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[dwalcott]

Test animation of the space shuttle landing at an air field.  Going for a photo-realistic feel with this one.

[Arik_the_Red]

cool... I especially like the airport and scenery.

Does the space shuttle really come in that steep and hard? 

[$imon]

Hey nice start on that animation!

I feel the landing was a bit too hard though, though i dont  really know how a space shuttle would land, i would think the angle with the runway would be a little smaller for landing, maybe hover a bit above the runway before actually gradually touching down.

Another thing is the sky, you might want to try a different image for the background, where the horizon would be on the same level as the models.

Good job so far though!

[Arik_the_Red]

Here's a nice little landing on youtube...

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[Olias]

It's a good start.

The space shuttle after its reentry is little more than a giant plane.  As such, its landings would be very similar to a typical aircraft.

Generally a plane begins its descent by cutting back on the throttle.  This causes the plane to descend with little change in its attitude (where its nose is pointing).  As the plane reaches its final approach and nears the ground, it "flares" (brings the nose up) - this further slows the plane and ensures that the rear wheels touch down first.

You could fix this pretty easily by curving the path and putting in some pitch keys, and it will look much more realistic.

A higher resolution ground texture would also work wonders for the overall look.

[EricAug]

Another successful landing of the space shuttle. The crew is recovering from whiplash.

[dwalcott]

Thanks for all the good feed back... I think in my rush to see the overall animation I neglected the physics of such a landing.  Ha ha ... Thanks guys!

[Arik_the_Red]

You could make it bounce! 

[headwax]

Beautiful work. Most of the animation is very well timed. Maybe its a case of getting the slide rule out and figuring the angles etc.

[dwalcott]

Thanks for all the great feedback... NASA is processing the data and determining the next launch date.  Stay tuned!  In the meanwhile here is a little something I worked on for a long time.  I lost the audio file so had to abandon the project...

[ENSONIQ5]

Great work dwalcott, really nicely done.  The camera movement is excellent and overall the textures and modelling is great.  With such short wings relative to its weight, the shuttle does indeed come down pretty damn hard and fast, though not quite at the speed of yours!  It relies on a hard stalling manouever in the last moments before touchdown, and you have captured that quite well.  In fact, I think your angles are quite good, and if the action was running at one third the speed it would appear very realistic.  IMO it's the speed that's the problem, not the geometry.

The parachute deployment is a great touch, very nicely executed.  A suggestion for improvement would be to have a cluster of 3 parachutes and to have them "dance" more as the shuttle taxis to a stop.  Having the chutes crumple and drop to the ground when the shuttle stops would be a challenge but would look awesome!  Excellent work mate.