Real-time animation of Titanic sinking will amaze you
So you saw Leo and Kate in “Titanic.” That’s one depiction of the 1912 mariner tragedy that claimed more than 1,500 lives.
Here’s another.
An animated re-creation of the sinking began making the rounds last week, and people are mesmerized by it.
With voice-overs from the crew, the re-creation lasts as long as the actual sinking: two hours and 40 minutes.
CNET has dubbed it “gripping.”
“The video exposes just how long it took the crew of the Titanic to realize what was happening, and the poor efforts made to ensure as many people as possible,” writes London’s Mirror.
The animation comes from the folks behind Titanic Honor and Glory, a video game under development. They posted the video to YouTube last week on April 14, the anniversary of the sinking.
“This is our full-length animation of the Titanic sinking, beginning with the iceberg collision and ending with its disappearance. The point of collision is at 1:06 in the video,” the developers write on YouTube.
“This is a complete animation; not a short animation that was slowed down to match real time.”
The project’s developers are working with historians and descendants of Titanic survivors to create a detailed record of that night.
The video begins about a minute before the ship hits the iceberg. It marks when rooms were flooded, lifeboats lowered, distress rockets fired, the orchestra began to play, all while the ship sinks deeper into the cold North Atlantic.
The animation, notes Digg.com, shows no people. More than two-thirds of the people onboard died.
“It’s as if an empty ship is sinking, which somehow makes it even eerier,” says Digg.
Chris Plante at The Verge calls the video “downright plodding,” with 45 minutes passing without any hint that the ship is going down.
But ignore the temptation to skip to the end, he warns. (There’s no surprise ending.)
“I recommend muting the video, and leaving it open in a tab, checking in now and then,” Plante advises. “Having the ship's sinking actually play it in real time is more affecting than any other film I’ve seen on the Titanic, even that one from 1997 that launched (and sunk) a thousand ships.”
This story was originally published April 18, 2016 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Real-time animation of Titanic sinking will amaze you."