The Evolution of the Warp Speed effects

[valkyrie013]

Hi Guys and girls, Would like to talk today on the topic of the Warp Speed effect. I bring this up because after watching STD's Season 2 trailer, the Discovery has changed its warp effect to the "Kelvin" version of a tunnel. So wanted to spend some time on talking about the evolution of the effect over the years, and a bit of Science! in what warp actually is. ( I did look at old threads and didn't find anything recent, so I apologize if i'm retreading a topic) So, without further ado!

In TOS, we had just the stars moving, and thats about it. Impulse was slightly slower stars. Battles occurred at warp speeds.

In the movies, we still had just the moving stars, but the warp entry became more grandiouse. and in ST2 we got the "warp streaks" on the ships. The ship streak was combined with the star streaks in latter movies.

Enter Tng, first season was similar to tos, but with S2 we got the new "standard" of the Star Warp streaks and the entry Pop which continued to nemesis and through out all the "berman era" tv shows. Battles occured at warp, but mainly at impulse.

Next the 2009 "Warp Tunnel" effect, with changes in Darkness with the "fairy dust trail" warp entry, and the "warp bubble" in beyond. and the tunnel effect changed in each movie. And with this entered the "Hyperspace Effect" in that its a tunnel, and that going to warp was an effective means of escapeing a battle, instead of the past of, even if you go to warp.. you better be faster than the other guy to escape.

STD also changed it to a "Psycadelic Tunnel in season 1, and it seems standard Kelvin warp tunnel in S2.

"To be continued"

 

[at Quark's]

Enter Tng, first season was similar to tos, but with S2 we got the new "standard" of the Star Warp streaks and the entry Pop which continued to nemesis and through out all the "berman era" tv shows. Battles occured at warp, but mainly at impulse.

Even within this period, there is a subtle evolution, I think, in that the streaks gradually became somewhat thicker, and more multi-spectral. It's interesting to note that for example Voth transwarp is shown with yet thicker streaks than ordinary warp, so perhaps that shows a gradually increasing warp capability over those 15-odd years.

 

[Timo]

What one sees when traveling at warp probably depends a lot on where one is located exactly. This probably affects especially the observing of the entry flash. But even without this consideration, it's not too difficult (and a lot of fun!) to see the evolution of warp streaks as a smooth continuum.

That is, when we get smooth starstreaks of the 24th century, we have reached perfection. Anything short of the perfection will involve wobbling, of the sort we see in DSC and the Abrams movies. And what the engines belch out to achieve the end result varies with tech, but the less exhaust, the closer we get to 24th century perfection.

Oh, and the "bullet through water" effect in ST Beyond is what one gets when a ship warps through a dense nebula, such as the one next to Yorktown...



Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

Now the past decade, we've had the "Warp Tunnel" which looks suspiciously like a "Hyperspace Tunnel" like Star wars, and in star trek terms, a Quantum slipstream, or Transwarp tunnel effect. Now Trans warp and Slipstream ARE tunnels through subspace, the ship has left normal space and is "Tunneling" through subspace.

Now regular "Warp" is not a "tunnel", it is a bubble. The ship creates a bubble of space/time and the engines move the bubble by squeezing space ahead of it, and expanding space behind it, effectively moving the bubble faster than light. Now the "Effect" to me, should be like a soap bubble, and the stars moving, but in a Blue shift of the stars in front, and a Red shift of the stars in back.

So, to me, I don't like the new effect of the "Warp Tunnel" that has been the norm for the movies, now the tv, and the use of it like star wars "Hyperspace" where its "We're at warp, they can't fire on us" line in Darkness.. which flied in the face of 50 years of warp speed battles..

 

[Galileo7]

I like the J.J. warp speed effects the best in 2009, STID and Beyond.
http://visionarytrek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Warp-Speed.gif

 

[Shawnster]

The warp streaks actually started with TMP.

 

[Butters]

My preference is for the TNG style, but it’s not exactly realistic, not that warp travel is exactly plausible any way.

What I would like to see more of is individual stars passing by, rendered in real time. Some stars are red, some are blue, there’s nebulae and space dust, binary systems.

If passing Sol system, for example, parallel to the planetary plane, at a distance of two AU from the sun, at warp 1 with no warp tunnel effects, and no relativistic weirdness on light waves, what would it look like?

It would take a while to pass the system, even a warp. The sun wouldn’t be a streak of light, it would be a sun, and take about half an hour to pass. The local stars would barely appear to move and the distant stars wouldn’t move at all, and then the Milky Way is there in the background.

Warp 9. I imagine, would be significantly different.

 

[Orac]

I like the pretty colours.

 

[F. King Daniel]

My favourite was the ST'09/Into Darkness/Disco S2 trailer effect. Yes, it's virtually a Star Wars copypaste but angrier, but I think it's really cool regardless. Followed by the Wrath of Khan warpjump, which was the TMP one but without the utragoofy red, white and blue AMERICA STARS.

One thing I'm very glad to see the end of, is the Voyager/Enterprise habit of depicting stars as tiny dust motes sprinkling past the ship when flying at sublight speeds, even sometimes between the ship and camera. That drove me fucking bonkers.

 

[Jedi Marso]

Warp speed effects are a staple of Trek, but I'd like to see a more 'realistic' depiction in the following way:

At sublight, the only relative motion you would see between a ship and a stellar object would be at high speeds and close range, and even then the stellar object wouldn't appear to move much. Background stars and such would be motionless. Of course, the problem here is that from the dramatic viewpoint there is almost never any sense of movement, even if you are going half the speed of light.

At low warp, the effects wouldn't be much different than at high sublight. At Warp 1, it's a four year trip to Sol to Alpha Centauri, so you wouldn't see stars whipping past the ship, you are literally between two stars with nothing in between.

For an idea of how things would really look at different speeds, fire up Celestia or Space Engine and play around. The problem is that space is REALLY big, and you have to fire the velocities up to ludicrous before the starfield really starts to move in any dramatic, appreciable way at all.

 

[FreddyE]

But realistically speaking...wouldn´t the only thing you see be pitch black darkness when at warp?

 

[Timo]

Or then the outside radiation would still get in, but not through any sort of a direct route.

Perhaps starlight gets in through the pulsating distortions of the warp field, so that the same stars flow past the ship over and over again.

Or then it's just stardust - but since it takes extreme light amplification to make us see the starships in the depths of interstellar space, the dust motes get boosted into looking like bright stars.

Timo Saloniemi