exert downward accelerations in excess of 1 G.
There are more cylinders than necessary to support and control the platform,
(5 would be enough) but fewer cylinders didn't look right.

Due to the chrome of the hydraulic rams, silhouetted against a dark
background, it was necessary to render at AA of 0.05, which can keep even
a P400 busy for a while.

My daughter Linda found the wonderful green theater carpet somewhere, as a
GIF. It was used as an image map to get the theater aura. It seems as if
every theater in the US uses this carpet pattern, so a VR theater could be
expected to use it as well.

The area under the ride platform is a thick concrete pad, for stability.
and to prevent leaking hydraulic fluid from soaking into the carpet.

The signs and the clock display are done with ttf text, while the monitor
screen and post-it notes are image maps. The post-it note have real text
on them, which ended up too small to see. One was prophetic: "Y2K audit?".

The ray beams are 50% transparent, and have a bumps texture.

There are no projectors visible, as this is a rear projection screen.

For the purposes of the scene composition, I made a large rectangular
lobby area, attached to the half dome screen, with the lobby walls visible
in the upper corners. The lobby contains the loading ramp and control
console, but a real theater of this type would probably have a much smaller
lobby space. The shadows in the upper left corner of the lobby came from
something in the scene, I don't know what, which is the way real life
photography works.

I was originally planning to have a multi-window simulator control screen,
with a Red-X popup close box saying "You are toast.  OK ", but decided
instead on the finality of a Blue Screen lockup.

This scene makes considerable use of RGB values well in excess of 1.0,
and plenty of Ambient.

BTW, as a long-time software guy, who has done Y2K validation real products,
I don't expect many serious Y2K problems such as shown here.
Perhaps this predicted Y2K disaster represents another imaginary world?


RENDER TIME COMPARISON:

P400/128 NT4:    13 hour 53 min 33 secs at AA 0.05
P200/64  W98:    31 hour 46 min 01 secs at AA 0.1


Copyright Notice

Blue(tm) Screen(tm) Of(tm) Death(tm) is a trademark of
The(tm) Evil(tm) Empire(tm)


