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Flat Earth Community / Relative distance of us to the stars, moon, and sun

« on: May 27, 2016, 02:03:53 AM »

A number of you may be familiar with the out of focus videos of stars taken by the Nikon P900. We see a circular light with a fluid like visual affect, in some cases the focus can be manipulated to make the star appear amorphous. These videos are typically disregarded as not focusing the P900.

I too disregarded this phenomenon as a P900 owner but upon further thought, came to realize that when taking a photo of ANYTHING ELSE, anything from a bird, car, indoor lights the list goes on, neither of the two affects mentioned occur.

I've also taken photos of the moon at maximum optical and digital zoom and do not notice such an affect at any point during focusing, neither does the sun with the appropriate solar filter.

Disregarding the precepts of any particular wholesale ideology, would it be safe to conclude that both the moon and the sun are closer to us than the stars are, being in front of this fluid substratum?

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Flat Earth Community / 3D engines fails to reproduce round earth as we experience it

« on: March 03, 2016, 03:53:02 AM »

I've posted this before on a forum that is now closed and thought I would try again.

The 3D engines that the gaming industry uses to create games using a first person perspective have all used a mapping engine that produces flat maps with the a flat horizon.

Use of a 3D engine to create spheres representing planets in space with the surface interaction visible and interacting with the space between other planets are all out of scale.

Use of a 3D engine to create spheres representing planets in space with no surface interaction visible are actually representations of an in-engine planet but upon approaching close proximity of this representation a transition occurs in which you exit the "space map" and load a "planet surface map" and this transition can be obscured by thick cloud layers, motion blur, a cut-scene or any number of other methods to provide the sensation of going through an atmosphere of sorts.

I've seen every game up to Star Citizen which has the most impressive presentation yet, but still falls in the later category in which the transition is just that.

A game such as Minecraft, has a finite limit to the depths one may dig down and ascend to the skies limit. However, there is an "infinitely" procedurally generated terrain for the players moving along the X axis. The player will never circumnavigate their world. This however is by design, as the game doesn't intend to ever wrap around because it isn't spherical and this is geometrically impossible. This example is more of an aside.

I feel that it is peculiar that we may generate such surreal first person environments in the computer, but fail to reproduce a, to-scale reproduction of a spherical earth.