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From: wolit@mhuxd.UUCP (Jan Wolitzky)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation,comp.graphics
Subject: JAL 747 crash film
Message-ID: <7237@mhuxd.UUCP>
Date: 4 May 88 17:51:35 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 33

Last night (Tuesday, 5/3), WNET-TV (PBS, channel 13, Newark)
broadcast a 1-hour documentary entitled	(I think) "The
Crash,"	a report on the	Japan Airlines Boeing 747 crash	in
1985, the worst	single-plane disaster in history.  The film
included an amazing computer-generated animation:  the
producers took the radar track of the plane, provided by air
traffic	control, and added a terrain elevation map of the
route, filled in by color Landsat imagery.  They then took
Boeing's CAD/CAM data on the 747, overlaid by the JAL paint
scheme,	and used the information recovered from	the plane's
digital	flight data recorder to	generate a God's-eye view
(from above and	behind)	animation of the plane,	in its
actual flight attitude,	flying over the	actual Japanese
terrain	it passed on its way to	its demise.  They even
depicted external damage to the	plane visible before the
crash, information gleaned from	a computer-enhanced snapshot
of the plane (taken by someone on the ground along the route
of flight, as he noticed the plane flying erratically),
which determined that some 60% of the plane's vertical tail
had been blown away when the aft pressure bulkhead failed.
(The bulkhead failed because Boeing had	incorrectly repaired
damage to it caused by a hard landing several years
earlier.)  The animation was accompanied in real time by the
actual recording of the	radio conversations between the
plane and ATC.	The Dutch rolls	performed by the plane after
losing most of its vertical stabilizer and its elevator
hydraulic control lines	were sickeningly believable.

This impressive	show will be re-broadcast at 2 a.m. on
Monday,	5/9 (the listings will show it as being	very late
Sunday night, of course).
-- 
Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ; 201 582-2998; mhuxd!wolit
(Affiliation given for identification purposes only)