I vote faked.
-
Your Blogger
Chris Mooney is host of the Point of Inquiry podcast and the author of three books, The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America. He was recently seen on MSNBC's "The Last Word" discussing "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science," and recently wrote for The American Prospect magazine about how the reality-based community is moving to the left.
For more info see Chris's bio and events. You can friend Chris on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter. You can also stream Point of Inquiry, or subscribe via iTunes.
RSS feed for The IntersectionMy Books
Copyright © 2012, Kalmbach Publishing Co.
Privacy - Terms - Reader Services - Subscribe Today - Advertise - About Us
August 8th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Definitely fake. This would be easy to make with off the shelf cameras, computers and software.
August 8th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
C’mon. The guy coming out of the pool ain’t the same guy racing down the slalom.
Nice job, though! Doesn’t have to be real to give some pleasure.
August 8th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
It certainly looks real, but I am really bothered by the tiny size of his target. If he were off by just a tiny amount, he would have crashed into the ground or, worse, the support platform for the water. Just a tiny bit of error in his motion down the slide would have been enough to alter his trajectory with fatal consequences. Moreover, there’s no plausible procedure he could have followed to insure that the target was properly placed. Even sending a dummy down the slide would not have produced the same results, because the dummy would not have been able to use tiny maneuvers to keep himself on track while going down the slide. So this leap was definitely an extremely risky undertaking.
However, the video appears to be absolutely real. The video appears to be continuous. The jumper is clearly a human, not a dummy: he moves in a human-like fashion while in the air.
I timed his flight and he was in the air for two seconds. I estimate the slope of the launch platform to be about 40º, which would be about optimum for this kind of effort. but with a 40º launch angle, and 2.1 seconds in the air, he would have hit the ground at a speed of about 20 m/s, or roughly 40 mph. Now, imagine jumping out of a car going 40 mph and hitting a water pool the size of the one shown — do you think you’d be able to stand up within a couple of seconds?
There’s another problem with the video. The slide is placed on bare ground. Imagine traveling across bare ground in a vehicle at, say, 20 mph. You’d expect a very bumpy ride. How could he possibly maintain his central position in the slide with all those bumps.
Although the video looks quite real, the physics leads me to conclude that the likelihood of this guy’s success was extremely low — much less his survival.
August 8th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I just watched some other videos including one at the cited website, and now I’m not so sure it’s faked. There definitely is a dummy on the ground, so they must have run a lot of tests. There’s some instrumentation on the launch ramp, as well as an anemometer, with the data lines running into a laptop computer. He makes some last-minute checks of the data on the laptop before the jump.
I now believe that the event shown in the video is plausible.
August 8th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
It is well done, it looks natural and they paid considerable time to detail but the speed of the second part (after where the first part of the track ends safely in the grass and is hidden from view) is way too fast. It think in the final editing they made a compromise and speeded up the first part too to make it look more continuous, because that to doesn’t compute with normal Earth gravity. But is nice work!
August 8th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I just did web searching and found an argument that the water wasn’t sufficient to lubricate him all the way down. However, I had a realization: what if they dug a shallow trench in the ground to act as a guide channel? The two water bearers both carefully aim their water for dead center in the slide. If they did indeed dig a guide channel, then the aerialist’s path would have been controlled and there would be a high probability it would work for him.
On the other hand, a pool of water one meter deep would not provide much in the way of cushioning for his landing, especially because he lands feet first. I would guess he’d lose only a few mph during his traversal through the water, meaning his feet hit the wall of the pool going maybe 35 mph. That would be the equivalent of falling feet first from a height of about 40 feet. That would be about four or five stories up. You jump off the top of a four-story building into a pool of water 1 meter deep and see if you walk away.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
The “daredevil” is Bruno Kammerl and he’s selling his “megawoosh/ softslide” idea to attact investors via a viral: http://www.mach-es-machbar.de/
August 8th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Except for those several frames around 0:11 where the body is conveniently obscured by a grassy knoll. That seems a bit suspicious to me.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
[...] Vía Discover/The Intersection [...]
August 8th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
The obscuration of the aerialist is unavoidable. Remember, the water slide must first go down, then it must level off, and finally rise. This requires a dip, unless you set up the ramp to extend all the way to the lowest point in the arc, which would require a much larger ramp. If I were he, I too would seek out ground that gives a good approximation of the perfect arc.
The point that continues to bother me is how he walked away from that landing. Unless that water pool was built to absorb the impact, it just doesn’t look possible. I would have much appreciated it if the video were accompanied by other video showing the entire setup. Indeed, given the cost of the undertaking, they really should have had at least three cameras on the event, one at each end and the one in the middle.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Absoltly faked.
- There would be too much friction
- The height that he got from the momentum he gave is rediculous
- No body in theyre right Fing mind would take on something like this.
August 8th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I’m willing to bet that it’s fake! They would never try anything that dangerous! IMO
August 8th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
And, please correct your title!
August 8th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
And, the momentum that he gained was absolutely ridiculous!
August 8th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
And the momentum that he gained was absolutely ridiculous!
August 8th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Quasar, the physics of the situation are plausible. Yes, he could have gained the altitude he did. Consider: I calculated that he reached a maximum altitude of about 15 feet above the lowest level of the slide. His initial altitude above the lowest part of the slide is obviously much greater than 15 feet. So yes, he lost a lot of energy to friction, but there was still enough to get him on the trajectory we see.
I still believe that it is more likely faked than not, but the only strong argument I have against the evidence in the video is the impact — and without seeing the full rig, I can’t be sure that he hasn’t something more than just a pool of water.
August 8th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I just found another video of this guy in his early preparations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GvaDOwk_ik&feature=related
In it, he’s in a kind of “water slide gerbil exercise wheel”. He’s sitting on the plastic as a ring about 3 meters in diameter rotates underneath him. He’s got some instrumentation on the thing. Now, if I were planning something like this, I’d do exactly the same thing to get good measures of friction at various angles. And the rig he set up clearly took a lot of time and money to build. The slide material appears to be slick plastic on top of foam about 4″ thick. It could well be that he preformed a groove into the foam so as to obtain an accurate guideline.
This has tipped my judgement in favor of the “genuine” hypothesis. My reasoning is that this guy put a lot of effort into designing this thing and testing its components before the stunt. Which leads us to ask, “If he intended to fake the video, why would he have gone to all the trouble to get the physics perfect?”
August 8th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Erasmussimo, you are starting to sway me….
August 8th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I am not saying they put a lot of effort in it to make it seem real. I am impressed but not convinced in the least. I first thought that in the first part of the video Kammerl really slid down, but the much better clip at the megawoosh site does make that seem highly unlikely. You can clearly see while the camera zooms out, how the fabric is draped over irregularities in the terrain which tilt the “track” but then Kammerl nevertheless goes in a straight line over it. That is not possible. So I have to conclude the first part of the video is fake too. That shouldn’t have been necessary.
I am learning a lot about virals though. Obviously I had a lot to learn.
And by the way, where would the water come from when the ramp goes up?
August 8th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
@Erasmussimo:
That video sealed it for me – I recognize acting when I see it, even in a foreign language.
The guy in that video was clearly acting.
Best argument though, these days more than ever, is that if something seems to good to be true, it more than likely is.
August 8th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Albert, your argument about the irregularities in the terrain is answered, I think, by the possibility that the slide is more than just a thin strip of plastic. If it consists of a sturdy backing, a bit of shaped foam, and then the waterproof plastic, it could both keep him in line and smooth out the irregularities in the ground. That’s certainly how I would build it. Still, it wouldn’t be possible to get a perfect curve, and slight irregularities in the ground should cause him to bounce around, which doesn’t seem to happen.
You have an excellent argument about the lack of water on the ramp. It may be that the water is needed only for quick acceleration at the outset, and once he gets moving the friction from the air is more significant than the plastic friction. After all, in the other video with the gerbil exercise wheel, he seems to experience very little friction. It could be that the combination of the suit and the plastic make for very low friction. It could be — but I don’t know.
Here’s another argument for the “fake” hypothesis: the oscilloscope in the preparation video. What the hell does he need an oscilloscope for? You use scopes to measure high-frequency phenomena, things taking place at at least 50 Hz. Yet this problem has nothing going that fast. There’s a remote chance that he’s using it to measure the motor speed, but there are much easier ways to measure that. Moreover, he’s got this big bright LED that reads “5.00″, which is some sort of milestone for him. I think he’s claiming that he has traveled 5 kilometers on his track — which doesn’t make much sense to me.
I’m really confused at this point. I’m not sure what to think.
August 8th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Dennis, the fellow was definitely performing for the camera, but remember what he’s doing: he’s explaining that his dream is to waterslide down the Matterhorn and he has set up this apparatus in support of that effort.
However, a close examination of his equipment reveals mostly negative results. On the plus side, he’s got a splash screen protecting the instrumentation — that’s something that only an experienced investigator knows to do. On the minus side, he’s got some sort of three-cable doodad on the near side of the wheel, and I cannot imagine what it’s doing. He could measure the linear speed of the wheel with it, but he doesn’t need three cables to do so.
It looks like he has a dual-output power supply underneath his laptop, but why would he use an ancient machine like that? Nowadays you can get power supplies one tenth the size of the monster he has.
Another huge oddity: he’s handling the equipment while barefoot. Anybody who knows anything about instrumentation knows about floating grounds and the ease with which you can electrocute yourself when you’re running electricity all over the place.
The display on the laptop looks overly graphical to me. If he were really compiling technical data, it would show just numbers. Instead, it looks like there are lots of rectangles and dark spots and other graphical elements.
I’m starting to lean back towards the “fake” hypothesis — but mostly, I just can’t decide.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Erasmussimo, yes it could be that he uses a foam-backing with a slight cut out in the middle. I wasn’t really refering to pebbles or small bumps though, but the fact that slide over its entire breadth actually does tilt a few times and that means that you will see some slowing down caused by the energy that it takes to change direction, even if the line of sight prevents you from seeing that actual change of direction, and the same goes for the bumps near the lowest point: up and down are also changes in direction.
It was actually 5000 km he claimed he slided in his wheel, which means that if the diameter of that thing is about 3m he has to have sat through 500.000 rotations. At a fairly optimistic rate of about 10 s per rotation, he would have been about 58 consecutive days busy sliding on his ass. So I feel confident to (again) say that he really put a lot of effort in all of this.
The oscilloscope is there because it looks sciency I guess, but one could imagine it being used to monitor some converter between the solar panel and the motor that drives the big wheel or something like that.
Indeed he doesn’t seem to need water in the wheel, but that is inconsistent in another way, namely with how he himself explains the working of “softslide” on his site. Then again maybe it rained a lot during what most have been most discomforting weeks anyway and it just happened to clear up when they reached the 5000 kilometers.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
That solar panel is another suspicious element. Why does he have a big solar panel when it’s overcast? Yes, you can pull some power out of a big solar panel even when it’s overcast, but certainly not enough to power that wheel. So he has to be using line current to power his rig, and so we have to ask, “Why the solar panel?”
I find it hard to believe that the assembly went through 500.000 rotations. It would have worn out by then! The wheels, the bearings, the motor, the big wheel itself, would have been subjected to enormous wear and tear. I just can’t imagine it lasting so long.
I found on his website the statement that the jump distance was 35.2 m. That fits nicely with my calculations. However, I still can’t understand how he could have landed without injuring himself.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
One other thing: he obviously put a lot of money into this leap. Yet why did he have just one camera capturing it? Cameras go down. You always put multiple cameras on something like this just in case something goes wrong with one or in order to get additional information.
August 8th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
My first impression was ‘fake.’ Yes, the video is continuous, but the jumper is obscured twice, once at the bottom of the slide, and then again when he lands in the pool.
So the conclusion I reached (at first) was that the jumper was ‘switched’ with a dummy, who went off the ramp and into the pool, then another switch occurred when the guy in the pool jumped out. (He’d been there all along, I figured….)
But it’s not that simple. I looked again, full screen, slow motion. The ‘dummy’ flying through the air moves his arms around to steady his flight, then tucks his legs in just before the landing. Looks like a real person, after all.
Then he gets out of the pool and takes off the helmet…is that blood I see? Yes, it is. He’s bleeding, badly, around the mouth and nose. At one point when he’s in profile you can see blood not just dripping, but practically running off his chin!
If they faked this jump, they could have faked it without any injury. I’m starting to think this is real, but I’m not 100% sure yet.
Rt
August 8th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
I think you’re mistaking his mustache for blood. In other videos it’s quite clear that he has a mustache.
But yes, there’s no question that the thing flying through the air is a real person. The arm motion and the leg motion is just too human-like to fake with a dummy. If any faking is being done, it’s not in the aerial part — and if he really is flying through the air, why would they fake take-off and landing? They really did get him in the air!
His website claims that he’s using a special combination of neoprene and plastic, which makes sense, but it also says something about magnetic repulsion — which is completely bogus. I see no magnetic coils, no supercooled circuits, no high-power equipment.
August 9th, 2009 at 5:25 am
[...] to the Discover Magazine blog for the [...]
August 9th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I think it’s faked. First off, there wasn’t enough water to get that much speed, but more importantly, wouldn’t you use multiple cameras to capture every inch of the slide and pool? I mean the man disappears on the slide allowing easy CGI and wouldn’t the pool warp more upon impact? It reminds me of this video of an airplane landing with one wing.
August 9th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Erasmussimo Says:
August 8th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
“I think you’re mistaking his mustache for blood. In other videos it’s quite clear that he has a mustache.”
If you take a closer look at his face when the helmet comes off, you’ll see it, from his nose all the way down to his chin. It’s bright red. His mustache doesn’t look that way. Then right around 34 seconds, as he steps away from the pool, there’s blood running off his chin. (This is an important clue — facial hair does not behave this way!)
You’ll have to watch it in full screen mode to see this — I completely missed it when viewing in a smaller window.
Rt
August 9th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
This looks like a job for Captain Disillusion!
http://www.youtube.com/user/CaptainDisillusion
August 9th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
#30 Roadtripper, have you been playing the file from http://www.mach-es-machbar.de/ because the quality is better.
You will see if you freeze the frames at the beginning and the end that the guy doesn’t have a moustache. He has a light moustache in the other video, with the wheel. Here it’s just shadow of his nose. Neither is he bleeding, his chin remains clean as a whistle.
Microsoft did a hell of job, it’s really well thought through, and they must have used a computermodel of the jump. But I still think they really overdid the cancellation of friction. But once you take that as a given it isn’t really determinable. Erasmussimo was right about that. But the site (in German at least) is pretty clear about it. So perhaps I should now be giving off a spoileralert.
Microsoft says Bruno Kammerl does not really exist. This is the text in the ad: “Mach es machbar – mit Microsoft Office Project 2007. Den Mann ohne Angst vor großen Ideen – gibt es ihn wirklich? Auch wenn Bruno Kammerl eine Erfindung bleibt. Die Zeit ist reif für neue Helden.”
Or in English: “The man without fear for big ideas, does he exist? Even when Bruno Kammerl remains an invention (literally), in this case a better translation is a fabrication, or was made up.. the time is right for new heroes.”
The domains are registred to microsoft as you can see clicking “impressum” at the bottom of the page. You could also click Elbkind GmbH and Okifilms to see the brains behind the trick: http://www.okifilms.com/microsoft-project-viral-teil-2/
So really, really well done!
August 9th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I don’t know. Here’s his bio on his website:
http://www.projektbuero-kammerl.com/ueber_mich.htm
If this guy is an invention, they’re really getting very elaborate. Moreover, Google Maps shows a real house at the address given for the fellow. I think that Bruno Kammerl is a real person. His bio is right for this project: he has an MS in materials science, which is exactly what is needed because the crucial factor is the friction between his suit and the plastic.
I remain undecided.
August 9th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Maybe you don’t read German, it is not my mother tongue either, but I am fairly certain that it does not leave much room for ambiguity.
Did you click on “oki films,” the company of the producer of these clips, Niko Hannack? You could click on the “OKI films” button at the top of the screen and then read the last sentence. Even if you don’t read German I hope you will be able to decipher the last sentence without too much trouble wherein the message is conveyed that since they put their latest microsoft viral on You Tube, about 350.000 people have seen it.
Behind “kunde” which is German for customer/ client, you can see that this viral was made for MRM and Microsoft, that is to say MRM Worldwide is a New York based advertising agency who were hired by Microsoft and they on their turn hired Hannack.
The director designs virtual moving bodies.
http://www.minh-duong.com/
And the guy who holding the camera is no amateur either. He makes his own, preferably funny commercials (or werbefilme in German.)
http://www.thorstenharms.com/thorstenabout.html
As to the question who plays the Bruno Kammerl part I don’t know. They also made a point of giving him a credible bio, but it seems he managed to leave no traces in the real world: http://www.geo.tum.de/forsch/forsch_inggeo.htm
Also someone else lives at the (real enough) address where Kammerl is said to reside.
I am absolutely certain.
August 9th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Yes, I saw the stuff from oki, and I noted that the cameraman was involved in some other projects as well. That in itself doesn’t mean much. Nor does the fact that Microsoft sponsored the project — they could have sponsored it as fake or as real. The translation you give is certainly a big factor, but I was still bothered. However, I just found the proof I wanted. I carefully examined the man’s flight frame by frame, and I found that all of the frames show motion blur for everything in the background, but no motion blur for Bruno. He’s quite sharp in all the frames, much sharper than anything else in the image. That decides it for me.
It’s a fake.
August 9th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
If it’s real, the guys that made it are dolts. They should have filmed it from above the slide pointing down while simultaneously filming it from behind the pool as well. Then they could have split the frame to show both at the same time.
I vote “dummy” flying through air with probably in excess of 20 takes to get it right.
The impact on a real person would probably break bones.
August 9th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
If you are even considering the idea that this is real, then you are insanely gullible. Viral videos of physically impossible stunts are becoming dime-a-dozen these days. They’re all over the internet. There’s the girl hitting a beer can with a golf ball, the guy surfing a shark, etc. etc. etc. They’re advertisements, aimed at selling products. It doesn’t take a frickin’ “scientist” to see this.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Wes, the fact that other people tell lies does not mean that this person tells lies.
Our next task is to figure out how they did it. I have already noted that the most important positive piece of evidence was the apparent limb motion of the body in the air. The best hypothesis, IMO, is:
There are two people: one going down the slide and the other in the water tank. The figure flying through the air was inserted manually by an artist. This hypothesis could be tested by carefully measuring the apparent position of the body as it moves through the air to determine if it really is following the basic physics of projectile motion.
The weakest part of the hypothesis is: why would anybody spend thousands of dollars on all that equipment in order to create this hoax? Is it really cost-effective?
August 10th, 2009 at 5:39 am
I really respect your open-mindedness Erasmussino, but I think you are missing the importance of the viral angle.
It changes entirely the purpose of the video. Whereas it is possible for me to imagine a mad and perhaps slightly suicidal but really motivated inventer who desperately wants to attract investors for his Earth-shattering idea with a death defying stunt, it is most definitely not credible to see it as a pretext to sell more Microsoft Project 2007 software.
Now you can no longer narrow down the calculations to try to determine if it was possible at all. Now as it were you must put yourself in the shoes of “Bruno Kammerl” and see if you would trust your life and limbs to mathematics. Undoubtedly you know very well that over a 35,2 m distance to land in an area about a square metre (you must land pretty precise in the centre of the pool, and then as you say earlier you’d still be very unlikely to suvive) you’d have a margin of error which is vanishingly low. Also you’d have to leave the ramp within a +/- 1,6 degrees angle and hope you don’t have to correct torque in mid-air, because that means the probability is very close to 1 that you’d be dead within the next 3 s. Since you have almost no friction while sliding (or you’d see a much slower acceleration) you’d have almost no way to correct even the smallest perturbations and you’ll know you won’t be alive anymore in the next 6 to 4 s.
So while it remains difficult (at least for me) to determine with absolute certainty without knowing the slopes, the differences in heights and so on whether a certain German inventer has been so incredible lucky as to use it all up for the rest of mankind forever, but it is possible to estimate the likelyhood of that, which is almost naught and then put that in the light of this video being made for Microsoft. That is the importance of the viral angle.
I agree with your virtual airborne Kammerl hypothesis and think the computer skills of the director might provide for an answer. You have many such video-trickery exposed, that’s not really a problem.
I don’t however see the cost of this campaign as an objection and I don’t know, but I strongly suspect from an advertising point of view this was a big success, money well spent. What puzzles me somehwat is why they would make the fake go so deep as to invent entire histories of a fake Bruno Kammerl and then state on that very site that this person is fake. Maybe it’s because of a legalistic technicality, I don’t know.
August 10th, 2009 at 6:15 am
Here is a description of how they probably faked it.
http://www.juicetheblog.com/2009/08/05/unbelievable-waterslide-compositing-walkthrough/
August 10th, 2009 at 10:38 am
A nice ski jump. Are you people oblivious to the skis the fellow is wearing.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Thanks, Mark, for the link. That really nails it. It particularly explains one tiny detail that had bothered me: why where the observers so far away from the water tank? If the aerialist was betting his life on hitting the water tank, why did they need to remain at least 30 m away? That seemed odd to me until I read about the threat they imposed upon the compositing process.
It also struck me as slightly odd that the dummy would be positioned so as to be obvious to the camera. If I were dragging the dummy back from a test shot, I would place him right next to the ramp, so as to avoid the possibility of tripping over it.
I have also come up with an alternate explanation for the apparently excessive expense and trouble to which the fellow went. He states in his “explanation of purpose” video that his dream is to build a water slide down the Matterhorn (that’s my very ignorant interpretation). He has detailed technical analyses of the slide material, and his exercise wheel setup is ideal for testing the durability of the material (using a dummy, not a real person). My hypothesis is that he really is working on a new water slide material, a composite of a durable low-friction surfacing with a shaped foam backing. His test rig on the ski slope is real; he uses it to test overall performance by launching the dummy down the slide and measuring how far it travels through the air. That gives him an excellent and easily computing measure of overall performance at different velocities. By launching the dummy from higher or lower starting points, he can get really good estimates of the coefficient of moving friction as a function of velocity — which in turn will tell him how much stress will be placed on the surface at various velocities.
August 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Oops, failed to complete the hypothesis:
So he really is working on a water slide, but somebody got the idea that he can get some financing by proposing a viral video in which HE is the one sliding down the slide, not a dummy. He gets money and lots of publicity for his project.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
If it were real (and they wanted us to be convinced) there would be more than one video. There’s no reason at all that the bucket guys and the pool guys couldn’t have been filming.
Also, the splash from the pool seems suspicious to me: more water should have been thrown forward given his forward momentum.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
“The display on the laptop looks overly graphical to me. If he were really compiling technical data, it would show just numbers. Instead, it looks like there are lots of rectangles and dark spots and other graphical elements.”
I couldn’t see the screen well enough to tell for sure, but it’s consistent with Labview (http://www.ni.com/labview/), which is an industry standard for data acquisition. I remember thinking something similar about wasted effort on graphics the first time I saw someone using it, before I found out how easy it is to use it to set up a front panel like that.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
it’s so obviously fake. the pool wouldnt catch you at that angle, he would either skip and flop out, or hit the backside of the pool so hard, break his legs. the ground is uneven, but he doesnt bounce up and down when he is sliding down. he wouldnt gain that much speed because friction would drag him down on the upramp. no one in their right mind would try it, because if you bump up and down or to the side just a little bit, you are going to miss your target. you can’t stop, you are done, with broken bones, legs, neck. If you notice how captain robbie kneivel jumps on ramps, his ramps are smooth, he doesnt take any chances. this is ridiculous.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I would say its fake but Ive seen people manage stupider things.
August 10th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
“Hey, ya’ll – watch this!”
I smell some Darwin entries coming up from people who watch this video…
}:-]
August 10th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Obviously faked. The splash at the end was way too small to be real. He would have splashed about 90% of the water out towards his direction of travel. Not to mention, he would have burst out the back of the pool of water. Completely plausible, but exceptionally dangerous,and exceptionally unlikely, and the ending splash gives it away as a clearly faked scenario.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I first saw this over at http://www.crZay.com. I posted my thoughts there but wanted to do more research and found this great site.
I agree with much of what is said here regarding this being a fake. I would like to add one thing that I also mentioned at http://www.crzay.com/giant-waterslide-jump/
“Sixth, the three buddies. One of them appears to be standing still at about 15.5 seconds and is about 110 feet away. He then appears at 23 seconds slowing to a stop to congratulate the stuntman. That means 7 seconds to do a 40 yard dash over uneven ground. Great running backs in gym trunks will do the distance on flat ground in 4.5 seconds. Average athletes can do the dash on a track in 5-6 seconds but they aren’t coming to a stop! They are in full acceleration the entire way and need to take 20-30 feet to come to stop. This amazing man does close to that speed on uneven ground and is at a near stop when we see him! His buddies are even faster since they are off screen at 15.5 and therefore are 10-20 feet farther back.”
August 10th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
The thing that bothers me most is the lack of movement in the sides of the pool given the force with which he landed.
We have an almost identical pool and even little kids jumping in from close by causes the sides to move quite violently and water to spill all over the place.
That combined with the fact that they chose to film from an angle that conceals part of the slide just makes me think FAKE FAKE FAKE!
However all props to them if I’m wrong.
Just my $0.02!
August 11th, 2009 at 3:03 am
Faked with a capitol F. Not only would he not get enough speed with that short of a run, but it actually appears that he gains more velocity after coming off the ramp.
.
Funny, but very fake
S
August 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
To go that distance in that small amount of time, the horizontal vector would be quite high, and even with 50 kilos of mass (very low estimate), the plastic pool would not contain the energy and most likely would have ruptured. The post-landing video of the pool shows almost no motion in the sides.
I’ve seen these pools, and even jumping in and/or vigorous movement will cause the flexible walls to undulate. After the initial “splash”, seen at a distance, the immediate zoom-in shows the pool standing relatively still.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuWqpMhANZ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M21_zCo6UM&feature=related
Definitely a fake.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Too much overthinking; the launch end is higher than the starting end. Impossible to reach.
August 11th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Ok, let’s suppose it WAS faked.
There is now a worse problem to explain.
How did he stop without going off the jump?
If you say it is fake you have to say the part of him going down the ramp is fake as well.
By choosing the optimal angle to extend his flight as far as possible, he burned off a lot of the energy as drag during his flight.
Mathematically it is possible to pinpoint where he will land. The science of artillery bombardment allows dropping shells on targets up to twenty miles away with similar if not greater precision.
August 11th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Here’s a way to film it:
Film a ramp on a similar hill next to a lake.
Then film a ramp on a hillside and cut the flying guy onto that background.
The splash in the pool was too small, so they just dropped him from ten feet into the pool and cut that in at the end.
August 12th, 2009 at 6:27 am
Come on people, a body hitting the water that fast and hard would split that pool like tissue paper. Look on youtube, there is at least one video of a like pool splitting just because a fat guy jumped in. You people that have doubts about it being faked need to remove yourselves from the gene pool.
August 12th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Fake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is to many flaws to go into. Just one to start with. Two buckets of water lubricant for that distance. Give me a break. If more than a few believe it, then it proves how bad a job our schools are doing.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:26 am
If you go to the website posted at the end of the youtube vid there is a tremendous amount of advertising to MicroSoft office products. Please use common sense here: MicroSoft backing = loads of money = superbly faked viral video. Definitely fake.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I have a definitive answer. I actually emailed the fellow and here is his response:
thank you very much for your mail.
You are absolutely right: Megawoosh is not to be taken too seriously.
If my jump would be real, I certainly wouldn`t have done it myself
Kind regards from Munich
August 13th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
[...] Remember that fellow on the waterslide who seemed to fly 115 feet before landing in kiddie pool? [...]
September 19th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
If he were really doing it, hitting water at that speed wouldn’t stop him instantly like that, he’d have either skipped on the surface or if the water were big enough go at least 40-50 feet at a minimum. Hitting a small pool at that speed wouldn’t be much different than simply hitting the hillside if he had piled up a few pillows on it. And for those who are saying that it couldn’t be faked, Have you never been to a movie?
February 19th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
[...] Via Discover [...]