The detail on this thing is just insane. The amount of time and effort put in is comparable to what it takes to build an actual aircraft.
[UPDATE] Just to clarify: building an actual jetliner is obviously orders of magnitude harder than building this model. But I think building this model is probably comparable to building a light aircraft like this one: https://www.vansaircraft.com/rv-14/
Jesus can you relax? Sometimes statements aren't meant to be taken exactly literally. I don't mean to be hateful but what do you get out of being needlessly pedantic? Obviously there's more time actually spent on modern airliners. OP is using it as an analogy to show that it's a complicated process, and isn't saying that it's scientifically 1 to 1 exact.
It's this type of comment that makes people be needlessly careful on this site more than any other. When you know there is someone just waiting to correct you when you use a simple turn of phrase.
Your parent comment just seems to make their point and it's technically correct, but might have missed the nuance. All people in this conversation seemed fine.
Are you sure that the following doesn't apply to your own comment?
> It's this type of comment that makes people be needlessly careful on this site more than any other.
I mean this will all due respect; you need to interact face to face with people more. Learning how to talk to people like a human in a space where you can see how they react will help with:
>You cannot reasonably expect me to discern with 100% success rate between ignorance, software developer hubris and exaggeration ?
And this:
>I'm not willing to take the risk of letting someone get away with such a comment if they really believe it ;)
You know you don't win anything here, right? The score is made up and the points don't matter.
Oh yeah, I should clarify: I didn't mean that building this model was comparable to building an actual airliner. But I do think it's comparable to building, say, an RV-14 (https://www.vansaircraft.com/rv-14/).
Penn and Teller’s Fool Us had a couple of contestants per year that did a trick the hardest way possible. A couple times they gave the person the prize even though they knew how it was done. Like the people who “shuffled” an entire deck into a specific order, and/or used precise cuts rather than using marked cards or swapping the deck.
There have been a couple people they’ve had back three times even if they knew how they did it, because they’re just so good.
Comedy has some of the same. Some comedians look like they're just rambling through random ideas that have popped into their heads, when in fact it's a patter they've been practicing for months and months. I have a lot of respect for the ones who can hide the seams between their various jokes and make them look like the funny uncle at family gatherings just riffing off of people or themselves for an hour.
It's funny you say that because whenever I see a standup special and the comedian seems to randomly be prompted by something they see in the audience/off camera that leads them down a bespoke, yet perfect response/thread I have to think they are just making the prompt up.
I'd estimate about 20 years ago I saw a British comedian called Ross Noble who did this. He almost acts like he's got some form of ADHD where he is permanently distractible, will switch topics mid-sentence because something else gets his attention. Someone came in late, so he asked them what took them so long. Someone wearing a hat catches his eye and he makes a comment and goes off on some tangent. Those tangents can be minutes long. Eventually he always goes "right, now where was I?" and resumes the scripted/rehearsed part of his show.
And then... in the final minute or so of the show all of those seemingly random distractions and tangents come together to tie up the various stories and jokes he'd been telling! Decades later when I think about it it still blows my mind. They can't have been random at all. I've no idea if the various distractions were plants, or maybe they never existed at all and everyone in the audience just thought we were all too far away to hear whoever he was talking to? It was such a flawless execution though, only heightened by the fact he'd convinced you he was a rambling unfocussed mess for most of the night.
At UT Austin, there was a Physics class called "Pseudoscience" taught by Rory Coker(?). The class was on precisely the topic mentioned; it was a graded attendance-based class. (You lost a grade letter for every 1–2 classes you skipped.)
Rory was a master class mentalist — literally world famous. When other world class magicians were on the continent or passing through they'd come visit him. Invariably, he'd make them do a 10m opener for the class (usually mentalist, illusion, and close up). Did I mention the class average was a C?
Anyways, for the final, Rory did his trick: he chatted to us for a few minutes, drawing a picture; then we all had ~30s to draw a picture. Then, he chatted with some people — kinda at random — then picked one person to seal their picture in an envelope. At the end of the class was the reveal: he'd drawn this picture the girl drew. More importantly, just about everyone drew the same picture.
Then he made his point: depending on how he was feeling, there were about a half dozen pictures he could get an audience to draw.
Penn referenced it in an interview somewhere, with the impression he was citing a well-known stage magic quip.
Essentially: there are two ways to make something appear magical.
- One is a gimmick (physical or otherwise), which is performed so well as to be invisible to the audience.
- The other is simply doing something effortlessly that seems impossible without spending years of practice... but having actually spent years of practice on it.
He cited some Teller trick that Teller brute forced by just practicing the movements for an entire year until he could do them reliably and flawlessly.
Yeah or the guy who can pour a whole deck of cards onto the table and grab the right card out of the air. It's not a trick, he's just insanely practised at it.
To be clear: if they absolutely know how the magician did it, they do NOT award the prize.
They do award the prize if they know there's more than one way the person could have done it, but they cannot tell for sure which one was it.
And they make it clear their show is not about the prize anyway, it's about the wonder of watching cool magic acts. The prize is a gimmick (but still, it's always fair and never staged).
They always celebrate good magic, regardless of whether they can figure it out or not.
> Offering a prize tends to bring out the best in people.
If I remember correctly, the prize is a hook for the producers, it's how they got approval for the show. It's not for the performers, which I guess are simply thrilled to perform for P&T and their audience.
Interesting that I got downvoted for stating what Penn has stated again and again in their podcast.
I guess people find it hard to believe these two guys truly do what they claim to do: award the prize to people who truly fool them, and celebrate all magic acts regardless of whether they are fooled.
They've also stated the prize is an excuse for the show.
They are on record stating this, it's not my guesswork, yet somehow saying this earned me a downvote.
There's obviously a high level of skill involved...
However, if you want to experince the late 80's, change the playback speed of the landing gear video to 0.75 :D
I'm assuming the guy doesn't have kids or cats, I can't even make a cup of coffee most days without one being in the way!
I used to love to make things when I was younger but I was never this dedicated. I stopped at radio controlled models.
I'm glad my mum bought me a TI99/4A when I was a a kid, so my hobby turned into my career.
I remember seeing this when it was first making the rounds (though I thought it was earlier than ‘14, but that’s what all the press links date to). Incredible.
This is wonderful. The loving dedication to getting the details right reminds me of the engineer hobbyist that built a functional scale model of a Ferrari 312PB race car as shown on this classic Top Gear episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeUMDY01uUA
At first I was confused by this "Made from Manila folders" which I didn’t know; I thought these folders were some kind of information from something that happened in Manila, and that the author did the scale model based on what he had found in them
For something vaguely similar, as in a meticulous way of making a 3D object out of 2D materials with fine details, I recommend the Metal Earth products (puzzles?) as I find them to be quite rewarding. The complexity is probably two orders of magnitude less--think 10-20 hours to assemble the pre-designed and cut pieces.
How does he come up with the 2d designs? They need to all fit together right? I feel like there some missing step between the reference material and the 2D illustrator designs.
This threw me off too. Sure Illustrator is probably a better tool for this than pen and paper, but it seems like far from the best choice. I guess that just makes this all the more impressive.
I've never tried it, but I wonder if designing in 3D and then printing out UV maps would be a good way to go? You'd at least end up with all the polygons and an outer shape to cut out, although whether you could fold paper along the edges is another story.
Wow; this is amazing. I was looking into who makes their seats for business/first (I usually assume it's Rockwell Collins but it might not be) and was shocked to see how old their product is on this aircraft. The business class seats look like those from the 90s!
I'm sure he'd have plenty of offers if he was going to sell it. As long as it really requires a decade of work to produce, somebody might value it at the labor cost as a kind of proof-of-work. But what if he does another copy in only few months by reusing all the part designs? Its value could be destroyed. Probably has to become famous then die so that there's no chance of the same creator flooding the market.
Would love to see the files or precut sheets released as the ultimate scale model kit. It'd be really awesome to take these files to a laser cutter and make the model out of thin aluminum sheets.
your problem is not focus or willingness, it's being motivated by excitement rather than perfection. it's about the object, take yourself and how you feel out of the equation.
This is also a personality trait. Where ADHD has this in the extreme.
I, having ADHD, cannot do any task if it's not motivated by excitement and newness (or forced by raw discipline, which is extremely energy consuming).
Your comment sounds like "it's just a matter of changing your mindset". Maybe I read that wrong. But I know it's not just mindset changing. It's, e.g. with ADHD fundamentally wired into a brain.
These planes are incredible to ride on. AA runs a Charlotte <-> Munich flight... the Premium Economy exceeds expectations for the money, like sleeping in a lay-z-boy.
Premium economy to MUC out of CLT always annoys me because the legs that hold the seats up can possibly be right in the middle of your under-seat space, making putting a briefcase under the seat in front of you impossible (the legs are unevenly spaced throughout the row so not all seats lose the space). They also have those fold-down footrests that I never actually use and take up more space. Paying more for a seat in which I might not even be able to access my work laptop is a bit annoying.
I feel like any class of seating except business suffers from that "near seat storage shortage". I tend to carry a soft sided satchel instead of a case for the reasons you state: it can be jammed pretty much anywhere
Well in this case on the return flight I’m usually booked regular economy, and regular economy has no under seat space loss. I’m able to work the entire flight back from Europe on the cheaper ticket.
I wonder why manila envelopes. does envelope paper have properties uniquely fitted for this kind of modeling, or is it just nice color and suitable weight?
These are folders, not envelopes. They are pretty stiff and hold their shape well. I bet any light card stock would do, but everyone of a certain age has experience with these folders; the fact that they're so basic makes this achievement extra special.
Is age the factor here? feels like they’re just as ubiquitous today as they were when the author was in high school.
I certainly appreciate the idea of crafting something special out of seemingly boring material, but the remark that they were taught to model with this paper in school made me wonder of it does have advantages over basic paper or cardstock.
I think it may be that it's a fairly uniform thickness across manufacturers, whereas if you are getting cardstock from different places you would need to pay attention to paper weights (gsm).
I've looked up what the hell is a manila folder, and it turned out to be a paper folder looking exactly like a Windows folder icon, even with a matching yellowish colour. Maybe I grew up and lived in all the wrong countries, but I've never seen such a folder in my life.
[UPDATE] Just to clarify: building an actual jetliner is obviously orders of magnitude harder than building this model. But I think building this model is probably comparable to building a light aircraft like this one: https://www.vansaircraft.com/rv-14/
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