![r/flightsim icon](http://web.archive.org./web/20240803063208im_/https://styles.redditmedia.com/t5_2qspy/styles/communityIcon_274154al50p31.png)
Start up is fun, descent is fun, flight planning is fun, landing is fun. Everything in between? Horrid, what am I supposed to do for an hour? Tempt fate?
Start up is fun, descent is fun, flight planning is fun, landing is fun. Everything in between? Horrid, what am I supposed to do for an hour? Tempt fate?
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
Anything related to aircraft, airplanes, aviation and flying. Helicopters & rotorcraft, airships, balloons, paragliders, winged suits and anything that sustains you in the air is acceptable to post here.
For example I enjoy flying Delta with the MD-82 or Fenix A320 but with the upcoming 777-300ER I might switch it up to American or United.
I tried A pilots life 2 but the schedule restrictions don’t work for me, sometimes I want a short flight and sometimes a longer one and it usually doesn’t line up with what apl2 offers me.
Curious how others approach this. Do you buy certain airports because their hubs of your favourite airline? Do you fly a super strict VA or do you just choose what tickles your pickle on a particular day?
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
Hello once more, I promise you this time it won't be lengthy. However, there are new and relevant details regarding the Airliner videos.
Previous threads:
Part I:
Part II:
Part III:
------------------------
Stereoscopic video
This is something already explained in my previous post:
Some users found out that the original satellite video is actually a stereoscopic three dimensional video. What does this imply? The image is composed from two different cameras pointing at the same location, resulting in a three-dimensional footage. Just like in certain movies where you require 3D glasses to become fully engaged, similar to the case of Avatar.
Source:
Forget about the NROL-22 location
The key information discovered pertains to the Satellite responsible for capturing this footage. We invested significant effort into tracking the NROL-22 Satellite, yet it's possible this turns out to be irrelevant.
During my research, I stumbled upon this enlightening video:
Its description says:
Can you see this animation in 3D? Test your depth perception with this stereoscopic view of storms over the Tennessee River Valley on July 11, 2018. GOES East (GOES-16) is on the left, GOES17 on the right.
The GOES-17 satellite (launched March 1, 2018), is currently in a test position, viewing Earth from 22,000 miles above the equator at 89.5 degrees west longitude. Meanwhile, GOES East is positioned at 75.2 degrees west longitude. The relative proximity of these two satellites means that we can create stereoscopic, or three-dimensional, imagery by placing views from each satellite next to one another.
To view the animation in three dimensions, cross your eyes so that three separate images are present, then focus on the image in the middle.
Please note: GOES-17 imagery is preliminary and non-operational.
Credit: NOAA/CIMSS
What does this mean? That the airliner footage could have been taken from two different satellites.
Look at the very bottom of the video, it even have a similar text showing the relevant data:
So why does it says NROL-22 at the bottom of the AIRLINER video?
This user explained it clearly:
Therefore, if we are committed to the idea that NROL-22 took the video, it simply does not work.
However - thats where the post from 3 days ago by comes in. It is very plausible that NROL-22 served as a relay for much lower satellites, either SBIRS-GEO 1 (aka USA 230) or SBIRS-GEO 2 (aka USA 241)
The wikipedia page for SBIRS-GEO 1 () describes it as follows:
"The SBIRS satellites are a replacement for the Defense Support Program early warning system. They are intended to detect ballistic missile launches, as well as various other events in the infrared spectrum, including nuclear explosions, aircraft flights, space object entries and reentries, wildfires and spacecraft launches."
I believe this is a perfect match for the video. And NROL-22 certainly cannot be the satellite taking the video.
So imo, if the video is real, a SBIRS satellite relayed information to NROL-22, and the relay is shown in the screengrab. And the fact that this fits so well and is such an obscure detail, to me, points towards the video being real
What does this mean?
That NROL-22 is the central hub receiving the information from two other satellites. I made a mockup to illustrate this:
In this case NROL-22 acts as a relay satellite:
More stereoscopic examples:
Here is a video showing how this stereoscopic software would be used by the military, I linked to the relevant timestamp:
If something of this nature can be displayed to the public, consider the classified technology that the military possesses.
Here is another instance of software capturing stereoscopic satellite data:
------
Weather satellites in the area purposely turned off?
During the period when the MH370 flight was in the vicinity, a recent inquiry has revealed that certain weather satellites were deactivated because of "keep out zone operations"
Source:
Footage capturing the MH370 airplane contrails?
This video was posted on March 12, 2014, merely four days following the vanishing of the MH370 airplane. Allegedly captured in proximity to the plane's disappearance site, it depicts a plane contrail abruptly concluding in mid-air.
I attempted to reach out to this user on Twitter to inquire about the video's source, but I didn't receive any response. Perhaps someone else will have better luck:
Drone angle shot:
Alright, there has been considerable debate regarding whether an MQ-1C could capture footage resembling what is seen in the FLIR video. Interestingly, the recently released drone footage by the Department of Defense displays a remarkably similar perspective:
You may also observe difficulty in tracking the incoming plane, characterized by slight fluctuations similar to those seen in the airliner video. The cameras on these drones are under manual control by a drone operator.
Airplane heat contrails:
Certain experts on Reddit argue that the video is falsified due to the thermal imagery not accurately displaying airplane contrails as heat signatures. However, this isn't a universal rule, as demonstrated in this particular video:
Plane interception?
Was the MH370 pilot attempting to intercept another flight? Based on data from FlyRadar, the deviation trajectory closely resembled that of the UEAU343 flight. Is this purely coincidental?
Disinformation campaign?
I came across this amusing tidbit on Twitter. Two separate accounts focused on UFOs both made identical comments, dismissing the Airliner videos as fraudulent:
Eglin AFB strikes again?
---------------------------------------
Folks, this is gaining momentum. Hopefully, prominent figures like Coulthart and Corbell will weigh in on this soon.
EDIT: Added information about weather satellites being turned off.
A place for major news from around the world, excluding US-internal news.
A place for major news from around the world, excluding US-internal news.
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
I've decided to create a new post that brings together a comprehensive overview of insights gathered from various Reddit discussions on the Airliner videos. My goal is to continuously update the post with any new information, findings, or analyses that come to light.
In light of the suggestion to create a new post, I'd like to share the original comment that sparked this idea:
()
March 8, 2014
00:42 MYT: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 departs from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Malaysia, en route to Beijing Capital International Airport in China, carrying 239 passengers and crew members. (around 6 hours flight)
01:19 MYT: The last voice communication from the cockpit is made, with the words "Good night, Malaysian three-seven-zero."
01:21 MYT: The position symbol of Flight 370 disappears from KL ACC radar, indicating the aircraft's transponder is no longer functioning. --
--The plane changes its course towards the west--
02:22 MYT: The last primary radar contact is made by the Malaysian military. --
--plane continues to fly for 6 hours--- (Plane was scheduled to land at Beijing airport at 06:30 MYT).
08:19 MYT: Last automatic satellite communication between the aircraft and Inmarsat's satellite communications network.
--- Sometime between 08:19 MYT and 09:15 MYT the plane disappears---
09:15 MYT: The aircraft does not respond to an hourly, automated handshake attempt.
Possible trajectories after the plane stopped responding:
Some possible trajectories were estimated after the last known location which was at 02:22 MYT,
These trajectories were calculated based on the Inmarsat pings which occurred until 08:19 MYT, the only information these pings provide is the distance between the plane and the satellite. Meaning that additional data and estimates were used for a possible trajectory of the plane.
The generally accepted flight trajectory is not 100% accurate, since is based on plane-satellite distance and they just did some calculations for possible routes based on the Inmarsat pings:
)
Simplified graphical representation of the aforementioned details: --
----------------------------------------------------------------
Videos:
Video 1 - FLIR Footage:
Video 2 - Satellite Perspective:
Side-by-side comparison of both videos:
Original video via Wayback machine:
Clouds movement:
The clouds actually move, and it is not a simple horizontal / vertical movement some might expect from a 3d rendered scene object. The clouds are moving realistically:
Interesting post from a 3D VFX artist about the difficulty of creating 3d realistic movement clouds:
Clouds shows accurate illumination from the flash:
Another proof of this not a static background, is the clouds are affected by the lighting flash:
Source:
Matching Plane Identity:
Indisputable Match - Plane depicted corresponds precisely to the Boeing 777-200ER model, akin to the MH370 aircraft:
Source:
Drone depiction:
FLIR source appears to be a General Atomics MQ-1C Grey Eagle with 2 additional camera sensors under the wings. Some of the credibility questions on the reported footage are that it cannot be from underneath the nose, as the camera placement appears on MQ-1L platforms.
Source:
Satellite video location:
This is the location of the alleged satellite video, based on the GPS coordinates appearing at the bottom of the video:
GPS coordinates appearing in the video: 8.834301, 93.19492
The distance between the MH370 flight last known location and the satellite video location is around 340 miles. Around 6-7 hours passed between the two, a theory could be that the plane was flying in circles for 6 hours or was just flying without a defined flight course.
Alternative satellite video location:
A user pointed out that the GPS coordinates could also be:
-8.834301, 93.19492
Yielding a different location for the video, 1100 miles south of last known plane location:
Satellite angle shot:
According to the satellite video data from the bottom of the video, the source of this footage is most likely Satellite NRO L-32, launched in 2010:
Alternative proposed satellites are:
NROL-22:
NROL-23 - Used for oceanic surveillance.
Some redditors have asserted that the satellite footage should depict an overhead perspective. However, it's worth noting that not all satellite imagery provides a directly top-down view. In situations where the satellite's position isn't precisely directly above the target, the resulting shots might exhibit a slanted angle. For clarification, consider the following example:
Another examples of satellite footage, this time from an overhead angle:
Thermal Coloring:
Some people have suggested that the colors presented in the thermal imagery are atypical for military footage. However, it's important to understand that the thermal coloring represents a configurable parameter for heat vision cameras. This feature is standard and can be adjusted even after the recording has been made.
Round UFOs claim (grain of salt, dubious source):
This news article claims that rounded UFOs were detected in the vicinity of the MH370 flight before disappearing:
The first peculiarity is seen in the lower left of the screen. A round object appears in the vicinity of Flight 370 (and amid several others), which the radar does not automatically "read" as airplane. Suddenly, this round object take the form of a "plane" on the radar screen and accelerates at a rate of speed that must be at least five times the speed of the surrounding planes, heading eastward, over the South China Sea - and just as suddenly the object stops and appears to hover in place."
Three Unidentified objects detected by chinese military satellites:
Interesting article about unidentified objects near the flight path:
But debris was found:
Interestingly, it should be noted that debris associated with the MH370 flight was discovered. Taking into account numerous abduction narratives, if one were to entertain the notion that the plane was taken by UFOs, it is conceivable that it was subsequently returned to a different location, but maybe just the plane was returned.
And even if the plane was not returned and was indeed abducted and caught on camera by the military, there is a high chance that some fake debris would have been planted.
Some articles with doubts about the veracity of the debris:
Theory of pilot Zaharie crashing the plane into the ocean:
This theory is based on the Flight simulator data obtained from the pilot home's computer, this article says:
"..there was a very odd route which ran up the Strait of Malacca, turned south after passing Sumatra, and then flew straight down into the Southern Indian Ocean before terminating in the vicinity of the seventh arc."
There is actually several simulated flight paths the pilot played on the simulator:
"it could just mean Captain Shah was practising emergency landings on his home flight sim."
Analysis of the pilot simulator data:
This Guardian article says:
"It is not known whether the simulation was made by Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, but the simulator was in his home. "
"The ATSB said confirmation of the plotted course did not prove theories that the captain planned a deliberate murder-suicide. "
Pilot background:
"Zaharie was 53 years old and became a pilot with Malaysian Airlines in 1981, 33 years before MH370 went missing. He’d flown for a total of 18,423 hours and his co-workers considered him one of the best captains the airline had."
In my opinion: If the pilot wanted to crash the plane, why fly the plane for 7 hours after turning off its transponder?
Why change his planned route drastically?
An elaborate hoax:
The aircraft's disappearance took place on March 8, and the video in question was first posted on May 19. The individuals behind this potential hoax had a span of 72 days to develop these videos. Their process involved:
Crafting two photorealistic videos depicting the same scenario from distinct viewpoints, each incorporating diverse effects and frames per second (FPS). This could be achievable if utilizing a 3D-rendered environment.
Compiling GPS data and classified satellite insights to ensure alignment with the MH370 flight specifics.
Creating lifelike cloud animations within the rendered scenes, a technically challenging task. Unlike common 3D-rendered clouds, these clouds exhibit realistic shape changes influenced by wind.
Capturing the video through filming a screen. If this is a leaked video, this method could be the most plausible means to avoid obtaining the original classified footage, a potentially more intricate endeavor.
Designing software capable of manipulating the mouse pointer to dynamically alter GPS coordinates while panning across the screen, subsequently capturing the changes.
This intricate fabrication process suggests a meticulous endeavor, prompting us to consider its implications with a nuanced perspective.
The disappearing effect is crappy in the thermal video:
The teleport effect in the thermal video doesn't look very good, and I agree with that view. Considering the amount of work put into making this complicated hoax, you'd think they would have tried harder to make the disappearing part look more believable. I think this actually makes the video a bit more believable. It makes you wonder what this kind of technology really looks like.
Additionally, remember how Guillermo del Toro described his UFO encounter. “It was so crappy", and it was ‘horribly designed’.
This is because were are used to slick and cool designs on Sci-Fi TV shows an movies. But we never really encountered a Sci-Fi element in real life. We have no idea how it might look.
"Why are military drones and satellites observed in the vicinity of the plane?"
The possibility of drones and satellites being in proximity is reasonable due to the aircraft's extended flight duration of 6 hours after going off radar. This timeframe allows ample opportunity for their deployment. Additionally, a U.S. military base on Diego Garcia Island, approximately 2000 miles from the location depicted in the satellite video, could be relevant.
Apparently there were also two major training missions going on in the area, operation and operations , involving joint US-Indo-Pacific military exercises.
"Why does the satellite footage show daylight when the plane lost contact at 02:20 AM?"
It's important to consider that the final Inmarsat ping occurred at 08:19 MYT. This indicates that the aircraft was still in flight at that time, transitioning into the daytime hours. This confirms a duration of approximately 7 hours of flight after the transponder was turned off at 1:21 AM.
After seeing many fake computer-generated images before, one thing that usually stands out is a noticeable oddness that makes you doubt them right away. But this specific case is different. For me, a gut feeling makes me think these videos are real.
You may say this video is "Too crazy to be true". Folks, we are already into crazy territory. Remember a guy named David Grusch? claiming we have non-human craft and non-human bodies for 90 years? Yeah, nothing sounds so crazy anymore.
Edit: The mystery continues:
How&Whys article on this post:
Anything related to aircraft, airplanes, aviation and flying. Helicopters & rotorcraft, airships, balloons, paragliders, winged suits and anything that sustains you in the air is acceptable to post here.
r/travel is a community about exploring the world. Your pictures, questions, stories, or any good content is welcome. Clickbait, spam, memes, ads/selling/buying, brochures, classifieds, surveys or self-promotion will be removed.
Given some incidents that have been in the news lately regarding turbulence, I think it would to give some safety tips about seat belts to all the travelers out when they're traveling via commercial airplanes.
I'm a very frequent traveler, with over 1 million lifetime miles on United Airlines, and I've been to all seven continents. I'm also an accomplished skydiver, with over 2,000 skydives and a world record (largest group jump at night).
So if there's two things I know, it's sitting on airplanes for long periods of time, and jumping out of them.
I also often travel with my parachute. But when things get bumpy, I'm not reaching for my parachute in the overhead, I'm making sure my seat belt is on. In fact, on a commercial flight a parachute is utterly useless. I can't think of a single incident in the past 40 years where a parachute in the cabin would have saved a person. It's about as useful as a bag of laundry. Expensive laundry. (I only travel with a parachute because I'm going somewhere to skydive.)
So seatbelts.
We're told over and over (and over, and over) on flights to keep our seat belts fastened. It's easy to drown it out. Many of us on this subreddit can give the safety briefing we've heard it so many, many times.
But... Seatbelts are probably the most important safety device we can use on an airplane. You would think perhaps that a parachute would be great, but as I said, it's useless. The seat belt is golden. And that's true for all stages of flight (taxi, takeoff, cruise, approach, landing, taxi).
We tend to think of as airplane seatbelts like we think about car seatbelts keeping us inside a car in case of a crash. So often people don't think they're needed outside of takeoff and landing. But they serve more purpose than that (even in cars). They keep us from bouncing around inside the cabin if things get really bumpy.
There's been some news reports lately about turbulence affecting airplanes, including sadly a recent fatality. Severe turbulence incidents do happen and while they're rare enough that in 1.5 million miles I've never had one, they're not impossible. They do happen. It's only now being reported more often now because more attention is being paid to aviation because of the Boeing debacle. That's how news cycles work.
A seatbelt is the best thing in those situations. It's not just for taxi, takeoff, and landing (though you should wear it those times too).
I've jumped from hot air balloons, a passenger jet (out the rear door of a skydiving-equipped DC-9 like DB cooper), and out of helicopters. And I wear my seat belt on the airplane at any time I'm in my seat (except getting up to go to the bathroom). I don't let it prevent me from getting up to go to the bathroom or grab a snack of the galley on a long haul, but if my butt is in a seat my seat belt is on.
We wear seatbelts for more reasons than you'd might think. Part of your seat belt is for me, part of my seat belt is for you.
If I'm wearing my seatbelt and you're sitting next to me and you're not, if we hit severe turbulence you're way more likely to hurt me than me hurting you.
Watch this:
The person without the seatbelt absolutely clobbered the one wearing a seatbelt.
Fortunately in 1.5 million miles on United (and other airlines) there's never been an incident like that, but I still wear it at all times when I'm sitting down.
So buckle up and happy flying.
A subreddit devoted to the field of Future(s) Studies and evidence-based speculation about the development of humanity, technology, and civilization. -------- You can also find us in the fediverse at - https://futurology.today
This is a subreddit for War Thunder, a cross platform vehicular combat MMO developed by Gaijin Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. The game is based around combined arms battles on air, land, and sea with vehicles from the Great War to today.
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
This post is getting a lot more attention than I thought it would. If you have lost someone important to you in an airline accident, it might not be a good idea to read through all these discussions and detailed analyses of videos that appeared on the internet without any clear explanation of how/when/where they were created.
#######################
TL,DR: The supposed satellite video footage of the three UFOs and airplane seemed eerily realistic. I thought I could maybe find some tells of it being fake by looking a bit closer to the panning of the camera and the coordinates shown on the bottom of the screen. Imgur album of some of the frames:
Stitching the video into a larger image revealed a better understanding of the flight path and the sky, and a more detailed analysis of the coordinates suggests that there is 3D information in the scene, either completely simulated or based on real data. It's not a simple 2D compositing trick.
#######################
Something that really bothered me about the "Airliner Satellite Video" was the fact that it seemed to show a screen recording of someone navigating a view of a much larger area of the sky. The partly cropped coordinates seemed to also be accurate and followed the movement of the person moving the view. If this is a complete hoax, someone had to code or write a script for this satellite image viewer to respond in a very accurate way. In any case, it seemed obvious to me that the original footage is a much larger image than what we are seeing on the video. This led me to create this "unwrapping" of the satellite video footage.
YouTube also compresses the video since it is a strange resolution, but you should at least be able to see a 4k version.
It's taking some time to upload and process so check back later. I'll edit this post once the files are available. The .zip of the full resolution png image sequence and the 6K video in H264 are now available.
Additional files: . I made this after reading I had originally dismissed the stereoscopic view as some sort of an error or a red herring, but it's clearly proper stereoscopic footage. Also on YouTube for more convenient viewing without downloading:
I used TouchDesigner to create a canvas that unwraps the complete background of the different sections of the original video where the frame is not moving around. The top-right corner shows the original footage with some additional information. The coordinates are my best guess of reading the partially cropped numbers for each sequence.
sequence | lat | lon |
---|---|---|
1 | 8.834301 | 93.19492 |
2 | undefined | undefined |
3 | 8.828827 | 93.19593 |
4 | 8.825964 | 93.199423 |
5 | 8.824041 | 93.204785 |
6 | 8.824447 | 93.209753* |
7 | undefined | undefined |
8 | 8.823368 | 93.221609 |
*I think I got sequence 6 longitude wrong in the video. It should be 93.209753 and not 93.208753. I corrected it in this table but the video and the Google Earth plot of the coordinates show it incorrectly.
Each sequence is a segment of the original video where the screen is not being moved around. The parts where the screen is moving are not used in the composite. Processing those frames would be able to provide a little bit more detail of the clouds. I might do this at some point. I'm pretty confident that the stitching of the image is accurate down to a pixel or two. Except for the transition between sequences 4 and 5. There were not so many good reference points between those and they might be misaligned by several pixels. This could be double checked and improved if I had more time.
Notes:
Why are there ghost planes? In the beginning you see the first frame of each sequence. As each sequence plays through, it will freeze at the last frame of each of them.
This should not be used to estimate the movement of the clouds, only the pixels in the active sequence are moving. Everything else is static. The blending mode I have used might have also removed some of the details of the cloud movement.
I'm pretty sure this also settles the question of there possibly being a hidden minus in front of the 8 in the coordinates. The only way the path of the coordinates makes sense is if they are in the northern hemisphere and the satellite view is looking at it from somewhere between south and southeast. So no hidden minus character.
I'm not smart enough to figure out any other details to verify if any of this makes sense as far as the scale, flight speed etc. is concerned
EDIT:
Additional information about the coordinates and what I mean by them seeming to match the movement of the image.
If this would be a simple 2D compositing trick, like a script in After Effects or some mock UI that someone coded, I would probably just be lazy and do a linear mapping of the offset of the pixel values to the coordinates. It would be enough to sell-off the illusion. Meaning that the movement would be mapped as if you are looking directly down on the image in 2D (you move certain amount of pixels to the left, the coordinates update with a certain amount to West). What caught my interest was that this was not the case.
This is a top-down view of the path. Essentially, how it should look like if the coordinates were calculated in 2D.
If we assume:
The coordinate is the center of the screen (it probably isn't since the view is cropped but I think it doesn't matter here to get relative position)
The center of the first frame is our origin point in pixels (0,0).
The visual stitching I created gives me an offset for each sequence in pixels. I can use this to compare the relationship between the pixels and the coordinates.
x_offset is the movement of the image in pixels from left to right (left is negative, right is positive). This corresponds to the longitude value.
y_offset is the movement of the image in pixels from top to bottom (down is negative, up is positive). This corresponds to the latitude value.
sequence | lat | lon | y_offset (pixels) | x_offset (pixels) |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 8.834301 | 93.19492 | 0 | 0 |
2 | undefined | undefined | -297 | -259 |
3 | 8.828827 | 93.19593 | -656 | -63 |
4 | 8.825964 | 93.199423 | -1000 | 408 |
5 | 8.824041 | 93.204785 | -1234 | 1238 |
6 | 8.824447 | 93.209753* | -1185 | 2100 |
7 | undefined | undefined | -1312 | 3330 |
8 | 8.823368 | 93.221609 | -1313 | 4070 |
I immediately noticed the difference between points 1 and 3. The longitude is larger so the x_offset should be positive if this was a simple top-down 2D calculation. It's negative (-63). You can see the top-down view of the Google Earth path in the image above. The image below is me trying to overlay it as close as possible to the pixel offset points (orange dots) by simple scaling and positioning. As you can see, it doesn't match very well.
Then I tried to rotate and move around the Google Earth view by doing a real-time screen capture composited on top of the canvas I created. Looking at it from a slight southeast angle gave a very close result.
Note that this is very much just a proof-of-concept and note done very accurately. The Google Earth view cannot be used to pinpoint the satellite location, it just helps to define the approximate viewpoint. Please point out any mistakes I have made in my thinking or if someone is able to use the table to work out the angle based on the data in the tables.
This to me suggests that the calculations for the coordinates are done in 3D and take into account the position and angle of the camera position. Of course, this can also be faked in many ways. It's also possible that he satellite video is real footage that has been manipulated to include the orbs and the portal. The attention to detail is quite impressive though. I am just trying to do what I can to find out any clear evidence to this being fake.
–––––––––––––––––––
Updated details that I will keep adding here related to this video from others and my own research:
I have used as my source in this post. It seems to me to be the highest quality version of the full frame view. This is better quality than the Vimeo version that many people talk about, since it doesn't crop any of the vertical pixels and also has the assumed original frame rate of 24 fps. It also has a lot more pixels horizontally than the earliest video posted by RegicideAnon.
The is but has some unusual qualities.
and the that this was not shot with two different cameras to achieve the stereoscopic effect. The video I used here as a source is very clearly the left eye view in my opinion. would suggest to me that the depth map is somehow calculated after/during each move of the view.
This depth calculation would match my findings of the coordinates clearly being calculated in 3D and not just as simple 2D transformations.
How would that be possible? I don't know yet, but there are a couple of possibilities:
If this is 3D CGI. Depth map was rendered from the same scene (or created manually after the render) and used to create the stereoscopic effect.
If this still is real satellite footage. There could be some satellite that is able to take a 6 fps video and .
The biggest red flag is the . The mouse is clearly moving at sub-pixel accuracy.
However, this could also be because of the (this would also explain the unusual 24 fps frame rate).
I was able to find some satellite images from Car Nicobar island on March 8, 2014
would suggest cloud base altitude around 2000-3500 feet depending on the time.
UPDATE: The Thermal View of this I made a test myself as well and completely agree. This is a clear match. . I can only assume that the satellite video is also a hoax. I would really love to hear a detailed breakdown of how these were made if the person/team ever has the courage to admit what, how and why they did this.
–––––––––––––––––––
Subreddit dedicated to the news and discussions about the creation and use of technology and its surrounding issues.
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
First, I would like to express my condolences to the families of MH370, no matter what the conclusion from these videos they all want closure and we should be mindful of these posts and how they can affect others.
I have been following and compiling and commenting on this matter since it was re-released. I have initial comments ( and ) on both of the first threads and have been absolutely glued to this. I have had a very hard time debunking any of this, any time I think I get some relief, the debunk gets debunked.
Sat Video Contention
There has been enormous discussion around the sat video, it's stereoscopic layer, noise, artifacts, fps, cloud complexity, you name it. Since we have a lot of debunking threads on this right now I figured I would play devils advocate.
edit5: Let me just say no matter what we come to the conclusion of as far as the stereoscopic nature of the RegicideAnon video, it won't discount the rest of this mountain of evidence we have. Even if the stereoscopic image can be created by "shifting the image with vfx", it doesn't debunk the original sat video or the UAV video. So anybody pushing that angle is just being disingenuous. It's additional data that we shouldn't through away but infinity debating on why and how the "stereoscopic" image exists on a top secret sat video that was leaked with god knows what system that none of us know anything about is getting us nowhere, let's move on.
Stereoscopic
edit7: OMG I GOT IT! Polarized glasses & and polarized screens! It's meant for polarized 3D glasses like the movies! That explains so much, and check this out!
This would explain why the left and right are there.. Wait, red/blue glasses should work with my upload, also if you have a polarized 3D setup it should work! Who has one?
Source Video:
I myself went ahead and converted it into a true 3D video for people to .
Viewing it does look like it has depth data and this backs it up with a ton of data. There does seem to be some agreement that this stereo layer has been generated through some hardware/software/sensor trickery instead of actually being filmed and synced from another imaging source. I am totally open to the stereo layer being generated from additional depth data instead of a second camera. This is primarily due to the look of the UI on the stereo layer and the fact that there is shared noise between both sides. If the stereo layer is generated it would pull the same noise into it..
Noise/Artifacts/Cursor & Text Drift
So this post seemed to have some pretty damning evidence until I came across a comment thread . I don't know why none of us really put this together beforehand but it seems like these users of first hand knowledge of this interface.
This actually appears to be a screencap of a remote terminal stream. And that would make sense as it's not like users would be plugged into the satellite or a server, they would be in a SCIF at a secure terminal or perhaps this is from within the datacenter or other contractor remote terminal. This could explain all the subpixel drifting due to streaming from one resolution to another. It would explain the non standard cursor and latency as well. Also this video appears to be enormous (from the panning) and would require quite the custom system for viewing the video.
edit6: Mouse Drift This is easily explained by a jog wheel/trackball that does not have the "click" activated. Click, roll, unclick, keeps rolling. For large scale video panning this sounds like it would be nice to have! We are grasping at straws here!
Citrix HDX/XenDesktop
It is apparent to many users in this discussion chain that this is a Citrix remote terminal running at .
XenDesktop 4.0 created in 2014 and updated in 2016.
Near the top they say "With XenDesktop 4 and later, Citrix introduced a new setting that allows you to control the maximum number of frames per second (fps) that the virtual desktop sends to the client. By default, this number is set to 30 fps."
Below that, it says "For XenDesktop 4.0: By default, the registry location and value of 18 in hexadecimal format (Decimal 24 fps) is also configurable to a maximum of 30 fps".
Also the cursor is being remotely rendered which is . Lots of people apparently discuss the jittery mouse and glitches over at . Citrix renders the mouse on the server then sends it back to the client (the client being the screen that is screencapped) and latency can explain the mouse movements. I'll summarize here:
The cursor drift ONLY occurs when the operator is not touching the control interface. How do I know this? All other times the cursor stops in the video, it is used as the point of origin to move the frame; we can assume the operator is pressing some sort of button to select the point, such as the right mouse button.
BUT When the mouse drift occurs, it is the only time in the video where the operator "stops" his mouse and DOESN'T use it as a point of origin to move the frame.
Here are some examples of how these videos look and artifacts are presented:
. Not the exact same software but have a look at the “Activate Windows” text in the corner. Do you see what I see?
- Similar cursor movement?
So in summary, if we are taking this at face value, I will steal listing what may be happening here:
Screen capture of terminal running at some resolution/30fps
Streaming a remote/virtual desktop at a different resolution/24fps
Viewing custom video software for panning around large videos
Remotely navigating around a very large resolution video playing at 6fps
Recorded by a spy satellite
Possibly with a 3D layer
To me, this is way too complex to ever have been thought of by a hoaxer, I mean good god. How did they get this data out of the SCIF is a great question but this scenario is getting more and more plausible, and honestly, very humbling. If this and the UAV video are fabrications, I am floored. If they aren't, well fucking bring on disclosure because I need to know more.
Love you all and amazing fucking research on this. My heart goes out to the families of MH370. <3
Figured I would add reposts of the 2014 videos for archiving and for the new users here:
edit: resolution
edit2: noise
edit3: videos
edit4: Hello friends, I'm going to take a break from this for awhile. I hope I helped some?
edit5: stereoscopic
edit6: mouse
edit7: POLARIZED SCREENS & GLASSES! THATS IT!
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
Hello, I bring you another thread with new insights into this fascinating case. Fasten your seatbelts because you are in for a rollercoaster ride.
Previous threads:
Part I:
Part II:
I would like to thank many people for sending me information and insights through private messages.
I won't discuss all the points mentioned in the earlier posts, but there's new information that affects a few of them, so I'll reintroduce them as needed.
Some background information about the MH370 case:
This is a 25 minutes short documentary that explains all the key points of this case:
You can also hear the cockpit audio between the plane and the Air traffic control
-------------------------------------------------------
Not the original poster?
New evidence suggests that the YouTube video by RegicideAnon might not have been the initial upload of these videos to the internet.
It's highly likely, as many users have noted, that the video was originally posted on a private forum or another platform, and RegicideAnon subsequently reuploaded it on YouTube. It's also possible that this user was indeed the original recipient of the videos.
RegidiceAnon original video on Youtube had parts of the video cropped:
The term "NROL-22" isn't fully visible in the video; only the last character, "2," can be seen.
In the subsequent occurrence of this video in August 2014, uploaded to Vimeo, the complete term "NROL-22" becomes visible.
The curious aspect here is that the Vimeo uploader attributes the video to RegicideAnon as the original creator, which could indicate a couple of possibilities:
RegicideAnon shared the video on various platforms, and on one of those platforms, the complete video was posted without cropping.
The Wayback Machine's archived video might be displaying a cropped version for an unknown reason.
RegicideAnon already associated this video to the MH370 flight when he posted it.
This is a detail that wasn't initially noticed. Initially, it seemed like he had simply uploaded a video featuring a random airplane, and it was only later that users linked it to the MH370 flight. However, the user actually established this connection on Twitter by using the hashtag #MH370 on May 22, 2014.
More information uncovered about the original poster.
I attempted to reach out to the individual behind the username RegicideAnon****.com through the associated email, but I didn't receive a response.
A Reddit user disclosed the name linked to this email address: Reggie Brister. Whether this is the person's actual name or an alias remains uncertain; this information was obtained using a search engine.
Some additional thoughts about the release of these videos:
Consider a crucial point: The initial release is the Satellite video, followed by the FLIR thermal version a month later.
To maintain coherence between these videos, we collectively concluded that a potential hoaxer would need to meticulously craft a complete 3D scene. Curiously, the hoaxer opted to debut a video with a very low frame rate initially, showing a distant aircraft that cannot be clearly identified as a Boeing 777 due to its considerable distance. Notably, this video was captured from a screen. The rationale behind this choice raises questions: Is the hoaxer a mastermind of deception and 4D chess pro player?, or are these videos genuinely authentic? I don't think there is a middle ground.
Furthermore, in the thermal video, an intricate drone with precise detailing was rendered, including heated pitot tube. Although entirely unnecessary, these elements find themselves within the video.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exact satellite source:
There were some discrepancies about which satellite was the source of the video, it was said it could be NROL-32, NROL-22 or NROL-23. It seems that is now confirmed that according the the data on the video the satellite is NROL-22. I compared the 2's and the 3's on the video, and its clearly a 22:
NROL-22 satellite was launched in 2006 and according to Wikipedia: The satellite's orbit and mission are officially classified.
This satellite has a Molniya orbit, which is like a stretched-out oval path that it takes around Earth. Here is the Molniya orbit path, which coincidentally comes very close the MH370 flight path:
Several attempts were made via different websites to calculate where the satellite was located exactly at the time of the passing of the airliner, but no conclusive results were made. There were contradicting results.
Here are some attempts:
and a most recent one, still under investigation:
GPS Coordinates:
It's still not clear whether the video GPS coordinates indicate a North or South hemisphere location.
8.834301, 93.19492 These are the GPS coordinates visible in the video. However, certain users speculate that a negative sign could be in front of the 8, displayed using a unique font that positions the minus symbol at the bottom rather than the center, similar to the hyphen also present. So as an alternative, the coordinates might be:
-8.834301, 93.19492
Map with both possible Satellite locations:
I unfortunately could not find any examples online where the minus sign was written _8 instead of -8.
A post about this:
Here is my attempt to see how the sky looked around the same time the satellite footage was taken:
This for the location of 8.834301, 93.19492:
and this for -8.834301, 93.19492, located more to the south:
It's worth considering that satellites can potentially be remotely adjusted in their positions. While I'm unsure about the feasibility within a brief timeframe, it remains a plausible option to explore.
You may be wondering, how exactly does a satellite physically get moved from point A to point B thousands of miles above Earth? NOAA's operations team can plan all of these maneuvers using navigation software. For a satellite to change its orbital position, it follows a series of commands uploaded by the operations team to the spacecraft's memory.
Another significant point to note is the potential that the satellite video might not be depicting daytime. It's worth mentioning that certain technologies exist which can provide nighttime visuals resembling those of daytime.
Stereoscopic video:
The initial video is actually a stereoscopic 3D video. What does this imply? The image is taken using two cameras, resulting in a three-dimensional footage. Just like in certain movies where you require 3D glasses to become fully engaged, similar to the case of Avatar.
If this video was faked, the fact that it started as a stereoscopic footage makes things even more interesting. This shows that making a fake video like this would need a lot of skill and work to get it right.
Source:
Here is a NASA link with the specifications for this satellite, it is a bit technical, but it does mention:
"USA 184 also carried the TWINS 1 (Two Wide-angle Imaging Neutral-atom Spectrometer) instrumentation "
Some thoughts about the satellite and why it was in the area:
It's conceivable to think that multiple U.S. classified satellites are surveying the whole globe 24/7. They just needed to go search for the one which happened to be above the MH370 flight at that time. It's also highly likely that these classified spy satellites are covering an extensive area, this is why in the satellite video it is seen how the user is panning across the screen. The captured footage was probably of a very large area.
A detail that might be nothing but worth mentioning.
A document from NRO contains a reference to the "MK370 Crisis." Keep in mind that NRO is responsible for overseeing these surveillance satellites.
A reddit user said it's possible that is is not a typo but a deliberate attempt to hide the keyword MH370 from search engines.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The question of whether the military would utilize a color or black and white filter for thermal footage remains a topic of discussion. However, this aspect is inconsequential, as explained in the Part I post, where it was clarified that the mode could be easily switched once the footage was recorded. Here's an illustration of this concept:
I also went ahead and transformed the colored thermal video into black and white. It's important to note that this doesn't represent the actual appearance of thermal imagery; rather, it's a conversion from the original video to grayscale.
Orbs displaying a plume in the thermal video:
Certain users pointed out that the presence of contrails behind the orbs in the video could be seen as evidence of fakery, contradicting witness accounts that mentioned no plumes. However, it's important to consider that this is a thermal video, and such plumes might not have been visible to the naked eye. It's unclear if there are any FLIR-captured videos of orbs, so this concern may be set aside.
My thoughts: I don't know if these plumes could be attributed to video artifacts, similar to the Baghdad Phantom UAP video released by Jeremy Corbell:
A theory: These orbs seemed to be getting ready or enhancing a teleportation wormhole, and the plumes might have been a result of this technology in action. IMHO the orbs showing a plume is not conclusive evidence of anything.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
An intelligence officer claims the U.S. knows where the MH370 flight is:
Mr B is a man who works in the intelligence community who approached Ghyslain during the first year of the MH370 investigation to share information. In the Netflix documentary, Ghyslain explains: “Someone I knew told me, ‘Mr B would like to meet you. This person has information. He’s someone who is very connected, connected to the secret services'”
Ghyslain claims that the spy told him ‘the Americans know full well what happened, because there were two American AWACS that were monitoring the area at the time the plane disappeared,'” he said. “These AWACS are Boeing planes with a huge radar like a mushroom on top. And this radar basically monitors everything underneath the Boeing."
Additional claims of cover-up by the U.S:
Former Malaysian Prime Minister accuses CIA of covering up what really happened to flight MH370
Hydrophones (underwater microphones) didn't detect any crash and a hydrophone from Diego Garcia island was shut down for 25 minutes:
An ocean acoustics recorder that may have picked up MH370's crash into the sea missed 25 vital minutes of data which could help unravel the mystery of the doomed plane.
A sound was identified but:
Rather than an airliner impacting the ocean surface, the sound was more likely "caused by an earthquake, underwater landslide, or volcanic eruption,"
This was also addressed in the Lemmino documentary I linked at the beginning of the thread.
MORE CLAIMS ABOUT UFOS DETECTED:
A Malaysian military aircraft did track an unidentified aircraft in the country’s airspace at the time of MH370 losing contact with the ground control, the Malaysian Prime Minister has finally admitted – six weeks after the passenger jet disappeared.
Unidentified blobs on military radar
Royal Malaysian Air Force Chief Rodzali Daud speaks of a unidentified blobs on military radar - right before MH370 vanished.
INTERFERENCE - Communications failure?
A pilot claims to have made contact with Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 shortly before it went missing - but all he heard was interference, static and mumbling
The man said he got in touch with the plane via his emergency frequency at the request of Vietnamese aviation authorities, who had been unable to reach it as expected.
WSPRnet based alternative flight path:
I want to address an interesting post about how a aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, managed to allegedly pinpoit the exact flight path of the MH370 flight using publicly-avaliable data from a third-party global network of interlinked radio senders and recievers called WSPRnet.
Arguments in favor:
Arguments against this:
----------------------------
Keep in mind that the MH370 flight was headed for China, a significant competitor of the United States in technology and military strength. Is there a potential motive for the United States to have had concerns about this plane reaching mainland China? Continue reading for more insights.
4 Tonnes of fruit or something else?
AN MH370 investigator has revealed a startling four-and-a-half tonne "secret" cargo that was on board the flight before it mysteriously vanished.
Malaysia’s political opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim told her: “I wonder what kind of cargo could be so secret that the cargo manifest of a commercial flight is treated as a classified document."
Lithium Batteries igniting a fire on board?
It has emerged that missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was carrying 221kg of lithium-ion batteries that did not undergo the normal security screening a year ago.
One theory had been that the batteries may have reacted to 4.5 tonnes of a tropical fruit called mangosteens that were also on board, producing hazardous fumes or in a worst case scenario caused a short circuit and/or fire.
Might this be related to the fire some people noticed in the thermal flir video?
Amidst all the recent talk about semiconductors breakthroughs:
On the plane were 20 staff members from a US technology company, Freescale Semiconductor, which makes powerful microchips for industries, including defence.
But there is more to this.. the Blackstone conspiracy for taking control of a valuable patent.
... four of the passengers on that flight were all co-holders of a recently issued, highly valuable patent and the disappearance of Flight 370 was engineered to eliminate them so that remaining co-holder of the patent could reap all the royalties from it for himself"
Who owns Freescale Semiconductor?
Jacob Rothschild through Blackstone (what an interesting name for a company) who owns Freescale.
Patent:
----------------------------------------------
These two creepy cases should be taken with a huge grain of salt, but I believe they are worth mentioning.
The SOS message "They are not humans"
A Twitter user claims he received a strange voice message from an unknown source.
The message sounds like a series of numbers and letters, but according to some it is the NATO phonetic alphabet and has been translated as: “S Danger SOS it is dire for you to evacuate be caution they are not human 042933964230 SOS Danger SOS.”
A cool video about it:
Article:
A passenger, Philip Wood, sent a picture from Diego Garcia island.
A photo, which appears black was posted as taken in a dark cell by an IBM engineer. The picture is black because the cell was too dark, but a critical piece of information was embedded in the Exif data, the coordinates to Diego Garcia, where the picture was taken.
Philip Wood was actually a passenger from the MH370 and an engineer at IBM.
Numerous efforts have been made to discredit these videos. While the authenticity of the videos is still uncertain, these attempts to debunk them do not sufficiently undermine their potential credibility.
THE OBSERVERS LINK
TheObservers link, often posted as a debunking proof:
This article has many of the facts wrong.
First, they express their viewpoint: Possibly a computer-generated creation. However, it's essential to note that an opinion doesn't constitute proof of its falsehood.
Secondly, they assert that the satellite is NROL-33, launched after the incident. This is incorrect, as mentioned earlier; the video pertains to NROL-22.
Thirdly, they refer to the Vimeo clip, which is a reupload of the original video: The description accompanying the video suggests it portrays "a possible depiction of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappearance" created by a "video editing enthusiast." It's crucial to recognize that this assessment originates from the Vimeo re-uploader and doesn't provide definitive evidence of any kind.
HIGHER FRAME RATE CLAIM
Several discussions on Reddit and Twitter are sharing a less-than-thorough investigation conducted by a user who suggests that the satellite video exhibits varying frame rates, implying possible manipulation.
This claim originates from a single thread, which the original poster already deleted. The original poster of that thread was using a video forensics software, that software provoked this framerate difference. It was debunked in the same thread, most likely the reason why the original poster of that thread delete it.
This is the thread:
INK BLOT ASSET
Numerous assertions have been made suggesting the video's falseness due to the identification of the effect used for teleportation in the FLIR video. While the effect bears resemblance, it's not an exact match. It's important to note that a wide array of animation effects can be found, rendering this as insufficient evidence to deem the video as fake.
REAL FOOTAGE BUT EDITED
Numerous users contend that the video is authentic, but they propose that elements such as the orbs and teleportation were incorporated through post-production effects. However, as of now, the original videos showing this footage have not been uncovered.
RECOVERY WRECKAGE
I will repeat this again, since many people are still using this as a proof to debunk the videos:
It should be noted that debris associated with the MH370 flight was discovered. Taking into account numerous abduction narratives, if one were to entertain the notion that the plane was taken by UFOs, it is conceivable that it was subsequently returned to a different location.
And even if the plane was not returned and was indeed abducted and caught on camera by the military, there is a high chance that some fake debris would have been planted.
Some articles doubting the veracity of the debris, take into consideration that half of the debris was found by a single person.
Finally, I'd like to extend a greeting to the individuals from Eglin Base, Florida, who consistently downvote any discussion or comment related to this case and contribute with brief remarks like "OMG this again, this is an obvious fake!" without presenting further supporting points: Hello there!
Edit: Added:A conspiracy to acquire a valuable patent.Military radar detecting unidentified blobs.
Edit2: Added more information about the satellite footage being stereoscopic.
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
Edit 2022-08-22: These videos are both hoaxes. I wrote about the community led investigation .
Watching I noticed that some of the clouds lit up during the flash. I found a better copy of the video and took a screenshot of the frame with the flash, and a screenshot of the frame immediately after. Then I used a difference filter in Photoshop and boosted the brightness a little with the curves tool.
This helped me see that the two clouds on the left and the one cloud on the right have a kind of halo around them. This would match the case where they are closer to the camera than the flash, so the flash causes them to be backlit. (These three clouds are completely black in the difference image because they are blown out, and the difference between pure white and pure white is zero.)
To the lower left of the flash there is a front lit cloud, which implies it is farther from the camera than the flash. Parts of this cloud that are farther away are less illuminated by the flash.
Another cloud at the bottom right is not blown out, and there is no obvious halo, which implies that it is also farther away from the camera than the flash.
If this is a hoax, the artist cared enough to accurately simulate the details of how clouds at multiple altitudes would be illuminated by a flash of light. I would guess it is unlikely that this video is 2D VFX work, but this doesn't rule out a full 3D VFX pipeline (which would have been useful to create the "alternate angle" thermal video).
Edit: Additional info for folks who don't refresh constantly. This is a video that has been claimed to show the disappearance of on March 8, 2014. The earliest source that I have seen comes from May 19, 2014, over two months later, posted by to YouTube. Some users have suggested that this may have circulated on or private forums before then. There are other versions of this video, like the one I link to above, that are less cropped and show telemetry data clearly—indicating that RegicideAnon is not the source. Evidence for this being MH370: the plane is a similar model (Boeing 777), the telemetry data at the bottom left gives a latitude and longitude that is around 250 miles west of the last military radar location for MH370.
Things that I personally find suspicious: the video is 24fps and 1280x720. This is the resolution and framerate that is default for video editing software, while screen recordings are typically at 30fps and monitor resolution. In 2014 the most common monitor resolution was . That said, the cursor does go off-screen sometimes and this could be a 1280x720 export from a crop of a 1920x1080 screen. More importantly, it's not clear that NROL-22/USA-184 was in a position to capture this footage at the presumed time of this event. The first loss of radar was 2014-03-08 01:21:13 MYT / 2014-03-07 17:21:13 UTC (just after local midnight), and the last attempted handshake without a response was 2014-03-08 09:15 MYT / 2014-03-08 01:15 UTC (around or after local sunrise). But looking at , USA-184 is not above the horizon at this location and on this day until the afternoon. By that time, the fuel would have been long since exhausted, and we're talking about not just teleportation but time travel. Edit: I was looking at the USA-184 rocket body and not USA-184 itself, see for an explanation.
Things I don't find suspicious: "the clouds don't move"—they do, but only very slowly. If you take two screenshots 12 seconds apart and overlay the same spot you will see some dissipation and evolution. "The framerate is wrong"—the cursor and panning are at 24 fps while the satellite video is at 6fps. "They found debris"—y'all, we're talking about the possibility of UFOs teleporting an entire plane. Who knows what happened after this video.
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
Edit 2022-08-22: These videos are both hoaxes. I wrote about the community led investigation .
tl;dr: right hand side is a warped copy of the left, but not necessarily fake. The cursor is displayed so smoothly it looks like VFX instead of real UI.
Around the same time I posted a writeup in the airliner satellite video pair, posted pointing out that there are matching noise patterns between the two videos. When I saw the screenshot I thought it just looked like similarly shaped clouds, but after more careful analysis I agree that it is matching sensor noise.
The frame that posted is frame 593. This happens in the section between frame 587 through 747 where the video is not panning. Below is a crop from the original footage during that section, at position 205,560 and 845,560 in a 100x100 pixel window (approximately where drew red boxes), upsampled 8x using nearest neighbor, and contrast dialed up 20x.
Another way to see this even more clearly is to stack up all the images from this section and take the median over time. This will give us a very clear background image without any noise. Then we can subtract that background image from each frame, and it will leave us with only noise. The video below is the absolute difference between the median background image and the current frame, multiplied by 30 to increase the brightness.
The fact that the noise matches so well indicates that one of the videos is a copy of the other, and it is not a true second perspective.
If this is fake, this means that a complex depth map was generated that accounts for the overall slant of the ocean, and for the clouds and aircraft appearing in the foreground. The rendering pipeline would be: first 3D or 2D render, then add noise, then apply depth map. It would have been just as easy to apply the noise after the depth map, and for someone who spent so much care on all the other steps it is surprising they would make this mistake.
If this is real, there is likely no second satellite. But there may be synthetic aperture radar performing to estimate the depth. SAR interferometry is like having a Kinect depth sensor in the sky. For the satellite nerds: this means looking for a satellite that was in the right position at the right time, and includes both visible and SAR imaging. Another thread to pull would be looking into SAR + visible visualization devices, and see if we can narrow down what kind of hardware this may have been displayed on.
What would the depth image look like? Presumably it would look something like the disparity video that we get from running , but smoother and with fewer artifacts. (Edit: I moved the disparity video .)
Additionally, identified that the text on the right while the text on the left stays still. This is consistent with the image on the right being a distorted version of the image on the left, and not a true secondary camera perspective.
Here is a visualization showing this effect across the entire video.
At the top left is the frame number.
The top image is the left image telemetry.
The second image is the right image telemetry.
The third image is the absolute difference between the left and right.
The fourth image is the absolute difference with brightness increased 4x.
The text is clearly slanting and jumping. This indicates the telemetry data on the right was not added in post, but it is a distorted version of the video on the left.
This led me to another question: what is happening with the cursor? If this is real, I would expect the cursor to be overlaid at a consistent disparity, so it appears "on top" of all the other stuff on the screen. If the entire right image, including the cursor, is just a distortion of the one on the left, then I would expect the cursor to jump around just like the text.
But as I was looking into this, I found something that is a much bigger "tell", in my opinion. Anyone who has set a single keyframe in video editing or VFX software will recognize this immediately, and I'm sort of surprised it hasn't come up yet.
The cursor drifts with subpixel precision during 0:36 - 0:45 (frames 865-1079).
Here is a zoom into that section with the drifting cursor, upsampled with nearest neighbor interpolation and with difference images on the bottom. Note that the window is shifted by 640+3 pixels.
Note that the difference image changes slightly. This indicates that it is being affected by a depth map, just like the text. If we looked through more of the video we might find that it follows the disparity of the regions around it, rather than having a fixed disparity as you would expect from UI overlay.
But the big thing to notice is how smoothly the cursor is drifting. I estimate the cursor moves , that's 0.08 pixels per frame. While many modern pointing interfaces track user input with subpixel precision, I am unaware of any UI that displays cursors with subpixel precision. Even if we assume this screen recording is downsampled from a very large 8K screen, and we multiply the distance by 10x, that's still 0.8 pixels per frame.
Of course a mouse can move this slowly (like when it is broken, or slowly falling off a desk) but the cursor UI cannot move this smoothly. Try and move your cursor very slowly and you will see it jumps from one pixel to the next. I don't know any UI that lets you use a cursor less than 1px. Here is a side-by-side video showing what a normal cursor looks like (on the right) and what a VFX animation looks like (on the left).
To reiterate: it doesn't matter whether this is a 2D mouse, 3D mouse, trackball, trackpad, joystick, pen, or any other input device. As long as this is an OS-native cursor, they are simply not displayed with subpixel accuracy.
However, this is exactly what it looks like when you are creating VFX, and keyframe an animation, and accidentally delete one keyframe that would have kept an object in place—causing a slow drift instead of a quick jump.
This cursor drift has convinced me more than anything that the entire satellite video is VFX.
FAQ
Could this be explained by a camera recording a screen?
Could this be explained by a wonky mouse?
Ok but is a subpixel cursor UI impossible?
Why would the creator not be more careful about these details?
Could the noise just be a side effect of YouTube compression?
What if this was recorded off a big screen?
Could the cursor drift be a glitch from remote desktop software?
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
Edit 2023-08-22: These videos are both hoaxes. I wrote about the community led investigation .
Edit 2023-11-24: The stereo video I analyze here was not created by the original hoaxer, but
I used some basic computer vision techniques to analyze the airliner satellite video (see if this video is new to you). tl;dr: I found that the video shows complex treatment of depth that would come from 3D VFX possibly combined with custom software, or from a real video, but not from 2D VFX.
Updated FAQ:
- "So, is this real?" I don't know. If this video is real, we can't prove it. We can only hope to find a tell that it is fake.- "Couldn't you do this via <insert technique>?" Yes.- "What are your credentials?" I have 15+ years of computer vision and image analysis experience spanning realtime analysis with traditional techniques, to modern deep learning based approaches. All this means is that I probably didn't mess up the disparity estimates.
The oldest version of the video has two unique perspectives forming a . The apparent distance between the same object in both images of a pair is called "disparity" (given in pixel units). Using disparity, we may be able to make an estimate of the orientation of the cameras. This would help identify candidate satellites, or rule out the possibility of any satellite ever taking this video.
To start, I tried using to get a dense disparity map. It showed generally what I expected: the depth increasing towards the top of the frame, with the plane popping out. But all the compression noise gives a very messy result and details are not resolved well.
I tried to get a clean background image by taking the . I ran this for each section of video where the video was not being manually panned. That turned noisy image pairs like this:
Into clean image pairs like this:
I tried recomputing the disparity map using StereoSGBM, but I found that it was still messy. StereoSGBM uses block matching, and it only really works up to 11 pixel blocks. Because this video has very sparse features, I decided to take another approach that would allow for much larger blocks: a technique called (PCC). Given two images of any size, PCC will use frequency-domain analysis to estimate the x/y offset.
I divided both the left and right image into large rectangular blocks. Then I used PCC to estimate the offset between each block pair.
In this case, red means that there is a larger x offset, and gray means there is no x offset (this failure case happens inside clouds and empty ocean). This visualization shows that the top of the image is farther away and the bottom is closer. If you are able to view the video in 3D by crossing your eyes, or some other way, you may have already noticed this. But with exact numbers, we can get a more precise characterization of this pattern.
So I ran PCC across all the median filtered image pairs. I collected all the shifts relative to their y position.
In short, what this line says is that the disparity has a range of 6 pixels, and that at any given y position the disparity has a range of around 2 pixels. If the camera was directly above this location, we would expect the line fit to be fairly flat. If the camera was at an extreme angle, we would expect the line fit to drastically increase towards the top of the image. Instead we see something in-between.
Declination of the cameras: In theory we should be able to use disparity plot above to figure this out, but I think to do it properly you might have to solve the angle between the cameras and the declination at the same time—for which I am unprepared. So all I will say is that it looks high without being directly above!
Angle between the cameras: When the airplane is traveling from left to right, it's around 46 pixels wide for its 64m length. That's 1.4 m/pixel. If the cameras were directly above the scene, that would give us a triangle with a 2px=2.8m wide base and 12,000m height. That's around 0.015 degrees. Since the camera is not directly above, then the distance from the plane to the ocean will be larger, and the angle will be more narrow than 0.015 degrees.
Distance to the cameras: If we are working with optics (2.4m lens for 6cm resolution at 250 km) then we could be 23x farther away than usual and still have 1.4m resolution (up to 5,750km, nearly half the diameter of earth).
Next, instead of analyzing the whole image, we can analyze the plane alone by subtracting the background.
Using PCC on the airplane shows a similar pattern of having a smaller disparity towards the bottom of the image, and larger towards the top of the image. The colors in the following diagram correspond to different sections of video, in-between panning.
(Some of the random outlier points are errors from moments when the plane is not in the scene.)
Here's the main thing I discovered. Notice that as the plane flies towards the bottom of the screen (from left to right on the x axis in this plot), we would expect the disparity to keep decreasing until it becomes negative. But instead, when the user pans the image downward, the disparity increases again in the next section, keeping it positive. If this video a hoax, this disparity compensation feature would have to be carefully designed—possibly with custom software. It would be counterintuitive to render a large scene in 3D and then comp the mouse cursor and panning in 2D afterwards. Instead you would want to move the orthographic camera itself when rendering, and also render the 2D mouse cursor overlay at the same time. Or build custom software that knows about the disparity and compensates for it. Analyzing the disparity during the panning might yield more insight here.
My main conclusion is that if this is fake, there are an immense number of details taken into consideration.
Details shared by both videos: Full volumetric cloud simulation with slow movement/evolution, plane contrails with dissipation, the entire "portal flash" sequence, camera characteristics like resolution, framerate, motion blur (see frame 371 or 620 on the satellite video for example), knowledge of airplane performance (speed, max bank angle, etc).
Details in the satellite video: The disparity compensation I just mentioned, and the telemetry that goes with it. Rendering a stereo pair in the first place. My previous post about . And small details like self-shadowing on the plane and bloom from the clouds. Might the camera positions prove to match known satellites?
Details in the thermal video: the drone shape and FLIR mounting position. Keeping the crosshairs, but picking some unusual choices like rainbow color scheme and no HUD. But especially the orb rendering is careful: the orbs reflect/refract the plane heat, they leave cold trails, and project a Lazar-style "gravity well".
If this is all interesting to you, I've posted the most useful parts of my code as .
A place for major news from around the world, excluding US-internal news.
The place for news articles about current events in the United States and the rest of the world. Discuss it all here.
Anything related to aircraft, airplanes, aviation and flying. Helicopters & rotorcraft, airships, balloons, paragliders, winged suits and anything that sustains you in the air is acceptable to post here.
A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism.
Hello
It's me again, author of this Reddit post:
I'd like to bring attention to a small detail that could potentially have been missed. While it might not necessarily yield significant results, it could also serve as a significant clue regarding the authenticity of the video.
So the first satellite video was first posted by a user named RegicideAnon on Youtube on May 19 2014, this is the original link from web archive:
Both the user and the video are no longer available on Youtube. The video description said:
Received: 12 March 2014
Posted: 19 May 2014
Source: Protected
Almost a month later the same user receive the second video, the FLIR thermal one, apparently filmed from a UAV:
Received: 5 June 2014
Published: 12 June 2014
So this user has obtained classified military footage from a confidential source. Why was this seemingly ordinary YouTube user chosen to receive such a highly classified video, instead of it being sent to a prominent media organization?
It seems that a few days later, this YouTube user received yet another video, a third one which also originated from a confidential source. Is this source the same as the one for the previous two videos?
UFO Sighting- Impossible Maneuvering
by RegicideAnon
Received: 16 June 2014
Posted: 18 June 2014
This information can be seen from the user profile on Youtube, from the web archive:
Unfortunately this video is not archived so it cannot be watched. However, if there is a way to locate the video, it could provide more insight into the credibility of this user and the source he mentions.
This video had 1942 views as of February of 2019, the last web archive snapshot. I am sure someone should have more information:
Additionally, there are more videos on the user Youtube channel, none of which I've been able to find. Finding any of the other videos could also shed some light on this case.
Please ensure that this topic remains active for longer.
EDIT: BREAKTHROUGH.
Video was found on Youtube which shows the RegicideAnon videos thumbnails:
Here is also the RegicideAnon channel information with a contact e-mail!
Original poster email can be seen in the above screenshot.
EDIT2:
One of the videos uploaded by RegicideAnon was found by :
WW2 Archive Footage of Flying Saucer
Flying Saucer flies adjacent to aircraft as it approaches landing strip.
EDIT3: Thread about this video:
EDIT4: Another thread with new insights:
A place for major news from around the world, excluding US-internal news.