Don't be so flippant. It's not exactly controversial to say that trained musicians will suffer more when listening to bad music, so why would it be different for any other skill?

One of the main gameplay mechanics is all about understanding orbital physics, and fiddling around with that for tens if not hundreds of hours will leave anyone with a grasp of it on an intuitive level.

Once the brain is that trained, is it so hard to believe that the process can take on an aesthetic experience? Ant that seeing it done wrong is like a false note in music?

Maybe, but I've got hundreds of hours of KSP under my belt and thought Gravity was fantastic. I'm a proud science and gamer geek, but feel that the urge to nit pick is the scourge of the geek community. I'll happily engage in a conversation about the compromises made in Gravity, it none of them spoiled the movie for me and I'm very glad it exists. If it makes movie goers more interested in Space and feel positively about space research and exploration, that's a wonderful thing.

I think they were saying that Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian and The Expanse are all good examples.

I'm confused about this too. The Martian (at least the book) has good science throughout. But in Gravity, the space shrapnel is moving much faster than the ISS, yet has the same orbit as it. I don't think that's possible, from what KSP has taught me.

I don't think it has the same orbit, I think it has a crossing orbit inclined relative to that of the space station. Imagine a belt of debris, much like the rings of Saturn, with the ISS on an orbit that passes through the ring twice on each orbit, on opposite sides of the planet.

It's all a matter of degree. The Martian also has creative decisions that the author semi-apologizes for because they made the plot work. (Such the idea that a windstorm on Mars could blow anything over.)

...relative to the usual "not even wrong" depictions that Hollywood screenwriters can crank out after barely passing high school physics.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

>Ant that seeing it done wrong is like a false note in music?

No, it's not the same because most movies are not meant to be a reproduction of the real thing.

No, but they are (usually) meant to be representative of the real thing, to the degree that it's recognizable. The more that representation diverges from reality, the more suspension of disbelief you'll bust for people that see it. Sometimes it can't be helped, or is one of a few things you are expected to take for granted for the plot, and that's generally okay with most people. Worse is when there's no real reason for it to be wrong except for lack of care. That's when it's really annoying.

> Are you not able to watch movies with guns because Rainbow Six taught you how guns work and now you're just too woke to suspend disbelief?

The people I know who shoot recreationally do get annoyed gun use in movies. Not "all movies are unwatchable", but OP specifically gave examples of movies he didn't object to. Sit down with a trap shooter and watch American Gangster - they'll probably grimace as the protagonist needlessly racks the gun over and over to make a cool noise.

If the rebuttal is "but that's real, not a game!", I think the point is being missed. Target shooting is not combat, after all. If someone spends hundreds of hours on a recreational version of something, they're that much more likely to be irritated by failures of research or realism.

I agree completely. The only recent movies that I can recall that got firearms handling even remotely correct were the two John Wick movies. Keanu Reeves went out and trained, and got good enough at 3-gun and similar shooting sports that he is actually competitive at the national level.

There is a line to be walked. Having a gun that never runs out of bullets doesn't fly in most movies, even if they'll fudge exactly how many are fired before a reload. This is due to the general public's level of knowledge on the topic.

It used to be very annoying to watch certain parts of movies when I was younger. Computers and the internet were treated so haphazardly, it was cause for celebration whenever a contemporary computer interface was shown that wasn't entirely bullshit. This isn't relegated to just these topics, I assume there's a wide swath of annoying Hollywood misrepresentations on topics where there's a sizable subculture, and interest enough to sometimes be included in popular media, but with enough obscurity to the general public that Hollywood can basically make up whatever they want about it and most people won't know any better. For example, I imagine a good majority of car chases and slides around turns probably look like crap to stunt and race drivers, professional and amateur.

The effects of this range fro harmless to possibly shifting popular consensus in harmful directions (I could argue that a lot of early fear regarding the internet was misplaced, and the expectations of the public were so off that it may have retarded some basic security awareness for some time).

The annoying part is that all too often it's just a small matter of knowledge that keeps the representation from matching reality, and the only thing that stopped it from happening was a lack of care on the director's part for the subject they were representing. That's what the real shame is, because how hard is it for a director to get someone to sit in and consult on those topics?

With guns, it has already been shifted in a harmful direction.

Suppressors are safety equipment, not badass silencers that let assassins shoot in near total quiet. But because the public only knows the movies, if you want to get a suppressor for your gun you need to pay 200 dollars. Imagine if we made it so you had to pay money to buy a muffler for your car, because Hollywood kept having cars with mufflers running dead quiet.

Or another one is bullet lethality. Handgun bullets make tiny holes in things without a lot of punch, so there is virtually no chance a single bullet from a pistol is going to knock a bad guy down. Maybe if you get very lucky and nail him in the precise right spot in the spine or brain, but otherwise he's still going to be alive and fighting for minutes or even hours. The police aren't putting 15 rounds into a suspect because they're dicks (well, they might be dicks I dunno) but because handgun bullets aren't very good at stopping people. You can only rely on volume of fire and hope you get a good shot to the central nervous system. Heck, even if you annihilate someone's heart the guy's still got about 10 seconds (called the 'dead man's ten') of useful oxygenated blood to work with before he's incapacitated - more then enough time for him to raise his gun and take you with him.

> it was cause for celebration whenever a contemporary computer interface was shown that wasn't entirely bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msX4oAXpvUE

Computer/Hacker Movie inspired GUI: http://geektyper.com/

I remember hackertyper from way back when, but I just spent about 10 minutes with a shit eating grin on my face as I played with the different things on geektyper, it nails the vibe spot on.

Oh please. This is an extremely vapid "stop liking things I don't like"/"not liking things I like" take. And an accusation of "nothing but loser nerds signaling their knowledge in public" is particularly rich coming from someone whose username is a Futurama reference -- a work no less subject to the same (equally vapid) accusation of its appeal being "look at me getting these leet nerd references".

How about art with pretenses towards realism/naturalism (which is not all art, nor should it be) can be more enjoyable for living up to that? And learning something is not a hostile act of self-indulgent performance by the learner, even when that learning might change their perspective on a piece of entertainment media.

Your attitude is pretty dismissive. I don't think it's crazy to say that once someone understands some principle better, they may become more aware of the excessive artistic freedoms some producers take in twisting reality to make their plotline work. And in general, I don't see what's the point of gratuitously attacking people like this, it's very unpleasant.

I had a real problem teaching Newtonian Mechanics to students who got most of their Newtonian Mechanics from movies. Their intuition about motion in free-fall was all wrong. Imagine if movies just got this right as a matter of course, and gave even uneducated people correct intuition.

I believe that constantly seeing mega-structures fail incorrectly (e.g. CG buildings falling over) actually contributes to 911 conspiracy theories.

EDIT> It's also a cool feature / talking point. Uneducated person watches a space movie. "Huh, why is the ship pointing backwards, etc." <-- this can serve as a hook for learning.

> I believe that constantly seeing mega-structures fail incorrectly (e.g. CG buildings falling over) actually contributes to 911 conspiracy theories.

The two biggest 911 conspiracy believers that I know are both involved in CGI for their day jobs.

Eh, knowledge of a thing means suspension of disbelief is ruined and broken by basic inaccuracies unless the media tries to handwave this away.

Star Trek does lots of this with "inertial dampeners" and their "deflector shield". It's total handwaving, but at least they did it. It helps sell it, like "oh, ok, well... I guess that makes sense?"

Much like most movie and TV "hacking", or even basic programming is totally irritating (to the point it's a trope now). Same deal, different subject.

Exactly. I think you can hand wave most things, and invent your own rules for how the universe works, including magic, aliens, FTL travel, teleportation, resurrection, etc.

But there needs to be at least a cursory hand waving, and the hand waving and the resulting rules must be logical and not contradict each other.

Although hand waved premises can set up the plot (magic exists and there is a school for magic kids) it's not really fun when the plot is advanced by hand waving new things as they are needed, and the hand waving should preferably just be background things like moving from a spaceship to a planet or walking around in space - in a budget friendly way.

I personally have a problem with anti-gravity spaceships, unless the other technology is at least Star Trek-, Star Wars- or preferably even Culture level.

> Oh boy, this again. Are you not able to watch movies with guns because Rainbow Six taught you how guns work and now you're just too woke to suspend disbelief?

A fun game to play in most action movies is count how many shots are fired before the protagonist has to reload. I wish I had one of those magic magazines.

Watch out for those magic magazines though. They have a tendency to disappear in dramatic moments, so you may suddenly find yourself with no magazines and one bullet in your gun at the exact time you need rounds the most.

lol, you say this in a place where any on-screen programming that isn't Mr. Robot is considered buffoonery.

Wow, cool, 30 minutes and two comments in and we're already tearing each others' throats out. God, I love the Internet.