Animated Models Of Every B5 Ship

[Triple F]

Some of you might remember I did a fan/tribute site a while back that had a pile of animated models in it. I wasnÆt totally happy with it so have made a few changes.

Updated the site so it now includes every ship, seen from the series, crusade and films. It can also now be viewed in firefox & netscape û READ THE FRONT PAGE FOR INFO. You will need a high speed connection to see it at it's best.

http://www.themadgoner.com/TMG/Sci_F...ark4_Build.htm

By the way if anyone, whoÆs looked through it first, knows of any ships IÆve missed out give us a shout and let me know.

Cheers û enjoy.



[edit]
Around 64 of them have (60k) animated gifÆs, by-product of the old original version of the site, theyÆre about avatar size, bit jerky, but up for grabs if anyone wants them. IÆll stick them all together in a basic Zip, should be about 4 Meg worth. Either PM or grab me over at the TMG public forum û more likely to get me there.

[DeMonk]

Impressive!

[FuryPilot]

Some of the stats listings are kind of funny. For example, talking about the Drazi Sun Hawk: "Crew: Kind of reptilian with beady little eyes"

[Triple F]

Deliberately stayed away from stats for the ships, (explained in the bits & bobs bit). ThereÆs about 130 one liner ôjokesö in those descriptions for the 140 ships, I use the word very loosely. When they are batched together they worked really well and got progressively funnier. The problem is, that when I split them up, the flow was lost and the humour falls a bit too flat now.

By the way on the SHIP SCREEN ONLY there is a little icon on the bottom right of the control panel, that will open up the screen shots for the ships. IÆve noticed that it can disappear off screen depending on the size of the viewing area on some browsers.

[phazedout]

wow!
that looks very nice indeed, 'tis most impressive 6. I'm always envious of those with artistic talent as I have none at all (well apart from some writing skills).
Phaze
on the "he is not a number, he is a freee person" ID

[closetnerd]

One tiny question

Ok so its not real tiny and dont yell at me for asking cause ill cry...but it seems like the tech used for various ships and jumpgates has basically been handed down. I just want to know, if it was ever said, which races developed their own methods of space exploration? This is an awesome site with lots of info but, to me, it seems like all the tech for ships and jumpgates was second and third and so on, generation. Is it ever said which races came into their own, on their own? Or are they all following a vorlon, shadow or even minbari type design, passed down and down? If so, maybe the vorlon/shadow confrontation was foreseen long ago and things, besides the telepaths, were done to solve it. Or maybe im just reading too much into it. This is why i love B5 though. JMS left so much for fans to interpret that it has kind of become our show, no disrespect intended to anyone.

[Triple F]

Just about all the different First Ones had different ways of entering or merging into Hyperspace like the Sigma Walkers and their really bad static problem, so most of THEM development different technologies. IÆm guessing the younger races seemed to use the Vorlon method simply because the Vorlons where the most active amongst the First Ones when it came to guiding the younger races, and ôgaveö them the widely recognised method seen in the show, as a result they never had to develop different approaches.

[Joseph DeMartino]

Jumpgates and jump engines are just ways of getting in and out of hyperspace. The real trick is navigating in hyperspace so that you come out where you want to in normal space. (Either by reaching the correct jumpgate or the right coordinates for your jump engine to open a jump point in the right place.) The First Ones were able to do this without jumpgates and without the beacon system.

Jump gates allow ships that lack the power to create their own jump points (or which originate on worlds that lack quantium-40) to enter hyperspace. The gates also serve as navigational beacons, again allowing relatively primative races to successfully travel among the stars.

According to the B5 Chronology (which ran in B5 Magazine and has been mostly endorsed by JMS), the original jumpgate network was built by an unknown race about 7000 years ago. Presumably at least some of these gates were built in systems that were home to intelligent species who hadn't yet discovered spaceflight, and were designed without locks or codes so that those races could eventually figure out how to access them.

After about 5,000 years the Gate Builders vanished without a trace, leaving no archaelogical record.

Any race might independently figure out how to build a jump engine and jumpgates. They are a bit like airplanes or atom bombs - the nature of the universe makes such things possible. But you need to first develop all the scientific knowledge and other technologies that brought together in a new arrangement let you create the new "invention." (The airplane could not have been developed unless the internal combustion engine had already reached a certain level of sophistication. The atom bomb required not only the theoretical physics to see the possibliity, but machine tools capable of incredibly fine tolerances, a metals industry the could create just the right alloys, a chemical industry the could created the explosive triggering charges to implode a plutonium sphere, and electronics that could explode dozens of such charges within miliseconds of one another.

The atom bomb also required the right raw materials. If there were no fissible ores on Earth, we would never have been able to build the bomb even if all the other pieces were in place. If you live on a planet with no Quantium-40, you can't build jumpgates or jump engines, no matter how sophisticated your technology and theoretical science are.

But obviously it is cheaper and easier to buy such technology off-the-shelf from someone who has already done the heavy lifting (or copy it from their designs) than to invent it yourself. Also it seems to me that for a race that doesn't already have interstellar technology, the most likely First Contact situation is going to be discovery by someone who does. So most races are going to encounter aliens with jumpgates long before they could develop jumpgates of their own, and thus any gates they eventually build will be based on technology acquired from whichever race discovers them.

Regards,

Joe

[Triple F]

Better clarify this, as itÆs been mentioned on other forums.

All the ships are canon û I didnÆt make up any of them and thereÆs screen shots for all of them (button on bottom right of remote). I actually threw a couple out as they where too much of my own design. ThereÆs 140 in total (models-I only did 70 of them) and another 10 or so with just screen shots.

The quotes on the episode guide are from the individual episodes which you are viewing when you read them, I think that makes sense.

Oh yeah, the canon thing in Bits & Bobs is only a series of light hearted opinions/observations based on reading many forums when I was putting the thing together, MOSTLY OLD ONES which had some very intense, and sometimes very funny, arguments on them.

The reason for not putting a link up to the 60 or so animated gifs is because the web space I used is only a temporary one so when it dies the link will too, so will be of no use to anyone. So on the off chance anyone else wants them, gives me a shout on here, or TMG, and I can make sure any link to them is up and running.