Flying 'Round: real saucers (sort of) - Part 1

A look at some real saucer and roundish aircraft

I recently picked up a book on weird aircraft at the bargain bin. The book could use some serious editing, but it did go over a variety of interesting designs that are not often mentioned in aviation books - often with good reason. Many of these I have also seen around the web, particularly since I'm fascinated with designs that didn't go anywhere. There was also a comment on one of my blogs about a real saucer that I decided to follow up on (the comment is on the wrong page somehow as it should really be part of the "Saucerfull" post, but anyway.) It is an interesting story, but nevertheless not that unique in aviation history, that is the idea of a flying disk. It is also an idea that predates the classic flying saucer story from 1947.

The more I prepared this post, the bigger it got, so I'm going to break this into separate parts to make it easier to digest (particularly for me).

What is a round wing?

There is some variation into what may be considered a round wing. One could say that it is of a circular wing planform (looking from top down) or a flat ring like (circular) wing planform. Disk wings are also described as low aspect ratio wings, meaning that the width of the wing (the chord) is large when compared to the wing's length. The surprising benefit of this type of arrangement is that it provides a considerable amount of lift at low speeds and high angle of attack (the angle of the wings with respect to the airflow). As a result these aircraft could fly at very low speeds and were attractive designs in the era pre-dating helicopters.
     Another type of round shaped wing comes from annular wing design. In this case the wing is encircles the fuselage. It is sometimes flattened out and made boxier for a shape that resembles a stretched box kite. This general design is also referred to as a closed wing design.
     A variation of round shaped flying machines is perhaps closer to what we would think of as a flying saucer. In a sense, these are wingless, because while the shape is generally considered to generate a certain amount of lift in flight, the main aspect of the shape is to house primary lifting devices that operate symmetrically. The more traditional lift devices make use of exhaust jets or ducted fans of some sort to redirect a mass of air directly downwards to counteract gravity. A more sophisticated method makes use of the Coanda effect to create an area of low pressure over the surface to lift the craft. More esoteric methods described are sometimes more whimsical than practical, such as electromagnetic levitation. One practical method that has been investigated is the usage of the shape as an energy receiver in the form of microwave or laser energy which can then be used or focused to superheat air at the base of the disc to generate thrust.

 Flying Pans and Pancakes

DaVinci's Helicopter
The prototypical flying saucer?

It is recalled that 19th century Yale students indulged in the aerodynamics of flying disks as they threw either the empty pie platters or cookie (can?) lids embossed with the name of the baking company; the Frisbie Pie Company of New Haven, CT. The shape of the these plates imparted some lift, but spinning it gave it the stability to maintain a positive flight attitude through its flight. While there are some images of spinning circular wings, the mechanics of spinning a wing simply to impart stability seems not to have been thought the best way to achieve that result (exception being Guido Fallei's design on the cover of the Sept. 1930 Popular Mechanics?). On the other hand, some inventors looked at the possible added strength from wider or ring like wings as a possible solution of building wings with enough lift area to heave up their weight and not collapse at the same time. The thing to remember is that in the early history of practical manned flight (and particularly pre-flight), there was generally a poor understanding of the mechanics and forces involved in flight, so in truth when some of these designs proved effective it was perhaps more a matter of luck than actual thoughtful, researched, design. The British aviation pioneer George Cayley achieved some success making small gliders with large kite shaped wings which were rather long in chord and narrow in span. Along these lines other 19th century inventors created saucer like designs such as John Wootton and Alphonse Pénaud, (1850 - 1880).

George Cayley's early gliders featured kite-like wings in various configurations (bi-planes and triplanes). One design for a helicopter featured saucer-like rotors. John Wootton patented a flying machine that operated like a helicopter and featured a large fixed circular parachute wing for safety. Alphonse Penaud designed a very modern looking flying machine with a large oval wing with engineer Gauchot in 1874. This last design was refined by 1876 with many modern features such as retractable landing gear and automatic controls. Penaud built many models that featured his forward concepts, but was never able to get financing to build a full sized version of his design.

     The advent of actual flying machines did not initially discourage inventors from trying unique and imaginative variations on flying machines. This was due in part to the availability of the resources in lightweight materials and powerplants that finally made these plans viable. There was also a lack of specific knowledge of aerodynamics that might have been used to better analyze these aircraft. It has also been noted that the Wright brother's aggressive protection of their patents did encourage investors to find "different" ways of flying. Louis Bleriot and Gabriel Voisin for instance working in Europe had very sketchy information about the Wright's success (in fact many in Europe doubted they had really flown at all). They chose an annular design for their biplane creating a sturdy structure for their floatplane. In the end, the design did not work and after some modification both designers went their separate, but ultimately successful, ways.

The Bleriot III used an annular or closed wing shape. It was eventually abandoned. The MCormick-Ronne circular aircraft did manage to fly eventually around 1912, but also proved a dead end. The Lee-Richards design of 1913 was a development from the earlier biplane design.

The McCormick-Ronne "Umbrella Plane" or "Cycloplane" had an interesting development history. Originally based on designs by William Romme, it received funding from Harold McCormick of farming machinery fame, and the millionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr. starting in 1910. The aircraft's basic design made use of a wing roughly in the shape of a regular polygon, held on a set of radially distributed spokes which in turn were supported by a large centrally mounted mast. Other aspects of the craft changed with time, such as the position of the controls, and the propeller and engine assembly which was variously either pusher, puller, and sometimes connected to the engine by a long shaft. At some point Charles Vought worked on the project as a young engineering graduate. Vought would later found a company that would revisit the "round" airplane concept. In the end the Umbrella Plane proved to be a dead end and was apparently abandoned around 1913.
     The J.G.A. Kitchen, G. T. Richards, and Cedric Lee designed aircraft that used a circular wing planform. Initially Kitchen created a circular biplane which was refined with Richard's help. Disagreement between the designers resulted in subsequent work being developed by Richards with Lee. The Richard Lee Monoplane went through various versions (1,2,3) from 1912 up to 1914. The final version crashed with Lee at the controls, who managed to escape with minor injuries, but the aircraft was a total wreck.

    Stephen Nemeth's, another "Umbrella Plane" built in 1934, mounted a circular wing above a standard fuselage looking like some of over-sized parasol and hence the name. It could take off and land in very short spaces due to that low aspect ratio wing. The circular wing was also only 15 feet in diameter making it easy to store in a hanger "not much larger than the ordinary garage" as the Modern Mechanics of June 1934 noted.

The Nemeth "Umbrella Plane" of 1934. If you can find newsreels of it, it flies surprisingly like a gyrocopter

Some of the more notable aircraft of this type were developed by C.L. Snyder, a podiatrist. He noted the interesting gliding properties of heel lifts and decided to try creating an aircraft around that shape. He did indeed employ actual aviation engineers in his company, the Arup Manufacturing Co.,  so the wing design was not totally based on an artifact of shoe manufacturing. Still, you can see the heel in the designs. It was developed through several models, Arup S-1 thru S-4 and even one off-shoot created by a former Arup engineer Raoul Hoffman who designed the similar Hoffman Flying Wing.
     All these aircraft show remarkable STOL flight characteristics and unique flying characteristics such as maneuvering at slow speeds. In fact newsreels of the craft show them taking off with very little space and practically dropping straight down for landings with rolls of only a few feet. The claim that it could take off and land from your own backyard does not look far fetched.

Strangely enough, the Nemeth and Arup aircraft did not really capture the interest of manufacturers that could have marketed and mass produced the aircraft. Perhaps it was the result of the fairly specific performance envelope at the time. They were also not the only ones to create such designs, the moth-like Aubron-Payen AP-10 being an example. While these aircraft did exhibit remarkable STOL (Short Take Off & Landing) capabilities, they were not that unique for a world dominated by relatively slow, fast climbing biplanes that could operate from small unpaved fields. The contemporary autogyro (precursor to helicopters) could match that performance and even show limited vertical take off capacity. More effectively marketed by Cierva (the inventor) and Pitcairn, autogyros were not limited to one-off prototypes.

World War II

     The U.S. Navy has a strong interest in aircraft that could easily take off and land in short spaces. They considered a design proposed by Charles H. Zimmerman from Chance-Vought. Zimmerman reportedly visited the Arup Company and investigated using the combined effect of the disk-like wing with air blown at high speed from the propellers to enhance lift. Test models of the design were shown to rise practically vertically with good control. Moreover, the design could potentially have fighter-like performance. The prototype V-173 was flown several times and showed much promise. The fighter prototype was the Chance-Vought XF5U-1. It's development was protracted and not completed by the end of the war. After the war it was undergoing engine tests prior to flight tests when the program was canceled. It was a victim of the jet age, as most cutting edge propeller designs were at the end of World War II.
     When talking about World War II saucer aircraft, some mention must be made of Nazi projects. It is true that several strange and unusual aircraft designs were produced by German aircraft designers during the war. It is also true that even stranger, futuristic designs were still on the drawing boards (or actually just left there) at the war's end. They had developed rocket and jet technology to the limits of engineering capacities at the time and in many ways were considerably more advanced than what the Allies had developed by that time. Even so, the stories of highly advanced "flying saucer" designs based on advanced electromagnetic devices or supersonic turbines have to be taken with a relatively large sized grain of salt.
     One of the few documented German "saucers" was fairly conventional and along the lines of Arup and Zimmerman. The Sack AS-6, had a truly circular planform. It was powered by a small engine and in that form would have been limited to simple utility work such as reconnaissance or field courier. Beyond research into that type of wing,  nothing really came from that design.

Various World War II era "round" aircraft (*design only, ** not flown). The Payen 112 (based on the PA-22 racer) was not round, but was perhaps an introduction of low-aspect ratio wings in the presently more familiar delta wing. Of these only the Eshelman Flying Flounder, the Vought V-173, and the Sack AS-6 actually flew. The XF5U was cancelled before flight, whereas the Boeing 390 and FW-Rochen were never built

     Other designs appear to be nothing more than quick paper studies: the Focke-Wulf Rochen that would have hidden a lift fan inside it's teardrop shaped lifting body fuselage, and the Heinkel Wespe and Lerche II designs which were tail-sitters with annular wings. It is doubtful that there was any way these technologically advanced craft could go much beyond theoretical work at the time. After the war much of this information fell into Allied hands, and truth be told, many of these designs proved impractical even with the huge military research budgets of the Cold War. As far as anything else, I really don't want to delve into some of the crazier rumors out there.

Next time:  More human flying saucers...

Links and Resources for Part I

There is of course many areas on the Internet to find out about flying saucers, real and imaginary. Unfortunately, due to their connection to alien technology, they can be pretty odd. In the case of the speculative human saucers, they can also be rather odd (particularly the Nazi ones, which seem to be in a mythological class by themselves). If one can overlook some of the personal points of some of these sites one can find out quite a bit on the real designs. The grain of salt comes when looking at designs that may have been nothing more than a sketch on a piece of paper by people with little aeronautical expertise that's been lost for decades.

• Celtic Cowboy's Odd Wing Gallery - a collection of various images of odd aircraft including many round disk and annular/closed types. It is also fairly extensive with respect to the really early craft.
• Helicopter Designs at Aviastar.org - Contains various articles on helicopters, but for this subject the interesting one are the really early designs. You can browse the site to see other disk like shapes.
• Short article at Stanford on low aspect ratio wings and high angles of attack
• One of the few spots I found more detailed information about the Kitchen-Lee-Richards aircraft was located on this post and at the Russian site flyingmachines.org, the Kitchen biplane and the Lee-Richards monoplane.

Rounding out flat paper

Some observations on problem surfaces

One of the biggest problems with paper models is the fact that you can't really curve paper in two different directions at one time. I should actually qualify that statement that you can't do that severely or easily in two directions at one time. The other problem is that many 3 dimensional surfaces are not directly mappable to a 2 dimensional space. This second problem is easily illustrated by taking a large section of orange peel and flattening out on a surface. The peel will inevitably crack and split.

Getting paper to go around in more than one direction

The reason for the former has to do with the material itself. Paper is a mesh of microscopic fibers (typically wood pulp) that are woven together under pressure. There is often a general alignment of these fibers that result in the paper being easier to roll in one direction rather than another. Some model designers actually recommend taking advantage of this property when fitting pieces for printing to take advantage of this natural roll which in most factory milled paper would be around its long axis. A crease or fold in the paper actually breaks some of these fibers creating a hard corner, but a roll will simply bend and stretch the fibers into a curve much like the way you would cup your fingers to give someone a "leg up" somewhere. While in theory it should be possible to stretch and bend those fibers around in more than one direction, like the way fabric will stretch and wrap, in practice paper fibers are too static.
     A limited amount of orthogonal roll (that is rolling around 2 axis) can be done by rubbing the paper over a curved surface such as the outside of a large spoon bowl. This technique is unfortunately limited to small areas and curvatures that are relatively shallow. If the paper is damp, it can be molded to some extent, of course if the paper is printed in a water soluble ink, this is not an option. Don't expect very dramatic curves, but it might be OK for miniature dishes and the like.

A sheet of paper is Euclidean

If you try to wrap paper around an apple to match the curve you will quickly come to the reason for the second problem. When one is first introduced to geometry, one of the first tasks is to draw a typical flat X/Y (Cartesian) coordinate system. Parallel lines will always remain equidistant to each other. This is a geometry whose properties were initially described by Euclid, and so hence Euclidean. On a non-Euclidean surface, by definition this is not true. So two parallel lines, being lines who can share a normal (a right angle intersection), do not actually remain equidistant. The classic example are longitude lines which while parallel at any particular latitude, in that they meet the common latitude at right angles, they do actually meet at the poles. This critically means that the area covered by any section between these two lines is not constant. This is why the orange peel splits, since there isn't enough area of peel to compensate for the increase in space as you try to map non-euclidean parallel lines to a flat euclidean space. The inverse with paper is the appearance of folds that try to take up the extra area.
     Surprisingly, not all 3D surfaces result in this type of area difficulties. Consider the rolling of a sheet of paper into a cylinder. This is a 3D surface, and it is quite trivially mapped onto a planar sheet of paper. Similarly you can bunch it up in a cone shape and again, this is not a problem. It turns out that a cylinder is basically a subset of a cone section, that is a segment of a cone whose vertex lies at an infinite distance from this segment. For a trickier shape, consider rolling over two corners like a cone and hold the other corners flat on the table. This shape is still related to the cone, but contains a more complicated set of curvatures.

A standard flat sheet on far left, curled up into a cylinder, then roughly into a cone, and finally the pseudo hood like shape that is flat at one end and curled at the far end

     The ability to create relatively complex curves that are based on shapes that can be mapped onto a plane is discussed in an article downloadable from papermodelers.com (alas membership required) called "Cardboard Models Design Principles" by Mad44ms. The paper can actually be a tough read if one is not well experienced in 3D geometry and CAD software, but it does provide some insight into what can be done with flat paper and how to minimize the number of parts to make a curve. To create the examples, Mad44ms takes advantage of the software to maintain the plane-mapping qualities of the surface that is being worked. This is unfortunately not always an option since the ability to do this may not be part of your software or at least a feature that is not easily understood - 3D software is often very complex and the learning curve can be very steep.
     Still, the basic cylinder and cone can provide a variety of different surfaces to work with, even in cases that the cylinder or cone are sectioned and somewhat asymmetrical.

Cylinders and cones. Note that a tapered cylinder is just a cone cut off horizontally. Similarly a cone section can be cut at any angle and the resulting shape can be mapped to a plane. Even a cone where the vertex is offset can be mapped to a plane (and a section of that type of cone as well). See next figure

On left, a simple cone. Center, a cone with an off center vertex,. Right, tapered cylinder.

     Regarding exceptions, if you recall the rolled sheets, it can be possible to extend some shapes along a line which indicates a change in curvature. If the line is straight in 3D space between the faces they can be kept together. In practice, without software assistance to maintain the required constraints (matching slopes on both faces, etc), this isn't really possible.  A possible surface that can be done manually by visualizing denting a cone in, or adding a cone in from the opposite direction such that the slope of the intersecting line segments are exactly opposite. The easiest example is with centered cones in which case the common seam is centered and circular making a crater-like shape. There often isn't much call for this particular shape, but I've seen it used for creating fancy eyes on dinosaurs and dragons.

The particular crater-like surface on the right consists of two intersecting cones of exactly the same absolute slope (although one is negative the other positive). The flattened pattern can then be two concentric sections (right).  The inner seated inside the outer. In theory, when folded it automatically generates a perfect circular section (in practice it's somewhat hard to glue perfectly...oh well). 

The crater does not need to have equally long slopes on each side, it doesn't even really need to be centered. This last point is because it only requires for the absolute slopes to match at the point of intersection, but not that the slopes on the whole be equal (the flattened version of the such a shape would have the middle circular fold line off center). To see the range, make a paper cone and dent the apex in such that you get a smooth surface on both sides. Without software to help you get this right, only the centered one is easy: make a cone, then halfway up, subdivide, reset apex to same height as base, then set segment lengths to required lengths by subdivision or translating vertices along the line to keep the slopes unchanged..

Triangles...why I mentioned them

An unfolder script for SketchIt made use of the fact that any face can be flattened against another face along a common edge. This can be then be extended to the next face and so on. Some designs that use this algorithm can appear as long snakes or like some kind of angular octopus.
     While Blender does allow for polygons of pretty much any size, the paper folder software only likes faces that are co-planar, i.e. flat. If for some reason you stretch them unevenly or apply a change to any individual vertex, you may very well introduce a twist in the face. This is also true if you make new 4 vertex faces on your own. When this happens in Blender, it is easy to find non-flat faces as the unfolder script will highlight them (although the feature can be buggy). A better method to deal with this is converting suspect faces, or even whole suspect sections, to triangles. Converting triangles not only guarantees flatness (3 points define a plane), you can also control the type of twist the surface gets for your purpose, such as a more complementary curve to the shape itself.
     Now when looking at a set of adjacent triangular surfaces, you can conceive a part that consists of the entire path of adjacent sides. You can also continue the path outward on additional sides provided that they only meet the main part along only one adjacent side (Note: exceptions do exist). If the curvature reverses (say from concave to convex), you may have to separate the part the mapping might cause an overlap.

A nonsense pseudo vampire with flowing cape that can nonetheless be mapped onto a single sheet.  Simply follow the path of the triangular edges from left to right. The "head" is also attached to only one triangular edge and itself has appendages that are only hinged on one edge.

Concave and Convex and Overlaps

So some intricate shapes are possible, but there are limits. As seen, it is possible to accommodate surfaces that twist and present concave and convex surfaces. Objects with both concave and convex surfaces can create faces that when unfolded results in overlaps. Sometimes with careful planning, you can allow the parts to unfold in a manner that the parts will miss each other when unfolded. In the Blender unfolder script, this is not always caught and you end up with an unworkable part. When it is caught, the part might be cut off arbitrarily and placing it back where it belongs can be tricky.

This surface consist of a rolled surface with down angled sides. The colors refer to the particular parts that overlap when unfolded ; the overlap being shown as blended colors(bottom). In this case, this part would need to be cut into different parts (at least 3, center plus 2 outer panels)

    Unfortunately, I don't have a sufficiently mathematical background to address when this would happen based on the geometry involved. Some surfaces that go in and out can be resolved without a problem, others can't. On the other hand, you may be able to visualize the problem parts as you plan the path of the common seams. Unfold it mentally and you may see not only where the problem arises, but how you can unfold it differently and avoid the problem altogether. I'll talk about decisions regarding seams and patterns for parts in a future posting.

Nautilus ice breaking ram from ongoing project. The highlighted section is only made up of triangles with single common "hinge" segments. It should unfold as one part if so desired.

Fanciful Engineering and Frank Tinsley

The art of Frank Tinsley and Sci-Fact-Fic

Some time ago I participated at a panel on spaceships for artists at Arisia (see old post). One of the odd things I was surprised at was the lack of familiarity in the panel and others with Frank Tinsley, an illustrator who did quite a bit of work for pre-war pulps and Mechanix Illustrated magazine after the war. While many SF illustrators were famous for the SF pulp cover work they did, Mr. Tinsley did no particular work for the many science fiction pulps or paperbacks during his career that I can find. On the other hand, he did quite a bit of work in an area which doesn't really have an adequate description. I suppose it is an area normally referred to as futurism, but in some ways I  think the terms science factional fiction or science fiction engineering is closer, or even Futurama. I don't mean the TV show, but rather the hugely popular GM pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair designed by Norman Bel Geddes.

"To New Horizons" the GM industrial film to introduce their Futurama Exhibit at the New York's World Fair of 1939

The reason I believe in the difference is perhaps because futurism does cover a lot of work that is actually rigorously thought out and modeled with reasonably hard data regarding technological and social trends. The type of work I would consider under sci-fact-fi or S/F/E  covers the type of documentary work  that talks about subjects with an air of hard technical background or specificity that is really at best an excessively overly optimistic view of technological and social trends and at worst pure hyperbole.

In spite of that last sentence, I do believe there is a great deal of value to this type of work. Whilst on the one hand, it is not really useful as any sort of foundation for creating a real functional piece of technology or social engineering, I do suppose it has in the past served as much an inspiration for young future engineers as the appearance of technology in science fiction romances. In fact, such articles were perhaps even more inspiring since they were normally presented as a non-fiction subject sometimes in quite serious publications such as Life or National Geographic.

Life magazine speculative article illustrated by Robert McCall about the future of space travel that accompanied the "First Man in Space" issue April 21, 1961 (find original at Google Books)

Frank Tinsley

Frank Tinsley was born in 1899 in Manhattan. Turn of the century Manhattan was perhaps the living embodiment of a future city in its day. Already having some of the tallest buildings in the world, it was a hub of continent wide transportation arteries. It contained the largest and highest bridges in the world, an elevated and subterranean suburban transport system, and collected a truly polyglot community perhaps unequaled anywhere at the time. Perhaps more importantly he was born in someways along with aviation and it was the aviation pulps where he did a lot of covers.

Variety of covers and art work Frank Tinsley did for the Air Trails/Bill Barns pulp magazine

As dated as these covers may seem to us, they are drawn with an air of passion about flying machines, colorful and dynamic. I dare say much more exiting than even what comes out of the marketing department of Boeing/McD-D and Lockheed-Martin these days. Many of the aircraft shown in these covers and stories represented slight variations on existing aircraft or protototypes.Some of Bill Barnes aircraft were truly inventive designs with some rarely implemented features on real aircraft such as retractable floats and sky hooks for areal dockings.

Some of Tinsley's fanciful futuristic designs that accompanied his articles for Mechanix Illustrated. From top right: A suburban saucer, a nuclear airship, a walking jeep or mechanical mule, and an airborne hover police car.

After the war, Frank Tinsley also began to write articles of speculative engineering projects, S/F/E involving many different forms of transportation: space, terrestrial, and maritime. He also illustrated a memorable series of advertising for American Bosch Arma in the 50s. These ads featured various nuclear and solar powered spaceships and lunar bases with descriptive copy of the futuristic settings, although the company was not in the business of building or designing spacefaring hardware at the time (just their electronics). I still have fond memories of the ads having come across them in old Scientific American issues from the 50s.

Two of the American Bosch Arma Adverts

As prolific as he appears to be in this area of illustration, I can't find any mention of him connected to any actual science fiction magazines or covers at this time. Given the nature of his articles, I can only imagine that he must have been a fan

More on this

While his images are out there, and not always credited, there is very little about Frank Tinsley himself. A brief bio as available at The Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists: Frank Tinsley. Also some more information here at the Lambiek Comiclopedia. The Flikr user X-ray Delta One (Call sign for the "Discovery" if you didn't know) has a collection of his images including some of the text of some of his articles. The articles for Mechanix Illustrated are available at the Mechanix Illustrated blog (I've put the link off the search term here to hopefully make it faster to find). A gallery of the ABA ads can be found at Vintage Ads on LiveJournal.

SFX: People Prefer Old School?

I've been very late getting back to this blog, and normally I always make at least one post after Arisia (2014) about something that happened there. This year there were at least two (probably more), but oh well, I'll get to at least one.

I ended up participating in couple of panels that dealt directly or tangentially with film. The first was actually regarding the looks and trends of current genre film, and the former tangentially in that it dealt specifically with design of fictional genre items. The topic that came up repeatedly though at this con (as well as similar panels at the subsequent Boskone 51 which I was able to attend this year) was the feeling that modern computer aided scenery and effects were not all that "good" and not up to the standards of much more classic FX done in older, particularly pre-CG days.

Some of this can be assigned to a lot of films which seem to revel in the extremely complex CG subjects that are animated up the wazoo, such as the Chitauri Leviathan from the "Avengers" movie or even the new Tranformers as visualized in their film appearances. These are not unique instances, but to some extent creates a kind of "what's with all the whirly bits" feel to it which perhaps to some extent detracts to how believable these objects are as "real" functional objects. Well, at least it does to me.

Wiggly Leviathan

The other and perhaps more pernicious problem is the usage of CG to create monumental sequences. These sequences used to require filming in some borderline Iron Curtain country so you could rent an army cheap to dress up in gear and charge across wheat fields or below a glass matte. The problem here is rather odd because programmers go through quite a bit of work to create realistic renders, and provide a certain amount of individual behavior through AI, and other variation in details that can easily exceed what you may get out of a set of mass produced props. Moreover, in situations where real life stunts would have been required, deadlier action can be more easily (and safely) visualized. This immense attention to detail, however, makes it obvious in the mind of a viewers that what they are seeing is of course fake.

On discussing the acknowledgment of Ray Harryhausen in the recent "Pacific Rim" credits,  a repeated remark was how much people preferred the artistry of his animation techniques. The artistry and talent required in many of the sequences involved in many of his films is undeniable, but is his animation technique comparable to even the early animations of dinosaurs seen in "Jurassic Park" which marked the first break away of stop motion for this type of movie.

The film short "Stop Motion vs. CGI as presented at the 2001 SIGGRAPH animation room (Will Vinton Studios). Details at the Inet Archive

Another aspect of old time effects that was commented about was the use of solid models as opposed to CGI in 2009's "Moon" directed by Duncan Jones. Jones used traditional miniatures as opposed to CGI to create the vehicles and exterior scenes in this movie. While this was done in the interest of the budget, Jones was also interested in capturing the look and feel of older space movies and programs such as those created by Gerry Anderson's programs (more on this below).

Pacific Rim

The context of much of the discussion I participated in was around the recent "Pacific Rim" and its clearly stated homage to Japanese kaiju genre film - i.e. the Japanese monster movie. This adds another aspect of "old timey" type effects, and that is "the man in the suit" to animate aliens and 60 foot monsters - the latter effect traditionally done though extensive use of scaled miniatures that are animated in real-time though motors and wires while interacting with a man or woman in costume. Guillermo del Toro, the film's director, made extensive use of CGI to create his kaiju, but expressly asked that all designs be able to theoretically fit a person inside them. The film also made use of some scaled miniature shots.

The film's jaegers, giant robots, pay homage to Japanese mecha genre. Mecha were also traditionally operated by a man inside when filmed as live action, but are perhaps more generally known from anime subjects such as Macross and Gundam. The mixture of monsters and robots is not unique either, as such battles were not unusual; even Godzilla and King Kong have battled their mechanical counterparts.

Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla (1974) and King Kong Escapes (1967) Toho films.

Gerry Anderson's designs are also part of this design palette (that being directed by Derek Meddings special effects work for Anderson). Shows such as Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and U.F.O. featured realistically designed vehicles based at elaborately engineered bases, often underground. The elaborate mechanisms of boarding and launching ships is definitely echoed in the elaborate boarding and launch procedures for the jaegers in Pacific Rim.

Thunderbird 1 launch sequence from Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds (1965-68). If you are a glutton for punishment, look for the Mars ship launch sequence in Thunderbirds are Go

It seemed to me at the time that the overwhelming positive reaction to the film in these panels had much do to the care with which the director and creative crew went to recreate the look and feel of these older movies. At the same time, there is no denying that a great deal of this work was only possible through the extensive use of computers for scene rendering, lighting effects, composing, color balance, and perhaps a slew of other visual details that were transparent to the audience.

Old vs. New

I have to admit there is a definite generation gap aspect to whether you like or dislike modern effects vs. old. In watching a recent documentary (ref below) there is repeated admiration for the artistry and talent of Ray Harryhausen and other stop motion animators, and yet is the work as "accurate" as a CGI rendition of similar subjects? Traditional stop motion animation, as well as matte or combined miniature shots, generally required fixed camera angles, and a limited set of those angles for the shot to work (unless the camera shots could be accurately computer controlled, see Magicam). The stroboscopic movement of the models was always hard to correct for, and there were always visual differences between small scale details between miniatures and combined live action were sometimes quite noticeable as being "off" (fur vs. hair for example just never worked 100%),

I think the mistake is to criticize these efforts as failures, but rather it is good to remark on their strengths. Even the "man in the suit" efforts and the usage of puppetry in effects could be remarkable for their time. A film that illustrates this type of effect quite successfully is Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal" of 1982.

On the other hand, it is impossible to compare the original puppet Yoda to the much more detailed and nuanced Yoda of the second trilogy. While in still shots, both are very good, in movement, in spite of Frank Oz's talent, there is a bit of a giveaway - maybe if the audience didn't know beforehand?

As for miniature shots, as a model maker I certainly miss traditional models. For one thing, given their original solid existence, they were easier to recreate. Still, the multiplier effect of computing power allows new vehicles to be designed with a much higher level of detail than what was possible with traditional kitbashing. Moreover, whereas one may have done much with a collage of mixed parts (a bit of a sherman tank here, half a tractor engine, a section of a battleship deck, etc), CAD tools allows the design of a ship based on the original concept art illustrations directly and by the original concept designer. CAD tools even allow for the inside of the ship to actually fit inside the outside as designed! CG vehicles are accurate to themselves regardless of the scale of the shot or number of vehicles. This is as opposed to traditional models which would differ among themselves depending on whether it was for a long shot or a "hero model" to be used for a closeup. Traditional miniatures are also associated with other problems. Limits on possible shots due to issues of depth of field or the static nature of the occupants give away the scaled nature of objects. Miniatures, as in the case of stop motion miniatures mentioned earlier, have problems in that they can't scale their interaction to flame or water making such interaction appear "off", in spite of various photographic effects to minimize the problem.

There are so many things that computers have done to improve the appearance of fantastical ships, creatures, and environments as well as recreating scenes that would otherwise be impossibly expensive. True scale physics can also be integrated to the animation so objects and events can behave properly to the objects designed size and mass.  As a result, I cannot criticize their use in film and genre film in particular.

If there is fault, it is perhaps in the creators of these films that genuinely believe that more is more. One of the interesting things about looking at older movies is the focusing on the near as opposed to the grand, the individual as opposed to the epic. Perhaps more importantly, these creators need to know that epic visuals will not substitute for a missing plot, particularly as the tools for creating epic sequences are available pretty much to everybody (if you got to see the original version of "Star Wrecks: In the Pirkenning" it is impressive to think it was basically made in some guy's apartment). When everybody makes grandiose epics, are they still epic?

Perhaps sadder still, at least for old foggies such as myself, is that viewers no longer look at a special effects shot and wonder "how did they do that?" but instead just think the computer did this.

Stuff that's out there...

Netflix has a few rather interesting documentaries available on classic SF movies, namely a documentary on Ray Harryhausen, "Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan" and "The Sci-Fi Boys" that also covers a lot of the classic creature effects and makeup. The "Making of the Godzilla Suit" covers the creation of the seminal kaiju in 1954. "The Making of the 21st Century" covers the puppet productions of Gerry Anderson in the 1960s (found it on youTube in 2 parts: Part 1, Part 2 ). For commentary on analog vs. digital, another Netflix documentary is "Side by Side", where we follow Keanu Reeves as the film looks into digital film making technology.

The argument of stop motion vs. CGI is discussed in Ethan Gilsdorf's article "Why Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion effects were more real than CGI" at boingboing.

DVD extras now provides ton of materials with regards to "behind the scenes" or "the making of..." type of titles (such as an odd industrial film "2001 a space odyssey: A look behind the future" made before that film's release). Many of these shorts have leaked to the internet and a search with the appropriate keywords will return a lot of interesting tidbits. Good hunting.