starfield motion / warp SFX

[Jedi Marso]

Ever wondered how realistic the warp-drive FX are in ST, at least in terms of how the stars streak by when the ship is in warp?

I think everyone understands that it's totally drama-driven- even in First Contact, the Warp-1 flight from Earth out to near Jupiter has the FX of stars streaking by the ship as it simply moves through the solar system.

As an experiment, I used the free-fight function in Celestia to drive myself around the cosmos at varying speeds. It's actually pretty fun to do- you can warp yourself right out of the visible universe if you choose to, or just putter around the solar system.

Here's the kicker, though: space is VAST. More so than we can really wrap our heads around. Using the TOS scale, cruising at Warp 6 from Earth to Vulcan (a distance of 16 light years give or take, if you go with the old assumption that Vulcan is at 40 Eridani), you are moving at 216 times the speed of light. At this speed, Earth to Vulcan is a 27 day trip- remember, that is at the NCC-1701's standard cruising velocity! (This thread isn't to debate all the different stuff we've seen like Earth to Kronos in four days, etc).

Now here's the thing- doing this in Celestia, the starfield doesn't move hardly at all while you are in flight. In order to get the starfield to move in an approximation of what you see on the main viewer in TOS, you have to kick the speed up to about 3.5-4 LY PER SECOND! That is orders of magnitude faster than even TNG ships travel at on the new TNG warp scale- far in excess of Warp 9. Also, at that speed, Earth to Vulcan takes less than 5 seconds! (Which, I suppose, is more like the speed of plot! )

Anyway, had a lot of fun messing with it and thought I'd throw it out there for people to play with if they use any sort of stargazing / planetarium software with the same capabilities.

 

[Ronald Held]

There is software to simulate special relativistic starfields, and warp speed travel. I wrote the first one, snd found others. Thread might need to be moved to Science snd technology?

 

[Paul Weaver]

The lights aren't really stars, they're particle interactions with the warp field. When dropping from warp the interactions vanish at the point where photons are passing through which is why it looks like the moving stars revert to static positions after dropping out.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Thread might need to be moved to Science snd technology?

I'm thinking Trek Tech, since it relates specifically to warp as depicted in Trek. The thread is liable to find a good audience of science-minded fans there. Energizing.

 

[Jedi Marso]

The lights aren't really stars, they're particle interactions with the warp field. When dropping from warp the interactions vanish at the point where photons are passing through which is why it looks like the moving stars revert to static positions after dropping out.

Source?

 

[C.E. Evans]

I tend to be in the camp that those distorted stars are an optical illusion. Heck, they may even be just the distorted light from only the nearest stars magnified and multiplied several times by the warp envelope.

In reality, there are only four lights...

 

[Paul Weaver]

Source?

Practical experience with the warp drive on my Ford Fiesta.

(In reality I believe there would be no light while in warp, then when exiting warp there would be a massive dose of EM radiation when the field collapses)

 

[Wingsley]

Show me the source in canon that confirms those streaking lights are supposed to be stars, or particles, or anything at all. For all we know, they could be the projected energy from the ship's warp field, only partially visible.

 

[Maurice]

They're stars. The optical effects guys and the production memos say so.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Found another free download that does all the stuff Celestia does plus more, and is prettier to boot. Not only that, it has more of a 'game' interface. Space Engine. The rub is that it's not always scientifically super-accurate- it will auto-generate a star system in different places to make exploring a little more fun. The cool thing is you can edit those star systems and save them if you want, so you can build the Federation, et al, and have your own personal version of 'stellar cartography.' I looked forward to entertaining myself for many hours with this stuff!

 

[Richard Baker]

What gets me is the times we see the starfield moving and the ship has never left the solar system.
When the Enterprise loops around the Sun in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday'' they are traveling very fast, but they are traveling from the Sun towards Earth- you still see the starfield moving in parallax. As far as I know you would not see any movement in that short a distance, you would need to be travelling past stars instead.

 

[Jedi Marso]

What gets me is the times we see the starfield moving and the ship has never left the solar system.
When the Enterprise loops around the Sun in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday'' they are traveling very fast, but they are traveling from the Sun towards Earth- you still see the starfield moving in parallax. As far as I know you would not see any movement in that short a distance, you would need to be travelling past stars instead.

That's what I was talking about in the OP. I think the stars blurring by is simply for dramatic effect, since it happens whenever the ship is at warp no matter where they are at, as you mentioned.

 

[David cgc]

Show me the source in canon that confirms those streaking lights are supposed to be stars, or particles, or anything at all. For all we know, they could be the projected energy from the ship's warp field, only partially visible.

"Fight or Flight," the second episode of "Enterprise."

HOSHI: Sir, my quarters are on E deck, starboard section five.
ARCHER: Yes.
HOSHI: The stars are going the wrong way, sir.
ARCHER: Wrong way?
HOSHI: On both my training tours, I had port side quarters. I'm having trouble sleeping.
ARCHER: Because you're on the—
HOSHI: —the wrong side of the ship, yes, sir.

 

[StarCruiser]

"Here's the kicker, though: space is VAST. More so than we can really wrap our heads around. Using the TOS scale, cruising at Warp 6 from Earth to Vulcan (a distance of 16 light years give or take, if you go with the old assumption that Vulcan is at 40 Eridani), you are moving at 216 times the speed of light. At this speed, Earth to Vulcan is a 27 day trip- remember, that is at the NCC-1701's standard cruising velocity! (This thread isn't to debate all the different stuff we've seen like Earth to Kronos in four days, etc). "

Can't imaging why this passage brought this up:

What the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has to say about space:

• "Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..."

 

[Avro Arrow]

Staring at the unfiltered distortion effect while in a warp bubble causes humans to go just a tad insane. So whenever the ship is at warp, the computer automatically displays the "starfield" screensaver on all screens and windows.

But that doesn't explain external sh...

Quiet! There were none.

What? I'm sure I've seen external shots with stars streaking by at warp.

Well perhaps you've spent too much time staring at the unfiltered distortion effect while in a warp bubble...

 

[Timo]

We have seen a couple of representations of the warp field itself, in onscreen graphics. The prettier ones are quite dynamic - "peristaltic" is the word that best describes the schematic in "Where No One Has Gone Before". It would make very good sense for such a field to distort the nearest stars in such a fashion that the same ones would fly past the ship again and again and again...

This would allow for them to be referred to as stars, as dialogue requires - and for a select few of them to solidify into immobile background stars when the ship drops out of warp, as we can see happen, while others disappear like any mere optical illusion should.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Thomas Kelvin]

I feel that the warp effects from the reboot movies are somewhat more realistic, at least from a scientific standpoint. When a ship is in its warp bubble, visual light can't really penetrate the warped space - at least not for the entire 360 degree viewpoint. When you consider the technology when TNG was around, it wouldn't have been possible to go with some outlandish CGI rendering such as the one above. The other three series just had to stay with canon.

 

[uniderth]

The other three series just had to stay with canon.

"New warp engine thingamagig, it looks different now when we're at warp."

Continuity satisfied, new effects inserted. Done and done.

Boom!

 

[David cgc]

I feel like there's a discussion to be had about why DS9 stuck with TNG's precedent with the transporter and warp speed VFX, when neither TNG, Voyager, Enterprise nor any of the movies were consistent from one to the next. Even after Voyager came out, DS9 still used the "shower" Starfleet transporter and the vertical warp-speed flash.

I'm not sure what there is to say about it, but it's a little interesting.

 

[Avro Arrow]

^ In-universe, it makes sense, though. Defiant and the runabouts were older than Voyager, so used a similar transporter system to the Enterprise-D. Why would Starfleet bother pulling out that system and replacing it with the one used on the Intrepid class, if the older one still worked fine and didn't cause any ill effects?

The Jenolan apparently used a TOS-era transporter system up to the time it was lost, in the mid-2290s!