{"id":54837,"date":"2015-08-19T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54837"},"modified":"2015-08-18T16:16:52","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T21:16:52","slug":"visualization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54837","title":{"rendered":"Visualization"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was in high school, I may have been the last generation to actually spend any time watching instructional\u00a0film<\/em>s. \u00a0Not videos – productions shot on film.<\/p>\n

Now, my beef is not with the medium on which the production was shot; video versus film is an aesthetic argument, and not one that I’m particularly involved in.<\/p>\n

But along about time time video supplanted film, computer animation began to replace an older, more fascinating art – the building of explanatory models.<\/p>\n

Explaining complex processes, equations, and mechanical concepts is difficult. \u00a0And in a way, I’ve found the plethora of computer-based animations used to do the explaining today are almost\u00a0too\u00a0<\/em>accurate to do a job of explaining complex concepts.<\/p>\n

Filling that gap, long before there\u00a0were\u00a0<\/em>any computers, was the operating model.<\/p>\n

An operating model took a complex concept, mechanism or process, simplified it, magnified the important stuff while omitting (or deferring) the minutia, and\u00a0explained\u00a0<\/em>it.<\/p>\n

And it’s kind of a lost art.<\/p>\n

Which was why I loved this film – which explains the function of the auto differential, a bit of mechanical engineering that always amazes me…:<\/p>\n