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SchizophrenicMC

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Everything posted by SchizophrenicMC

  1. SchizophrenicMC
    Sharpie is alcohol soluble. Actually it's been my experience that pretty much any marking you put on a model kit is going to dissolve to some level if wiped with alcohol. Especially paint markers.
  2. SchizophrenicMC
    I wish I was the CEO of a Japanese car company right now, so I could go to Engineering, write a blank check, and say "build something with a throttle cable".
  3. SchizophrenicMC
    [HEAVY BREATHING]
  4. SchizophrenicMC
    Can't wait to see it. Nu Ver.Ka looks fantastic painted and decaled up.
  5. SchizophrenicMC
    No idea. I keep having to go do things like work and fixing my cousin's car. Haven't had a chance to try shoehorning the massive thing into my rig.
  6. SchizophrenicMC
    You could definitely use the NAS in that way. My uncle does, but I'm not exactly sure what his specific setup is. I'll have to get with him on that. That's probably what I'd do if I had stacks of cash and more than 4TB of media. Of course, I have a spare rig lying around with more than enough power and space for drives to be a NAS. Maybe I don't need stacks of cash. In other news, my Sapphire R9 390 OC finally showed up. The thing is massive.
  7. SchizophrenicMC
    There is no more obvious list of 10. Dear god the fuel consumption.
  8. SchizophrenicMC
    Basically the exact reason Porsche makes an SUV, which is the best-selling model it builds. (Including its diesel model)
  9. SchizophrenicMC
    Because Space Engineers would choke. It struggles to run ships over 100 meters long. I built the empty husk of an Orbital Defense Platform a la Halo 2, and at just over a kilometer long, the game slows to a crawl, even on my decently powerful rig. And that's just with the platform floating in space. No systems or powered blocks. Just heavy armor. Trying to build a scale 1200-meter ship would kill the game completely. No matter how fun it would be to incorporate the transformation mechanism. (Which probably wouldn't work anyway since rotors have a maximum torque and doing it with gyroscopes would be a nightmare) I love Space Engineers, I just wish it was optimized a ton better.
  10. SchizophrenicMC
    I've heard Americans call them R2-D2 Whiskey-Bravo That is, R2-D2 With Boner.
  11. SchizophrenicMC
    All 3 sports have become dominated by one person each (if I hear Hamilton say one more thing about hard-fought anything, I'll kill something) and they've all become boring win-fests for whoever can throw the most money at the formula. Dammit, screw safety, I want cars to go back to being modified road cars that killed people. You want millions of dollars to go racing, accept the risk of death or Lauda-esque disfigurement.
  12. SchizophrenicMC
    I stopped following the sport after they abandoned homologation rules completely in favor of AWD widebody Fiestas.
  13. SchizophrenicMC
    Anything is possible with decals.
  14. SchizophrenicMC
    Just to beat the dead horse some more, the Robotech novelization does state that the VF-1 used a neural link system to operate, which is how it went about explicitly justifying Max putting on a Zentradi outfit. Kind of like midichlorians. However, in Macross proper, the VF-1 is controlled solely by control input by the pilot. Further, it is noted that the early VF-1 seen in Macross TV had its entire control scheme replaced by the Block 6 cockpit by the time Do You Remember Love? was filmed in-universe. (The official retcon for the difference in control systems) This suggests that the much more complex Block 1 cockpit was the result of a less-refined automated controls system than was available by the 2040s when DYRL? was said to be made. But all in all, it's an intuitive enough assumption to make: the pilot pushes on the controls, which correspond to various movements in the machine, as interpreted and implemented by the flight computer. For example, when Roy tells Hikaru in the second episode to slowly press on the pedals in order to right the VF-1D battroid after struggling to figure out how to control a plane that's just turned into a giant robot. We see that a simple, defined movement signals a much more complex movement in the actual battroid, which is also dealing with numerous other factors outside of an ideal situation. It was, after all, leaned up against a building, having fallen while trying to get out of the building it had just fallen into before that. It's easy to see that the Valkyrie's controls are acting as a fly-by-wire system, where the pilot inputs a simple command, like what direction to go or how quickly to move to that position, and the computer generates all the highly complex outputs to make that happen. As has been said previously, the F-16's stick barely moves at all and responds to pressure rather than travel distance to determine what the pilot intends to do with the plane. The aircraft then commands its various control surfaces to perform a certain way in order to create the desired outcome. And it's not always the surfaces you'd expect. For example, a fly by wire system might command ailerons to act as elevators if the elevators are not responding, or vice versa. They can even perform collision avoidance, automatically operating control surfaces to maintain flight a certain level off the deck, or artificially limit performance due to the potential for the aircraft to react uncontrollably. And this is just actual FBW on real aircraft that don't have overtechnology aiding them. And, of course, since VFs tend to start out as aircraft, you can see this same kind of effect in Macross. Namely, when Shin is fighting against Nora with the Ghost Booster attached. In order to generate movements beyond the flight control limiters, Shin uses the pedals in conjunction with the stick to control the thrust vectoring nozzles. While it's not stated why this works (and it's obvious it was just for dramatic effect in real life) it's easy to extrapolate that inputting both hand and foot commands of the same kind would signal to the flight computer that the performance limiter for the demanded maneuver is to be bypassed. Otherwise, the flight control system would have only used spoilers at that speed to generate a much larger but gentler set of movements. Really the concept isn't foreign once you think about it. Manually controlling an F-16 would be impossible, because controlling all of its flight surfaces with the speed and degree of accuracy needed to maintain flight would outstrip a pilot's abilities. But, delegating direct control to a computer that is very good at taking in a bunch of numbers, crunching them, and putting out a bunch of outputs on the fly, and leaving the pilot to determine the tactics of how the plane needs to move while the computer determines the best way to make movement happens, it turns out is highly effective. It's not unreasonable to take it several steps further and apply that to giant robots which are inherently even more complex to control. It's certainly no more unreasonable than anything else in mecha anime.
  15. SchizophrenicMC
    I just finished rewatching SDFM a couple weeks ago myself. I think the part that shocked me most was just how reasonably vulnerable to attack the Zentradi were. They weren't super OP like the enemy super alien race often is, even in Macross. They have a few ace pilots, but they're overall just as easy to blow up as any cannon fodder VF. This revelation was especially powerful coming off the back of a recent viewing of Space Battleship Yamato 2199, in which the enemy's ships are nigh indestructible against conventional weaponry. (And generally makes me wonder: Wave Motion Gun or Macross Cannon, which is better?) On the topic of comparison, can I just say, Global was never particularly brilliant? Everything clever that they do is because somebody else thought of it, and the greatest errors they make are because Global rushes into things. The Fold drive being totally untested, for example, and its maiden flight transporting an entire island to Plutonian orbit. Or when the omni-directional barrier fails and destroys a huge area in Canada because he insisted on flying low over populated areas to get the citizens of the Macross (who are only there because of his tactical error over a year prior) offloaded. On the other hand, Hikaru was just as unremarkable a pilot as I remembered, though a fair bit clingier to Minmay than I recalled. She never really even leads him on. Literally every time she refers to him to a third party, he's always "my friend, Hikaru" or "just friends". Get the damn clue, dude. Especially as close as she and her cousin are, as creepy as that is. Of course, all that does change a bit after Love Flows By, but by that point it's obviously too late for anything meaningful to happen between them. The story has sold Hikaru's heart to Misa already, and frankly that's much more compelling. Those two actually get character development together, whereas Minmay spends all of her time with Hikaru self-absorbing while he gushes. But now I'm ranting. All in all, I think Macross really only suffers from typical 1980s anime problems. And, coming off of Space Yamato 2199 when I rewatched it, I can't help but feel like a true-to-form remake would be super good. And not a SEED-like retelling a la Frontier (or Gundam the Movie, that is, DYRL?)*, I mean an actual modern telling of the story with modern animation and sensibilities. Instead we're getting Love Live: All That VF Edition. At least the Ace Combat scenes look impressive so far. *I should mention I do really like Frontier- even the movies- and DYRL? remains one of my favorite anime films. But the fact that it's retconned as an in-universe film about Space War I says pretty much everything I need to. I want TV Macross with its space assault carrier attack Daedalus and copious amounts of blue paint.
  16. SchizophrenicMC
    Wow, they're gonna get the first few to you in 8 years, fully 30 years after the JSF Program was initiated. Incredible. What a fantastic turnaround time. At least they had the good sense to pick up some P8s. Hard to beat the 738 for cost-performance ratio, especially if maintenance schedules are based even loosely on the platform's long history of reliability.
  17. SchizophrenicMC
    Easiest way to tell: the tailgate. For 3 reasons: A) the release mechanism is inside the bed, like any shaved gate. That's fine for a one-off, but it doesn't sell well enough to justify tooling B) it's understyled. They got rid of the cut lines, which again means new tooling, and again means it won't sell well enough to justify that C) it has the old Toyota logo. Toyota isn't too big on heritage anymore. They've avoided naming anything a Celica for a long time, they dumped the Crown naming line, and they won't even allow brand continuity within their sub-marques. (SC anybody?) They don't like their history well enough to put hints to it into production. Not really a shame though. The wheels are TRD, all sorts of bumpers will exist for this truck, KC Hi Lites are just KC Hi Lites, and the only other special thing besides the tailgate is the roll bar, which I'm sure somebody could make you if you were so interested. Otherwise it's just a black Tacoma Extended Cab with manual transmission. Though, if I ever do end up with a new black Tacoma, remind me to get a big-ass TOYOTA decal made up for it.
  18. SchizophrenicMC
    I can dig it.
  19. SchizophrenicMC
    I spent enough time working in various segments of the automotive industry to know buying a German car is a very poor value proposition. They're very unreliable due to their overly complex engineering and construction. Leasing makes sense if you have the cash and credit to snuff it, but buying and especially buying used is a bad idea. Volvo is in the same category, even though it is Swedish. I hesitate to say "European" however, because Fiat exists. The ones that sell with any volume, anyway. You two are just mad we don't like Porsches, calm down.
  20. SchizophrenicMC
    In 480p with even more ads than YouTube. As an aside, Daisuki's stream sometimes breaks in my browser. I suspect one of my extensions is killing it- potentially AdBlock Plus, even if I disable it, because I can't be bothered to uninstall and reinstall Chrome just to fix the dependency issue ABP sometimes causes with ad-heavy streaming sites. If I was really interested in streaming IBO, I'd have already used a VPN to get to YouTube via a foreign IP. I don't care for buffering though.
  21. SchizophrenicMC
    Yeah, you and every "car guy" from here to Timbuktu. They've got some standouts, but for the most part, their cars aren't worth the premium because the engineering is so half-assed, everything is going to break and cost German sports car money to fix, even though 2 of the 4 cars they make now aren't sports cars, but a sedan and a diesel SUV. At least in the 80s, they were a sports brand that made sports cars. Even if those cars were either still air cooled, or had really stupid things like the right half of an Audi V8 and a crunchy transaxle that makes the cargo floor too high to be usable in spite of a massive glass hatch. And then they made that car for over 10 years, and it was even based on another car, that was based on another car. Porsche doesn't design cars, they evolve one car vaguely toward a better performing but much dearer version that will inevitably break down and cost the family fortune to fix. And I don't care for that supposed level of performance anyway. Anything where they switch to DSG "because it shifts faster than a man" is beyond my capacity to make frakks be given. Be honest: you really did it because it's a higher-margin item that lazy rich people will buy because you can tell them it's sporty, but you both secretly know they're only buying it because of the automatic mode, because these cars only sell in most of their markets because of the prestige somehow associated with the sports brand owned by the car company started by the Nazis and named after the guy Hitler personally contracted to make the iconic Nazi wagen. And seriously, the Cayenne has a diesel version! It's bad enough it's an SUV, they're tough to make sporty as it is, but a 3-liter diesel V6? And it's on the list of emissions-cheating VWs now? Guess it's time to kick the guy who just moved from Porsche to VW CEO. Or did we stop being quite so outraged by the time that news came out?
  22. SchizophrenicMC
    Whole rest of the world gets in it in HD for free on ad-supported YouTube. We get a broken 480p stream and super ads, or a subscription streaming service we can't justify paying for. And all that means for me is I'm not watching it on the medium that's going to generate revenue for them, but I spend enough money on Gundam merchandise, I don't feel too bad about watching it via a method that doesn't generate them any revenue. I figure, if I buy one kit from the series, the profit margins on that are greater than the potential revenues, even if I clicked through on every ad for even a 52-episode series. Of course, if they'd leverage their options in an attractive way, they could pad that just the bit more, but that's where I stand. So I'm not watching it yet. That time will come. And it will gain Bandai nothing, and it will be in 1080p. At least they got ad revenue from when I watched Build Fighters twice. (And a ton better margins from the BF kits I've bought, and even better margins on the ones I want to buy) And who knows, maybe I'll love the mecha design enough to buy some merch. The show itself is a toy commercial at its core, after all.
  23. SchizophrenicMC
    So. That exists. Hmm.
  24. SchizophrenicMC
    The 911 is meh. The 944/951/968 is pretty cool, but it represents the half-assery of Porsche engineering. Like the 911 represents the half-assery of both their engineering and design. I'm just not convinced by the circlejerk. "Prestige" my dick, Porsches are just sporty Volkswagens.
  25. SchizophrenicMC
    Wow, 200 HGs. Literally hundreds of gunpla. So, who wants to try and build 'em all?
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