Star Wars planar ring explosions

I've noticed this topic of conversation come up before, so I just thought
I'd add my two pence worth...

Why does everybody hate the planar ring explosions so much? I think they
look pretty cool, and speaking as somebody who has had to produce just such
an explosion themselves (you should see the amount of C4 explosive that
required 8-) ), a spherical explosion just does not look as good.

Although a ring may only be a 2 dimensional object, a sphere, no matter
which angle you look at it in three dimensions becomes a circle (or
ellipse), and you wouldn't get the same feeling of three dimensions from
it, especially since it occurs in space and there is no other reference
point to get a feel for direction. A spherical explosion works on a floor
because you can clearly see where the explosion intersects with the floor,
thus giving the explosion depth.

All these rifts in space and so on which are so popular in Star Trek
generally just lie in a plane, and nobody complains about them.

Or am I missing the whole point of this argument and a spherical explosion
isn't correct either? What should it be?

Sean

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In article <199907202010.VAA25167@>, "seans" <seans@> wrote:
They are wrong. You get the planar ring effect on a surface, like the
ground.
Exactly. But in space there is no floor.
Many of us avoid Star Trek because of excessive technobollocks. The "rifts
in space" which always become two-dimensional are one of the worst examples.
They were poor in "The Black Hole", and have been poor ever since.
Spherical. If you are near enough to the sphere you do get depth when the
debris comes past. You may even see a ring, as the faster parts come out.
But that ring will appear to be a circle, since it is actually a sphere.
When it reaches you, of course, there will be secondary effects.

One of the most dramatic effects they could try in some of this space-opera
would be to cut the sound. It worked well in 2001, and it has never been
done since. The dramatic power of silence is very much neglected. That
way, when the explosion happened, you could see your Death Star (or
whatever) explode quite soundlessly, watch this CIRCULAR ring expand, then
as the edge of the spherical shock-wave came near you'd see local things
(like your ship's antenna, or nearby ships, or whatever) get hit, before
being hit by a wave of sound that would give the sub a good workout.

In real explosions, you can see the sound. That is what the ring is in
Earth-bound explosions. In space the only thing that would carry sound is
the shockwave of an explosion, and seeing the speed of sound would give
scale to the whole thing.

But that means light, then sound.


Simon

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