"GO FAST" Footage from Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy. Bird? Balloon?

[Mick West]

Assuming FixedUpdate2() is being called by FixedUpdate(), this code is incorrect and will leave a frame rate dependent mismatch between the simulation and the real video proportional to the difference in graphics update frequency, physics frequency, and project vsynchv settings. On a 60Hz monitor with 30 fps (skipping every second v-blank), the ratio is 30/50. At 60 fps (standard vsynch), the ratio is 60/50, etc.. On a 75Hz or other frequency monitor with vsynch enabled, the results will change accordingly.

Thanks. That code is a little old, and I've since changed it to just instantly run throught physics-only with a fixed timestep of 0.0333333 (1/30th), recording the entire thing, then synchronizing playback frame-by frame with the video, so I can simultaneously scrub them side by side.

 

[Rocky]

You'll find no argument from me in regards to Leslie Kean, she's a full woo-believer 100%. That said, the article was co-written by Ralph Blumenthal who is a legitimate journalist with a large body of respected work. I'm hesitant to dismiss their work completely due to his involvement. I still think it was a story worth telling.

I'm not sure the interdimensional ghost stuff is even all that fringe among UFO believers presently. If you read forums made up primarily of believers, it actually seems to be the predominant theory these days. You don't see as much discussion about nuts n' bolts flying saucers compared to the topic in the 1950's-1990's. Funnily enough, the exact same thing has happened in the Bigfoot community. Gone are the days of an egregiously large undiscovered primate stalking the American woods. Nowadays lots of people believe Bigfoot to be some sort of interdimensional entity, ghost, skinwalker, etc.

The explanation of aliens, ghosts or bigfoot are interdimensional beings by the paranormal community is because there is no way to argue against an unproven theory based on no evidence. For instance, it is very difficult to explain away a creature that has lived side by side with humans since beginning of history with the actual numbers needed to sustain such a group of bipeds. There would have to be millions of them. Same with the Lochness Monster. Its just very unlikely they would be so elusive. Sooooo, lets make them interdimensional. Bingo. LOL. Explanation solved.

 

[DavidB66]

So also the Indian geese, reach those altitudes but always fly at very low heights from the ground. If a bird was visible in the GOFAST video, there is no biological justification for it to travel at 5000 meters level, over 300 miles from the coast at a constant speed of tens of mph, in winter....

Good points, but we should not be too quick to rule out birds as an explanation of freak events. I've been reading the book 'The UFO Files', by David Clarke (2nd edition, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012), based on researches in the UK National Archives. He notes that

On rare occasions large individual birds had been known to cause chaos. Barry Huddard, who served with Fighter Command in 1957, recalled one incident 'when fighters were scrambled to intercept an echo on a radar screen which turned out to be a Golden Eagle at 25,000 feet in a jet stream, very unusual but nonetheless true'. [location 1099 in the Amazon Kindle version].

This is part of a general discussion of the problem of interpreting radar signals in the 1950s. After much research, flocks of migrating birds were found to be a common source of radar echoes, and the systems were tweaked to ignore them. The problem became less serious with more modern radar, but Clarke reports a visit to an RAF radar centre in 2005 where he recalls

When I asked one of the operators if they ever detected UFOs she replied, with a smile: 'Sometimes, but when we spot one we just send for the technicians who come along and tune them out'. [location 1123]

The whole book is well worth reading.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Admittedly drifting off topic:

Thought experiment: Okay, UFOlogists! You've convinced me and everyone of note that Aliens are driving flying saucers around the skies of our planet. It's an accepted fact.

Okay... now what?

 

[jarlrmai]

Claim by Alpha Check on Twitter


Source: https://twitter.com/alpha_check/status/1503846649629659141?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1503846649629659141%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2Falpha_check2Fstatus2F1503846649629659141widget%3DTweet


Basically this seems like a distraction from @Mick West's actual point which is a counterpoint to Alpha Check's claim that the ATFLIR does not do the following


Source: https://twitter.com/alpha_check/status/1503789281315274753?s=20&t=EqoIZBhKm_JoB08IIuKDvw


I mean whether it was moved with a TDC joystick or a helmet it's still "random" which I take to actually mean "speculative human controlled" slewing, which is what we see in the Go Fast video.

But the claim is worth investigating to maybe get a better picture, Alpha Check a prominent YouTuber sim pilot is often held up a SME (Subject Matter Expert) by UFO people on the stuff we see in the Navy videos, but he has been shown to be incorrect and I feel often just tries to blind people with acronyms and jargon.

The claim is that one of the pilot/WSO is wearing a JHMCS helmet, and steering the ATLFLIR using head movements to get the target in sight, from there it is capture by auto track.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmet-mounted_display#Joint_Helmet-Mounted_Cueing_System_(JHMCS)

To me it doesn't look like this as the major movements of the camera look to be large smooth movements along one direction, which doesn't initially appear to be what you would expect to see from a device mirroring human head movements.

 

[Leonardo Cuellar]

Claim by Alpha Check on Twitter


Source: https://twitter.com/alpha_check/status/1503846649629659141?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1503846649629659141%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2Falpha_check2Fstatus2F1503846649629659141widget%3DTweet


Basically this seems like a distraction from @Mick West's actual point which is a counterpoint to Alpha Check's claim that the ATFLIR does not do the following


Source: https://twitter.com/alpha_check/status/1503789281315274753?s=20&t=EqoIZBhKm_JoB08IIuKDvw


I mean whether it was moved with a TDC joystick or a helmet it's still "random" which I take to actually mean "speculative human controlled" slewing, which is what we see in the Go Fast video.

But the claim is worth investigating to maybe get a better picture, Alpha Check a prominent YouTuber sim pilot is often held up a SME (Subject Matter Expert) by UFO people on the stuff we see in the Navy videos, but he has been shown to be incorrect and I feel often just tries to blind people with acronyms and jargon.

The claim is that one of the pilot/WSO is wearing a JHMCS helmet, and steering the ATLFLIR using head movements to get the target in sight, from there it is capture by auto track.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmet-mounted_display#Joint_Helmet-Mounted_Cueing_System_(JHMCS)

To me it doesn't look like this as the major movements of the camera look to be large smooth movements along one direction, which doesn't initially appear to be what you would expect to see from a device mirroring human head movements.

Alpha check should know that ATFLIR is itself a target acquisition sensor. This is done through the autotrack mode. It need not necessarily be slaved to another sensor.

 

[aware]

Old thread I know but I just wanted to remake the footage in dcs, to get a more accurate idea of how much the jet's heading changed (in degrees).
Source: https://youtu.be/ioo5PcN941s

I found it was about 15 degrees to the left in the period of the 'lock'. However, this jet was the F/A 18c not the super hornet as in the real encounter. Also, the weight of the aircraft is almost certainly going to be different as I don't know what their full loadout is (if someone knows please tell me). Another point to mention is that I have not factored for wind speed and direction (again please tell me if you know) so this was done with no wind speed (very unrealistic but I doubt it has much of an effect). And most obviously, I cannot replicate the wing's motions exactly, I tried my best and got pretty close but you can see at the start I was a bit off, and also worth noting that the autopilot (altitude hold set to 25,000 feet) in DCS is not that good (it tends to not be able to exactly hold the attitude) so it can also cause a difference in the result. And this is DCS not irl, so its always going to a bit different.

 

[jackfrostvc]

So Nine News here in Australia are saying a Pentagon official told them the following in relation to the Go-Fast object:

"optical illusion created by the angle of the recording"

"object was moving at a maximum of 48 km/h" ie 30 Mph

Source: https://www.9news.com.au/world/ufo-...henomena/33abc6e0-02a2-4518-bbfc-55c6d3df8514

@Mick West Is this consistant with your analysis regarding speed ?

 

[Mick West]

"object was moving at a maximum of 48 km/h" ie 30 Mph

Source: https://www.9news.com.au/world/ufo-...henomena/33abc6e0-02a2-4518-bbfc-55c6d3df8514

@Mick West Is this consistant with your analysis regarding speed ?

30 mph seems a bit on the low side - and might be a calculation with a limited number of data points. But it's good that they agree with the basic idea.

 

[Mick West]

So Nine News here in Australia are saying a Pentagon official told them the following in relation to the Go-Fast object:

"optical illusion created by the angle of the recording"

This seems to be based on the NYT story, and not be new info.

Article:

One of the videos, referred to as GoFast, appears to show an object moving at immense speed. But an analysis by the military says that is an illusion created by the angle of observation against water. According to Pentagon calculations, the object is moving only about 30 miles per hour.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/ufo-military-reports.html

 

[FatPhil]

So Nine News here in Australia are saying a Pentagon official told them the following in relation to the Go-Fast object:

"optical illusion created by the angle of the recording"

"object was moving at a maximum of 48 km/h" ie 30 Mph

Source: https://www.9news.com.au/world/ufo-...henomena/33abc6e0-02a2-4518-bbfc-55c6d3df8514

One thing that might help trying to work out exactly who said what in what context would be if 9news had provided a more useful link behind "New York Times" than https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper to support the "relatively ordinary" in quotation marks in

But now anonymous Pentagon officials believe several UFO incidents can be attributed to "relatively ordinary" Chinese surveillance drones, reports the New York Times.

dated Nov 10, 2022.

My weak google-fu seems to suggest they're referring to https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/ufo-military-reports.html 's

This article is based on interviews with American officials familiar with the findings of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies' examination of the incidents. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified work.

Some of the incidents have been formally attributed to Chinese surveillance — with relatively ordinary drone technology — and others are also thought to be connected to Beijing. China, which has stolen plans for advanced fighter planes, wants to learn more about how the United States trains its military pilots, according to American officials.

which was Published Oct. 28, 2022 Updated Jan. 12, 2023

 

[jarlrmai]

Can anyone who has been following it break down the NASA analysis and subsequent UFO twitter noise?

All I can get is NASA did an analysis but didn't take into account turn rate or wind or something and got the low end speed based on the simple trigonometry model as detailed at the start of this thread.

But there's some wind data that other people have? Or classified data thats NASA has and didn't use? Or its the same data?

So they got it wrong? But its still wind speed driven its just NASA didn't do an in depth investigation? Or something else?

 

[Mendel]

Can anyone who has been following it break down the NASA analysis and subsequent UFO twitter noise?

I created a separate thread on this at https://www.metabunk.org/threads/nasa-panel-analyzes-go-fast.13174/ .