Man Flies Like A Bird Flapping His Own Wings..

Originally posted by Namaste1001
Analysis of the Human Birdwings

edit on 21-3-2012 by Namaste1001 because: wRONG LINK, FIXED

A useful link, Danke!

Something to mull over, and much more useful than some of the 'Intuitive' comments that have been made, they sound so much like the two critics in the muppet show arguing silly buggers.

I imagine everyone who was defending this feels pretty stupid right now.

Fake, fake, fake in so many ways. For starters look at the angle of the helmet cam before takeoff, then look at supposed POV in flight. I don't think the lens would pick up that much of the helmet with it angled up like it is at takeoff. Camera is also way to steady for someone running with that much weight and the helmet view is also very fixed in relation to what it would be if it was actually on someones head. I'm thinking RC plane or glider with helmet mock up. The giveaway is the split screen views in relation to the trees, walkway and pond in the background. If you reference the hemet cam to the background at takeoff and landing to the ground footage, they're nowhere close to the same location. That was a lot of work for a poorly done hoax. Someone has way to much time on their hands.

I just read the analysis and the link about "nobody knows him". Someone posted this in comments.

For me, it was the part where he stretched out his legs behind him while dangling from his upper back. Not only would he have to be an Olympic gymnast to do that, but anyone who's ever calculated the weight and balance on a real aircraft knows that would have caused a sudden pitch up and a stall.

A test for whether this is fake is going to be if he makes a new video. If the look on his face after landing is authentic emotion, then it won't be long until he makes a new video. I'm not the best judge of faces, but he doesn't look like a faker to me?

The date of this video is the 19th March - if nothing new shows up within a few weeks, it's fake?

Lots of good quality scepticism in this thread, and lots of good counter evidence using ornithopters etc.

I don't think flight is properly understood by science. The models are nowhere near complete. Physicists will admit this to you.

I point to this video from New Scientist on January 2012 as evidence. This article basically tells you the thing we've been told about air pressure differentials causing lift is false. And they've been using that explanation for two hundred years. Oops.

www.newscientist.com...

Good thread! Stars and flagged.

Another site retracts after checking with his supposed employer (which he said he was returning to after sabbatical) and they said he never worked there:

www.humo.be...

They also tried to contact him again, but without success.

Article is in Dutch, but google translate can get it in English for you.

Originally posted by yampa
A test for whether this is fake is going to be if he makes a new video. If the look on his face after landing is authentic emotion, then it won't be long until he makes a new video. I'm not the best judge of faces, but he doesn't look like a faker to me?

The date of this video is the 19th March - if nothing new shows up within a few weeks, it's fake?

Lots of good quality scepticism in this thread, and lots of good counter evidence using ornithopters etc.

I don't think flight is properly understood by science. The models are nowhere near complete. Physicists will admit this to you.

I point to this video from New Scientist on January 2012 as evidence. This article basically tells you the thing we've been told about air pressure differentials causing lift is false. And they've been using that explanation for two hundred years. Oops.

www.newscientist.com...

Good thread! Stars and flagged.

edit on 21-3-2012 by yampa because: (no reason given)

I agree, and alongside that, it appears to be a cold day, and he might just have got a little help from a denser atmosphere, that's important.

Anyone still holding onto hope that this is real, see the second update on the gizmodo site (entitled "Lying High").

Note the stabilised video posted there. Even the people were composited onto the video! Watch the man in the middle. See that at first he appears to jitter about in an unnatural way. Then watch the feet of the same man as he runs towards the camera. Notice how fake his run appears. His feet don't contact the ground at the right moments.

gizmodo.com...

There's also problems with some parts being blurred and others not, etc.

Anyone holding out now is just deliberately denying the obvious truth.

It's a hoax.

I am a retired expert hanglider, and have been one for over 13 years now. I can truthfully tell you all that this is fake

It disgusts me how some of you (including the OP) can believe this drabble of a story.





LOL! I'm kidding. I'm not a expert hanglider. Never hanglided in my entire life. Lmao. I would be amazed at the people gullible enough to read that and believe there are expert hangliders.

I am also thrilled to see how many of you think CGI has come. I can see real movement in all his videos. I wonder how many of you watch 100+ UFO videos and think you know what CGI looks like, or those who finished a Autodesk Maya tutorial and think you're "Professional CGI Artists".

It's a shame to see how dumbed down ATS has become, from my time as a lurker to now. The video isn't fake, or CGI. None of it is. I'd welcome the posters who post

but look at 0:38! No one can do that!

Everyone can pick a scene and say it's unnatural. Stop jumping to conclusions, and go back to the ATS that actually does a bit of research instead of bunny-hopping on threads just for a quick 2 cents so you can grab-n-go some stars.

Background search on bird man

Reason number 57 it's a hoax:

16s = no sunglasses

21s = sunglasses

reply to post by mr10k

Originally posted by mr10k
....go back to the ATS that actually does a bit of research...

I LOVE THIS QUOTE!

...so quoting it because it deserves a place all its own.

Originally posted by Arkady
I imagine everyone who was defending this feels pretty stupid right now.

Especially the ones defending it to a ridiculous degree. Hurling personal attacks against debunkers and being as close minded as they accused others of being...

A fine lesson in psychology.

My eyes told me something was wrong, I'm not a physicist so I couldn't explain it in scientific terms that would potentiate my viewpoints, but it was obviously a hoax.

reply to post by Tharsis


just ridiculous that a couple of posts up from yours theres still somebody claiming this is real.

Here is an image I did up pointing out another obvious CGI effect.



I hate hoax's like these.

I also hate what it does to science. Kind of makes anything that has been hoaxed a taboo subject.

While I do believe with ingenuity, time and technology that we can have our own little set of wings. But It will simply be an assisted flying craft.

The flapping your wings effect could be added just for the feel of it or just for fun, but there are way more efficient ways to do this.

I second the motion of going back to the old ATS that did research.

While I did not join until it was already ridiculous, I did have the enjoyment of lurking some very good informative debates.

Can anyone admit when they are wrong anymore? It seems like that good trait has erased itself from society. There is nothing wrong with being wrong. That is why people shouldn't get so worked up and finalize their opinion so soon. Always leave room for debate on such subjects. Have the train of thought that says anything is possible but don't let that train trick you into thinking everything is possible. There is a scientific process. Pre-determined conclusions do not work and it is just bad science.

Imagine what the world would be like if history's great contributors such as Tesla or Einstein thought with such a closed mind and defended an idea just in spite of hearing the other guy say I told you so.

Anyway I hope we can stop fighting over this and point out flaws in design and maybe contribute to it or come up with our own ideas of how to achieve lift a different way with our own assisted flying machine.



Good thread none the less, a lot of critical thinkers still on here.

reply to post by godfather420


Nice catch. So his shoe vanishes into the 4th dimension because the ground he was running on when filmed is not the same as the ground he was composited onto.

Another pretty obvious flaw:

The camera is mounted on the TOP of his helmet facing at a very slight up angle. When he is laying prone whilst flying, it must therefore be in FRONT of him looking mostly DOWN.

But the video supposedly taken from the camera whilst in flight shows the helmet BELOW the main field of view of the camera and films facing mostly FORWARDS.

That alone completely proves it is a hoax, if the 100 other reasons were not enough.

In another part of the video, the shadow from one of the men faces entirely the wrong way!

This is all to say nothing of the fact that he would not glide (he apparently does for part of the flight) with that wing area unless he was travelling 40 km/hr (from basic physics). It's perfectly clear that he travels about 100m in about 40s, i.e. 9 km/hr. And the world record 100m dash is about 40 km/hr, so clearly impossible for a human anyway.

In fact, he'd need a wingspan of 2km to glide at the speed he's going.

Originally posted by TheBandit795
Gizmodo has interviewed employees of a CGI company who are all of the opinion that it's fake.

That is completely misleading. 'all of who are of the opinion that it's fake' is not true, some of the answers are ambiguous:

Employee 2 (also a pilot) "the camera seems very strange. I know that when I am flying in an airplane, I don't look straight ahead all of the time. Also, the only way people have been able to propel themselves above the ground have been by bicycle arrangements to power a fixed-wing aircraft. A human powered helicopter managed 10 seconds of flight about 5 inches above the ground. The legs are much more powerful than the arms."

Employee 3: "I agree, I saw that earlier today. I can't spot any glaring visual problems, but the physics just don't add up."

Employee 5: "check out this video

and some others....
www.humanbirdwings.net...

he is talking about the motors that assist his flying, so he isn't flapping all by himself.

if its a hoax, it's an elaborate hoax, because he has been trying t build up trust for months before hand."

Notice how several of those making comments don't seem to realise that this thing is supposedly powered by motors and has digital flight control?

I'm not convinced either way, most of the CGI arguments are ambiguous, but the video does look suspect to me too. And why bother flapping your arms if you could just use a regular controller?

Yampa you're totally missing the point, this has been proven beyond any doubt whatsoever to be fake in several different ways already. Try reading just the few posts before yours.There's nothing left to debate - it's a hoax. What a joke this forum is sometimes.

Yet another reason it's a hoax (as if we needed any more):

Look at how brightly lit the park is at 18s and on take off. (The people running back through shadows stay lit by the way.)

See that it remains brightly lit throughout the flight.

Now observe that the entire park is in shadow at 1:08.

The final scene was not even shot at the same time of day.

well... if its remotely real, its too late for icarus anyway

Originally posted by Arkady
Yampa you're totally missing the point, this has been proven beyond any doubt whatsoever to be fake in several different ways already. Try reading just the few posts before yours.There's nothing left to debate - it's a hoax. What a joke this forum is sometimes.

I've read the articles from Gizmodo and Wired, I didn't feel like they'd absolutely proven anything.

Look at this piece of shoddy reasoning:

gizmodo.com...

"Martin even produced a smoking gun:

Okay Sam, They wouldn't let this go without getting to the bottom of it. We've got proof it's faked.

The proof comes from one of their other videos and the guys here are genuinely impressed that it's taken so long even for us to determine the truth.
These guys are fooling everyone.

At 1:45, you can see a little black square on the fabric

Now, without cutting, the camera pans down and then back up again. When the camera pans up, the wing is cg. You can tell because the model they used didn't have perfect textures.

It's a pretty good fake, but it is absolutely fake."

OK WOW. SMOKING GUN!

Except not. The video they have used is the clip from January 20th. At no point in this video does he claim to fly.

This is Jarno's quote from that video:

"The wings did their job! The stakes were high for me, so I was disappointed that I only made a tiny hop in the air. But it worked!"

So, smart guys, he used cgi to fake *not* flying? Why would he do that?