something about blasters (couldn't think of a better title)

[LeftWingExtremist]

Erm just something I wanted to discuss. Aparantly Wookiepedia suggests that blasters fire at FTL speeds (article below). Its common knowledge that the damage doesn't physicaly come from the visable portion of the bolt. The article does give more water to the 10 light minute ranges of venerator guns. Is there anyway this can be verified (my internet searching skill is pretty poor). I also think that hyperspace technology might have something to do with it (anyway its already suggested that hypermatter technology is based on hyperdrive). Just a thought

anyway ill post the article.

Blaster Mechanics

Blasters were a considerable improvement on the laser design, however. The bolt fired from a blaster was not just light. Some gas used to generate the beam was energized to a plasma state and fired with the highly energized light at supra-light velocities. This combination of light and plasma formed the deadly bolt fired from a blaster. Because the bolt traveled at faster-than-light speeds, in some cases, targets could show signs of damage before the visible portion of the bolt hit. This was because the visible portion, was a side-effect of the actual, lethal bolt.

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[Stark]

Christ. Wookiepedia gets even dodgier.

[Omega-185]

Something that has always bugged me about the part of the bolt that does the damage being faster than the visible part is how can jedi only deflect the visible part (as we see them do in the movies) but not get hurt or killed because they didn't deflect the invisible faster bolt?

[Surlethe]

The wookieepedia is a wiki; seriously, it's going to be plagued with the same problems the Wikipedia faces. If you take anything from it at face value without the requisite truckload of salt, you have gullibility issues. The portion you quoted is nonsensical, introducing a FTL component to the beam to explain the invisible portion when all you need is an invisible component which is slightly faster than the visible bolt. If the bolt traveled faster than light, you should see the damage before the trigger is pulled.

Something that has always bugged me about the part of the bolt that does the damage being faster than the visible part is how can jedi only deflect the visible part (as we see them do in the movies) but not get hurt or killed because they didn't deflect the invisible faster bolt?

Presumably, the invisible component is closely identified with, but not congruent to, the visible portion. In some cases, it may travel slower than -- and in some, faster than -- the visible bolt. I think some have suggested the visible portion is a tracer as much for identification as anything.

[K. A. Pital]

Isn't that just wrong? Blasters don't deal damage ahead of the bolt, turbolasers do. That, and blasters are referenced as projectile weapons in AOTC nov.

[Mad]

Isn't that just wrong? Blasters don't deal damage ahead of the bolt, turbolasers do. That, and blasters are referenced as projectile weapons in AOTC nov.

There have been some instances of damage-before-impact with blasters (Luke's hand being hit in RotJ being the most-referenced example).

The author may have confused "lighspeed" with "faster than light," as many have done when reading explanations about lightspeed turbolaser behavior.

The most damaging component still propogates at a sublight velocity for blasters, however, as damage still occurs after the bolt is fired and does not instantly strike something else after deflection from a lightsaber. (In other words, the most common blasters behave quite differently from the most common turbolasers.)

[LeftWingExtremist]

The wookieepedia is a wiki; seriously, it's going to be plagued with the same problems the Wikipedia faces. If you take anything from it at face value without the requisite truckload of salt, you have gullibility issues. The portion you quoted is nonsensical, introducing a FTL component to the beam to explain the invisible portion when all you need is an invisible component which is slightly faster than the visible bolt. If the bolt traveled faster than light, you should see the damage before the trigger is pulled.

Fair enough thats why I asked whether there was anyway to verify if this is true or not (as i said mt internet searching skill are poor).

Well star wars databank says nothing, and neither does my VDs or ICSs (unless I missed something) say anything so is spose it's just wiki.

[Omega-185]

Something that has always bugged me about the part of the bolt that does the damage being faster than the visible part is how can jedi only deflect the visible part (as we see them do in the movies) but not get hurt or killed because they didn't deflect the invisible faster bolt?

Presumably, the invisible component is closely identified with, but not congruent to, the visible portion. In some cases, it may travel slower than -- and in some, faster than -- the visible bolt. I think some have suggested the visible portion is a tracer as much for identification as anything.

Except we have consitently seen jedi deflect the visible part and only the visible part so I still have trouble reconciling what we have seen on-screen and the non-visible bolt theory. Also while some bolts do damage ahead of the visible portion many, if not most do damage with the visible portion. This leads me to belive that thoses are individual special effects errors and nothing more.

[Covenant]

I think outside of specific discussions that it is hard to justify the 'invisible portion does damage' blaster/turbolaser effect. This is a movie afterall, and the syncing with the special effects is more at fault than a well-veiled attempt by Lucas to create a beam that has several invisible components. I think the author's intent is more important than what single-framing allows us to see.

But, if you still wish to justify it, you could consider the visible bolt as the actual transmission medium of the attack, but that there is a field around it. Blasters and Turbolasers are obviously not lasers persay, and probably don't even fire light at all. They don't have lenses, they have big holes that fire some sort of fluid or gas, and it glows, but blocks light. Iiotically, it's probably best described as a plasma that we're seeing, but that the actual damage isn't coming from the plasma round itself but from a field of some variety that uses the plasma as a transmission medium. This could be used to explain lightsabers being interactive with each other, but not causing a lot of thermal effects, and the similarities with blasters as well as how lightsabers bounce them.

So a turbolaser's magic magnetic field being emitted from the plasmic body we see does the damage by shearing forces, and hits first, the same way a magnet's field precedes the magnet itself. The TL bolt is a big hot ball of gas, but isn't doing the primary damage of it, and is just essentially the rocket engine to get it where it needs to go.

And a blaster, which is smaller, has a weaker field, and the magnetic shearing effect is much smaller and quite possibly restricted to barely outside of the field itself. The bolt may even be held into the shape we see it because of the magnetic field itself and some sort of field 'core' at the head or center of the bolt pulling the plasmic body into that shape. So when a lightsaber, which would be a monopole emitter of whatever magical magnetic field we're discussing, slams into the blaster bolt it richochets away, dragging the visible part with it and doing no damage AND not exploding the way a blaster bolt does on normal surfaces.

Phew. Just thougth that up at this very moment. Of course, the real answer is "because ILM screwed up and Lucas didn't give a fuck about science," as is the real answer for most Star Wars film-related questions. But assuming that you want to explain every visible messup as an intentional phenomenon of fact, this might suffice.

[Cykeisme]

Attention newbies: Look up "suspension of disbelief" approach toward analysis of the materials.

Also, look up Mike Wong's page on the feasibility of "plasma weapons."

[Covenant]

I've read both, if you intended those at me. In reality, there's no real reliable way to determine what the nature of the beams are--and that's straight from the Turbolaser analysis page--but I was just proposing a bizzare theory based on wild speculation for if you just HAD to justify it some manner in line with some manner of understandable science, how might one do that.

As Omega said, these are SFX errors, nothing else. That and inconsistant natures of the weapons themselves.

And if he was directing it at the Wookipedia article writers themselves then yes, as it stands, without my hypermagical field keeping the plasma crunched together with extreme forces, plasma weapons are incredibly silly and unrealistic devices. Just because we don't on hand have a better name for what we see than a plasma effect doesn't make it so.

[K. A. Pital]

Luke's hand being hit in RotJ being the most-referenced example

Really? Gotta watch my DVD closer.

In other words, the most common blasters behave quite differently from the most common turbolasers

On a side note, do the SPHA beams propagate at C? Me thinks they don't, however, I did no precise measuring.

[Mad]

And if he was directing it at the Wookipedia article writers themselves then yes, as it stands, without my hypermagical field keeping the plasma crunched together with extreme forces, plasma weapons are incredibly silly and unrealistic devices. Just because we don't on hand have a better name for what we see than a plasma effect doesn't make it so.

On the other hand, if they had a hypermagical field that can contain plasma, then you'd have a weapon in and of itself. Additionally, the same hypermagical field would be very useful as a shield.

Page 3 of the AotC:ICS gives us a better model, though:

Energy weapons fire invisible energy beams at lightspeed. The visible "bolt" is a glowing pulse that travels along the beam at less than lightspeed [...] The light given off by visible bolts depletes the overall energy content of a beam, limiting its range. Turbolasers gain a longer range by spinning the energy beam, which reduces waste glow.

The obvious objection is that turbolasers don't hit instantly upon firing. The explanation for this is that the beam rapidly ramps up in power for the first few moments. So while the beam is ramping up, the chain-reaction that causes the glow is propogating along that weak beam. After a few moments, the beam is at full power and damage is done to the target. (A graph of power over time would have to be on the order of f=x^3, or an even higher power.)

This concept and the debate around turbolasers can be found in more detail in this thread: Observing the behaviour of turbolasers and blasters. (Things have changed some since that post but the basic concept is there.)

[Covenant]

Yeah, that would work too. And yes they DO have a hypersupermagical field as a shield. It's called their shields. Hehe. Which deflect incoming fire as best it can, and can be angled, much like a magnetic field!

While I like your idea too, I'm just messing with the words explaining the things. All the calculations and science in the world still can't make up for the fact that these weapons were not one quarter as carefully created by any the movie people as they have been picked apart and analyzed by everyone else.

[Mad]

Yeah, that would work too. And yes they DO have a hypersupermagical field as a shield. It's called their shields. Hehe. Which deflect incoming fire as best it can, and can be angled, much like a magnetic field!

Of course, the field I'm talking about would be a more on the "invulnerable" side of things. I'm talking two ships of equal power having no chance of ever bringing down the other's shields.

While I like your idea too, I'm just messing with the words explaining the things. All the calculations and science in the world still can't make up for the fact that these weapons were not one quarter as carefully created by any the movie people as they have been picked apart and analyzed by everyone else.

And I'm not really an elf from Hyrule, despite what my avatar shows.

Is there any particular point you're trying to get at by repeating the most obvious conclusion that can be reached about turbolasers?

[Covenant]

That they act unlike any other weapon system? No, I was just stating it as part of my post. If I wanted to edit it down to the barest reply I could I could have edited it. I wasn't insulting your intelligence, if that's what you're getting at. No reason to consider it suspect behavior, I was merely trying to find some common ground, since it's the bizzare, difficult-to-quantify nature of turbolasers that allows for the large variety of interpertation and speculation as to how one can reconcile their onscreen performance and their otherwise stated nature.

[Alan Bolte]

What's needed, I think, is an examination of the newer SFX, especially from the opening battle of Episode 3. There's really very little room for this sort of error with computer generated animation. I haven't found anything so far, but I haven't looked terribly hard.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

What's needed, I think, is an examination of the newer SFX, especially from the opening battle of Episode 3. There's really very little room for this sort of error with computer generated animation. I haven't found anything so far, but I haven't looked terribly hard.

This was talked about in one of the old threads when RotS first came out, so I don't have a link to it, but when one of the droid gunships shoots at Yoda's platform on Kashyyyk, you see impact effects a frame or two before the visible portion of the shot hits.

[Spartan]

Alan Bolte wrote:

What's needed, I think, is an examination of the newer SFX, especially from the opening battle of Episode 3. There's really very little room for this sort of error with computer generated animation. I haven't found anything so far, but I haven't looked terribly hard.

It wouldn't matter anyways as you would have to conclude that the weapons were different or at minimum operated on a slightly different mechanism. SOD forbids us from dismissing the effects seen in the OT.

[Alan Bolte]

Yesss...but it sometimes helps to examine the matter without fully suspending disbelief. One must be careful not to misinterpret patterns, their cause is not always the simplest known correllation. Besides, it never hurts to have more data points.

[Darth Wong]

All the calculations and science in the world still can't make up for the fact that these weapons were not one quarter as carefully created by any the movie people as they have been picked apart and analyzed by everyone else.

So? That's just as true for any dialogue or text description of the weapons as it is for the visual effects. You either choose to take the material seriously or toss it out in favour of something you just made up or pulled out of your ass (like your telepathic reading of "author's intent").

[Covenant]

Yesss...but it sometimes helps to examine the matter without fully suspending disbelief. One must be careful not to misinterpret patterns, their cause is not always the simplest known correllation. Besides, it never hurts to have more data points.

As Wong says above, it's really more about if you want to take it literally or just call it a movie. If you fudge around inbetween and say this image is to be taken as literal but that one is not literal, and they're all on screen sharing the same space, then you come into problems. For the purposes of discussing the effects they seem to have in movies, therefore, you need to take them all literally or all not.

Otherwise the movie evidence is irrelevant, since you're tossing out the anomolies anyway. It's not precise, and it may lead to odd conclusions, but it's similar to having a character with a handgun that is pictured shooting a beam of energy straight through a ship. If you were to analyze the properies of such a gun you'd be forced to accept that it is something insanely powerful, regardless of all of the intent and context clues, or ignore the only time the device is used and assume it's something else. One is writing logic around a phenomenon, the other is rewriting the phenomenon itself. Tossing it out becomes especially problematic if it's exhibited as often as the time of damage and time of impact discrepancy, the odd way they interact with lightsabers, and the exotic beam weapon firing mechanism employed by the death star.

If you do that you might as well toss it out completely.

So while normally I'm all for looking for a variety of explinations for things and not making any serious attempt at shoehorning it into reality, if you -do- wish to find a way for it to fit, it should at least fit all the available indisputable canon. Analyzing newer SFX is good, since it not only allows for several technical and budgetary limitations to be removed--such as letting them do CG graphics instead of models, something a Sci-Fi novel does not have to work within to explain it's fiction--but it also gives them a chance to go back and correct errors.

If the "visible portion slower than real portion" effect consistantly holds throughout a DVD or Film copy of the newer movies and special edition originals, then it's still canon enough to merit debate. If it's been removed as an artifact of ILM's imperfect syncing system (or done intentionally for various practical reasons not germane to the discussion) then going back and re-analyzing it might be in order. It would be a retcon.

I hope that all made sense. I'm trying to offer the opinion that it's important to consider it literal, or figuritive, but not both at once, without trying to sound like I do take it seriously. In this case I don't, which is why I offered my colorful explination on Wednesday rather than strictly adhere to well-covered ground.

[Darth Wong]

There actually is a middle-ground of sorts, in which one recognizes the possibility of FX errors the same way you would recognize the limitations of a camera (the lens flare effect of sunlight on glass is not interpreted as a real object in 3D space, for example), but the problem is that you need a way of objectively determining whether an FX error was in fact an error, as opposed to being deliberate (in my experience, most people who classify something as an "FX error" do so with no real criteria at all for determining that this is in fact the case).

Appealing to the author's ignorance of science is a complete red-herring; what the author creates is what he creates, regardless of whether he knew what he was doing.

[apocolypse]

As Wong says above, it's really more about if you want to take it literally or just call it a movie. If you fudge around inbetween and say this image is to be taken as literal but that one is not literal, and they're all on screen sharing the same space, then you come into problems. For the purposes of discussing the effects they seem to have in movies, therefore, you need to take them all literally or all not.

Wong beat me to it, but your statement isn't quite accurate. You can treat the movies litterally while realizing flaws will occur. Perfect example being the Millenium Falcon's differing sizes.

[Covenant]

Yeah, that's why I recommended trying to compare the new movies, the special editions, and the originals to see if any of the behaviors discussed were cleaned up. Since at that point ILM is responsible for creating the world we see more than any writer is, and we're looking to objectively base analysis on the most canonical references shown, the author's intent in this case is secondary to the work created by the FX team. Second-guessing and claiming it's an error is irrelevant even if it was. It's only a real 'error' if it's inconsistant, as you said. If all but one turbolaser impact actually reached the target before there was any sort of pyrotechnics, we'd probably assume that one was an error.

As for the Falcon, that's a good point. We could just as easily say the effects we all saw were the same, but I think the general consensus has been to treat it as fact instead. -edit- I mean about the blasters. I didn't mean we'd assume the falcon had routinely changing size.

Anyway, we all know that. I was just saying, if none of the weapons in episodes 1, 2 and 3 demonstrate this behavior, it's more debatable. If there's no evidence against the "burn before touch" behavior however, then it's still hard to rule it out of this analysis, since it's there.

For my own information, is there any reason the burn-before-hit is important? If everyone had decided to see it as a failing of the medium, would it change anything, or are there materials I'm not aware of that make something more of this than just the SW-vs-ST debate?