posted 03-30- 05:36 PM            

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I have this really cool picture someone sent
me of a jet breaking the sound barrier. It
has a perfect egg shapped aura around it. I
thought in would be great for everyone on the
board to see it but I don't know how to post
it. Can anyone post it for me if I send it
to you. Let me know.

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posted 03-30- 06:02 PM               

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u mean the 1 of the f-18?

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posted 03-30- 06:47 PM            

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Yep, that's it. It has some text with it of
how the guy got the picture. Can you post it?

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posted 03-30- 09:07 PM               

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yea..if i can find it...i have a big picture in an issue of Maxim but that pic is too big to scan...i have a smaller version..somewhere

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posted 03-30- 09:36 PM            

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I sent it to ya.

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posted 03-30- 11:17 PM               

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posted 03-31- 01:42 AM               

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WoW!

Though if I saw that when I was flyin it I reckon I'd crap myself! lol

Awsome pic though

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posted 03-31- 03:49 AM               

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actually u wouldnt have seen that...that cloud (compressed water vapor) lasted less than a tenth of a second....i think about 0.065 seconds...but im not too sure on that number

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posted 03-31- 05:49 AM               

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That would make a cool wallpaper! anybody manage a higher resolution, maybe 1024*768 pic?

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posted 03-31- 08:34 AM            

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Here's how the guy got the pic. Truly amazing.
Thanks Vahnatai for posting.

> Through the viewfinder of his camera, Ensign John Gay could see the
fighter
> plane drop from the sky heading toward the port side of the aircraft
carrier
> Constellation. At 1,000 feet, the pilot drops the F/A-18C Hornet to
increase
> his speed to 750 mph, vapor flickering off the curved surfaces of
> the plane. In the precise moment a cloud in the shape of a farm-fresh egg
> forms around the Hornet 200 yards from the carrier, its engines rippling
the
> Pacific Ocean just 75 feet below, Gay hears an explosion and snaps his
> camera shutter once.
>
> "I clicked the same time I heard the boom, and I knew I had it," Gay
> said.
>
> What he had was a technically meticulous depiction of the sound barrier
> being broken July 7, 1999, somewhere on the Pacific between Hawaii and
> Japan. Sports Illustrated, Brills Content and Life ran the photo. The
photo
> recently took first prize in the science and technology division in
> the World Press Photo 2000 contest, which drew more than 42,000 entries
> worldwide.
>
> "All of a sudden, in the last few days, I've been getting calls from
> everywhere about it again. It's kind of neat," he said, in a telephone
> interview from his station in Virginia Beach, Va.
>
> A naval veteran of 12 years, Gay, 38, manages a crew of eight assigned
to
> take intelligence photographs from the high-tech belly of an F-14 Tomcat,
> the fastest fighter in the U.S. Navy. In July, Gay had been part of a
Joint
> Task Force Exercise as the Constellation made its way to Japan. Gay
selected
> his Nikon 90 S, one of the five 35 mm cameras he owns. He set his
> 80-300 mm zoom lens on 300mm, set his shutter speed at 1/1000 of second
> with an aperture setting of F5.6. "I put it on full manual, focus and
> exposure," Gay said. "I tell young photographers who are into automatic
> everything, you aren't going to get that shot on auto. The plane is too
> fast. The camera can't keep up." At sea level a plane must exceed 741 mph
to
> break the sound barrier, or the speed at which sound travels. The change
in
> pressure as the plane outruns all of the pressure and sound waves in front
> of it is heard on the ground as an explosion or sonic boom. The pressure
> change condenses the water in the air as the jet passes these waves.
> Altitude, wind speed, humidity, the shape and trajectory of the plane; all
> of these affect
> the breaking of this barrier. The slightest drag or atmospheric pull on
> the plane shatters the vapor oval like fireworks as the plane passes
> through.
>

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posted 03-31- 04:55 PM               

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burkley,

all u have to do is right-click the image and select "set as wallpaper" then right click on your desktop and select "properties". on the bottom right corner you will see "display"...pick stretch, then the picture will fit any screen resolution u have

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posted 03-31- 05:06 PM               

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Would be cool to reproduce those effects in a flight sim, but somehow I think all those physics calculations would be difficult even for todays computers to handle... along with the rest of the game engine.

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posted 03-31- 06:43 PM               

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Actually, it's not that hard. If you want to do it from first principles, then yes, it takes a lot of work to figure out the shape of the cone. But that's the sort of thing that can be precalculated. And it turns out the shape is basically always the same, so you just make it a piece of the plane model. Then you just have to decide when to unhide it. You decide ahead of time what the humidity is for the mission and once you have that then you can unhide it at a certain speed. Then you have it flicker on and off. So, during the game, it's a very simple test.

Not quite as pretty as the F-18, here's an F-4 breaking the sound barrier.

Imagine what it must have been like to see that thing blazing by at that altitude.

Oh, and here's a video of an F-14 breaking the sound barrier http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~numloxx/pics/f14/

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posted 03-31- 07:55 PM               

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With the partical effects available in todays rendering technologies, I dont think I would actually want the effect to be apart of the aircraft. It would be a smoke or cloud effect type of thing and thus programmed in as such I would think.

But the exact humidity calculations would have to be made for all altitudes and times of day.

It would be neat if future jet sims had this modeled.

P.S. Im pretty sure the sound barrier was broken in WWII. (Jets in a dive) I wonder if the same thing appeared on those WWII jets...

[This message has been edited by ArgonV (edited 03-31-2001).]

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