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They used CGI to fake the moon landing.

?? What?

You may remember that the first moon landing happened in 1969. Surely an example of CGI as-was in 1969 might be more appropriate. Assuming that CGI even existed back then?

I was a student then doing a summer job at a holiday camp (Butlins, Filey) and I managed to be watching the first live film of the 'first steps' - when the broadcast film was shown upside down. Picture quality was certainly pretty bad by later standards.

Geoff
 
You have to remember that a real-time video signal from 250,000 miles away was really pushing things.
I recall that my grandmother refused to believe that the TV broadcast was real. She thought it was some sort of staged play.
Recall that "Men into Space" was less than a decade before then.
 
That screenshot of Tomb Raider is not even CGI. The pre-rendered cut scenes are, but not in-game. People should get facts right before posting. Even a joke does not work otherwise.

Oh, and what's the context anyway?
 
I'm here for the dorky takes on a light-hearted meme. Keep 'em coming!
burn-elmo.gif
 
rittwage said:
Watch the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". Released in 1968.

That will give you some idea of what CGI was available at the time.
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I don't believe there was any CGI in 2001. The wireframe animation of the AE-35 unit, the Orion and other craft cockpit displays were all hand drawn. The HAL displays were coloured celluloids on 16mm film projected from the rear.
 
People seem to be using "CGI" (there's a C in that acronym for a reason) interchangeably with "special effects" here. I think that may be part of the joke in the OP, but for the record, ray-tracing was in its infancy in 1969 and most experiments with computer-generated video involved wireframe plots of varying complexity. And no, 2001 didn't use computer graphics - even the stargate sequence was done with good old-fashioned camera trickery.
 
Bringing the conversation here full circle - anyone willing to help user reinhardtjh get his equipment shipped from Brunswick, GA can go ahead and pick up two lightly used Symbolics 3640's from the same seller. The Symbolics 3640 Lisp "L-machine" computer has a fascinating architecture worthy of its own thread, but more to the immediate point, the Symbolics Graphics Division was responsible for some early CGI, like 1984 Star Trek III console, and the 1986 short "Stanley and Stella in: Break the Ice". Symbolics used AI algorithms to model the birds in flight, for which Lisp was a good fit at the time. No news on whether they were involved in the moon landing, but plenty of people probably spaced out to the 1990 Mind's Eye video which popularized the video and other early examples of CGI.
 
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I'm definitely enjoying the commentary more than the original joke post. So great.

1944GPW said:
I don't believe there was any CGI in 2001. The wireframe animation of the AE-35 unit, the Orion and other craft cockpit displays were all hand drawn. The HAL displays were coloured celluloids on 16mm film projected from the rear.
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Even the small details I appreciate. Like, the double-sided tape on the pen stuck to rotating glass for the stewardess to grab, giving the illusion of zero-G. When I watched it most recently, I still didn't know how they did it until I looked it up :P
 
bsd64 said:
No news on whether they were involved in the moon landing, but plenty of people probably spaced out to the 1990 Mind's Eye video which popularized the video and other early examples of CGI.
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Got several of the Mind's Eye videos and other "random CGI set to New Age & trance" collections on Laserdisc & VHS. A neat little pleasure from a bygone age :D
 
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