Pixel Scaling & pressumed heights/lengths

[Peoples_General]

Maybe I should've named this as "Real-life structure scaling sprites"?

Okay since there's apparently "geniuses" who are able to scale ships and what-not on the show using presumed dimensions and pixels...

Lets see if such a technique can work on REAL LIFE images.
Measure the MetLife building at the end of Park Avenue here using pixel measurement. No googl-ing of it's actual height... allowed.
http://www.maj.com/gallery/EliteMang...k_city_004.jpg
I took this pic while driving in Manhattan, stopped at this red light of course.

And here... the Buddhist temple/pyramid in Java island, Indonesia. The temple is called Borobodur... Looking at this pic, you think it's base is about as big as the Ha'Tak...
http://www.maj.com/gallery/EliteMang.../borobudur.jpg

Im not gonna post the full pic, as they're quite large. And please don't move this thread as it deals with the exact and precise "Science" of pixel measurement...

Mainly, I wish this to be a counter-point to the effectiveness of measuring ships using people, the presumed height of people relative to ships, and etc.

[jhkplaya888]

there both big ....yah someone tell me how big the stargate ships are ROAR

[Peoples_General]

What's this? No one wants to pixel measure the pics?

I guess I proved my point!

[Mister Oragahn]

Maybe I should've named this as "Real-life structure scaling sprites"?

Okay since there's apparently "geniuses" who are able to scale ships and what-not on the show using presumed dimensions and pixels...

Lets see if such a technique can work on REAL LIFE images.
Measure the MetLife building at the end of Park Avenue here using pixel measurement. No googl-ing of it's actual height... allowed.
http://www.maj.com/gallery/EliteMang...k_city_004.jpg
I took this pic while driving in Manhattan, stopped at this red light of course.

And here... the Buddhist temple/pyramid in Java island, Indonesia. The temple is called Borobodur... Looking at this pic, you think it's base is about as big as the Ha'Tak...
http://www.maj.com/gallery/EliteMang.../borobudur.jpg

Im not gonna post the full pic, as they're quite large. And please don't move this thread as it deals with the exact and precise "Science" of pixel measurement...

Mainly, I wish this to be a counter-point to the effectiveness of measuring ships using people, the presumed height of people relative to ships, and etc.

I'm afraid that your pictures, though nice, prove nothing.

Measuring things according to people is perfectly fine and valid, as long as done properly. You need to consider perspective, which is often forgotten for hasty measurements, and I consider that it's a flaw. That's why I try to get the shots where there perspective has less chances to trump the eye, and where the lines can be easily drawn.
There's also the problem of simple wrong scalings because of the VFX teams.
I made measurements of asgard vessels from people's dimensions, and though the calcs were correct, the simple fact that the people were wrongly scaled against the decor, the background or else, made the final results unacceptable. It was quite annoying to realize that after several step scalings, I was nearing completely absurd sizes.

It's particularily tricky to scale things in Stargate. What's relatively safe to scale is the stargate, and the dimensions are constant (they have to anyway). The dimensions are known.

Transport rings already begin to be tricker. I scaled a couple of them, and results can easily get you half a meter of difference. This is unacceptable considering that such a system has to be standard. So we have to use an average size.

But when it comes to ships, it's the ****. There are only a very few examples where it relatively works. For example, when you're dealing with one shot ships, like Osiris' shuttle (The Curse) or Apophis' modified Death Glider (Children of the Gods) which was more than 20 meters wide (I'll have to check my calcs, and that was based on ring calculations, so you already see the problem).
Tel'taks or Alkeshes are fairly safe to measure as well. They're quite constant.
The Daedalus seems to be constant, and thus are the hive ships (when compared to the Daedalus).
Wraith cruisers are already harder to get, since in Condemned, they looked rather small in comparison to their counterparts when flying to the sides of hive ships.

The worst ships to scale are the biliskiners (Thor's main vessel before they switched to the O'neill), Ha'taks (some of them are completely of the edge, like in Enemies for example), Ori warships, the Prometheus, for the reasons everybody knows.

If the VFX teams had always respected a proper scale for the ships, and only moderately tweaked the camera focus and zoom for drama purposes, then measurements wouldn't have been so painful to get.

[Peoples_General]

Whatever. And... what are you "afraid" of? I really find that expression I sometimes here, "..Im afraid.." to be very pointless and would imply cowardice to a person not familiar with such idioms.

Oh and those pictures just proved that the science of pixel measurements doesn't really work with reality. Unless you wanna give those two pics I posted a try....

But... onto the more important things..
Here's something which can put to rest yours and everyone's annoyance with the scaling. Mass mail the guys that make StarGate to have them put out books or something that gives OFFICIAL documentation on how large things like the StarGate, spaceships, and etc. are. This should prevent annoying debates on fan forums.

It'll save the pixel-measurers, and StarGate viewers alike a lot of headache. It's bad enough there's inconsistencies in the story telling. They should at least try to reduce the inconsistencies in the special effects department.
There should be a standardized size rule to establish scale of the ships and etc.

For example, regardless of what VFX team comes in and bumbles around with the graphics. They should know that certain objects have to be this big.
Atlantis City-Ship = 21km
Ori ship = 8km
Wraith Hiveship = 5.5km
DSC/BC-304s = 450m
and so forth...

Is it that hard to establish some guidelines for the VFX teams to work on? Rather than one group guessing on the work of the previous group?

I also still don't understand WHY the StarGate franchise hasn't come out with books the way StarWars, StarTrek, Babylon5 and so forth has done. We have a large fan base, it's the longest running Sci-Fi series ever...