One of the most influential pieces of visual effects in history (no, seriously). Admit it, whenever you drive past a logging truck these days, you get nervous, right? I think that behavior can be squarely blamed on the infamous logging truck sequence in David R. Ellis’ Final Destination 2, from 2003. The deadly pile-up caused by logs falling off the truck still induces nightmares in drivers today. Back then, it came about via some elaborate stunts, special effects, and visual effects by Digital Dimension (the film’s overall visual effects supervisor was Joe Bauer). With Final Destination: Bloodlines currently in cinemas, I thought it would be fun to go back to this notable VFX scene. I crawled through Digital Dimension’s old website and found some fantastic video from one part of the scene–when the logs first drop–and detailed descriptions of the whole sequence, both including the tests the VFX studio produced. With the video, I’ve put together a ‘remake’ of their VFX breakdown, and the text is also reproduced below (you can find the original here.) Enjoy a look back! Digital Dimension text For New Line Cinema’s teen thriller sequel, Final Destination II, Digital Dimension completed over 80 visual effects shots. Early Tests Digital Dimension’s involvement in FDII began early on with a series of tests to help Director Dave Ellis and VFX Supervisor Joe Bauer decide on the approach to take for the complex log sequence. The earliest of these tests included simple dynamics and rendering tests using temporary textures and cylinder primitives for the CG logs. Log Sequence Test Shot The log sequence was originally planned to be shot practically, if possible, but with promising results from the preliminary CG tests, it was decided that test footage would be shot in Vancouver with the intention of comparing real logs to CG logs. Digital Dimension went on-site to oversee the test. It became apparent during the test that real-life logs would be nearly impossible to control and would not exhibit the liveliness required for the sequence. Now it was a matter of whether CG logs would be believable and offer a more dramatic performance. Meanwhile, the CG Supervisor was working out the log dynamics and particles using the storyboards as reference. It was clear from the beginning that the whole pipeline was going to have to be flexible enough to accommodate changes in timing and feel of the shots. This basically ruled out hand keyframing of the logs and particles. Once preliminary dynamics had worked out, the team began experimenting with different types of layers that would contribute to the final composited test shot. The results of this experimentation would serve as the foundation for the pipeline used for the actual effects shots later in the production. On location in Vancouver The test shot was a complete success, and it was clear to everyone that using CG logs for the log sequence would provide the necessary control without sacrificing realism. So with Digital Dimension greenlit to create the digital logs, the Sr. Technical Director voyaged to Vancouver, BC, to serve as Digital Dimension’s eyes and ears on set, and to acquire detailed location measurements and reference photography for the sequence. Camera Tracking With data from the set, reference photography, and film scans in hand, it was now time to dig into the principal effects work. One of the first major challenges for FDII was camera tracking over two dozen shots making up the log sequence. The shots used lenses ranging from wide angle (~15mm) to telephoto (~450mm) with very few lock-offs. To complete the tracking in minimal time, most of Digital Dimension’s staff was involved in roughing out the tracking. A collection of before/after images. Modeling the Logs With the test shots completed using only temporary models and textures, the Sr. VFX Designer then began working out modeling and textures for the final log, ultimately creating 22 unique logs with custom textures built from reference photos. Close attention was paid to fine details such as scrapes and missing bark on the logs. In addition, custom displacement maps were built for each of the logs. For the final touch, a hair system was used to add frayed wood on some of the logs. Log Dynamics and Particles Revisions to the dynamics were completed on a regular basis, allowing critiques from the Director and VFX Supervisor to be incorporated. This insured the sequence held together as a whole. Meanwhile, working from the foundation built for the test shot, particle debris for the test shots were being refined for the final effects. Using a rule-based particle system, an automated approach was developed which detected the impact of a log and emitted various amounts of bark, dirt, dust and debris based on that impact. This meant that all the particle animation was generated in real time in response to the dynamic motion of the logs. The final approach included details to help convey the realism of the shot such as making “particle debris” at rest lay flat on the road without penetrating it. Bringing It All Together Visual effects are typically generated from a buildup of several layers to give the compositors the fine control needed to achieve seamless integration with the plate. FDII was no exception, with the complexity of a given shot often determining the number of layers needed for the CG elements. For example, the CG logs had layers for the logs themselves, large debris such as slabs of bark, small debris such as bark particulate, dust, and even earth kicked up by the logs. Additional layers included direct shadows, contact shadows, and a variety of masks such as log highlights, log cap masks, and height maps from the road for reflection layers. The CG logs also needed to change from dry to wet while interacting with the road, and they typically had great depth – traveling from near to far or vice versa. For this reason, all log-related layers typically included Z information used to apply depth of field and ambient density in the composite. And since the road was wet in many shots, reflection layers were added, nearly doubling the number of layers needed for the log elements. Some layers, such as water spray, were created directly in the composite with 2D particles. Finally, details such as focal changes and reflection quality were carefully matched for maximum integration. For the shot where the log crashes into Thomas’s squad car, a still frame of a real log was rotoscoped and warped based on a CG wireframe to give the illusion of rotation as it crashed into the car. From the beginning, the cycle of refinement was in effect. CG artists generated layers for the compositors. The compositors took the layers and worked them into the plates. This process was repeated continuously, with composite test renders re-edited into the sequence on a daily basis. This allowed both animators and compositors to review their work in context and make assessments for revisions based on seeing their work in its most final form. Digital Dimension Credits for Final Destination II Facility VFX Supervisor: Benoit Girard Facility VFX Producer: Jerome Morin Facility VFX Designer: Edmund Kozin Sr. Technical Director: James Coulter CG Supervisor: Jason Crosby CG Animators: Brandon Davis, Justin Mitchell, Andy Roberts, Marion Spates, Sung-Wook Su Lead Compositor: Leandro Visconti Compositors: Jeremy Appelbaum, Miguel Bautista, Jim Cabonetti, Dan Walker, Adam Zepeda The post An ode to the logging truck VFX from ‘Final Destination 2’ appeared first on befores & afters.

As summer approaches, millions of Americans begin planning or taking trips to state and national parks, seeking to explore the wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities across the nation. A lot of them will head toward the nation’s wilderness areas—110 million acres, mostly in the West, that are protected by the strictest federal conservation rules. When Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964, it described wilderness areas as places that evoked mystery and wonder, “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” These are wild landscapes that present nature in its rawest form. The law requires the federal government to protect these areas “for the permanent good of the whole people.” Wilderness areas are found in national parks, conservation land overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, national forests and U.S. Fish and Wildlife refuges. In early May 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives began to consider allowing the sale of federal lands in six counties in Nevada and Utah, five of which contain wilderness areas. Ostensibly, these sales are to promote affordable housing, but the reality is that the proposal, introduced by U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican, is a departure from the standard process of federal land exchanges that accommodate development in some places but protect wilderness in others. Regardless of whether Americans visit their public lands or know when they have crossed a wilderness boundary, as environmental historians we believe that everyone still benefits from the existence and protection of these precious places. This belief is an idea eloquently articulated and popularized 65 years ago by the noted Western writer Wallace Stegner. His eloquence helped launch the modern environmental movement and gave power to the idea that the nation’s public lands are a fundamental part of the United States’ national identity and a cornerstone of American freedom. Humble origins In 1958, Congress established the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission to examine outdoor recreation in the U.S. in order to determine not only what Americans wanted from the outdoors, but to consider how those needs and desires might change decades into the future. One of the commission’s members was David E. Pesonen, who worked at the Wildland Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley. He was asked to examine wilderness and its relationship to outdoor recreation. Pesonen later became a notable environmental lawyer and leader of the Sierra Club. But at the time, Pesonen had no idea what to say about wilderness. However, he knew someone who did. Pesonen had been impressed by the wild landscapes of the American West in Stegner’s 1954 history “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West.” So he wrote to Stegner, who at the time was at Stanford University, asking for help in articulating the wilderness idea. Stegner’s response, which he said later was written in a single afternoon, was an off-the-cuff riff on why he cared about preserving wildlands. This letter became known as the Wilderness Letter and marked a turning point in American political and conservation history. Pesonen shared the letter with the rest of the commission, which also shared it with newly installed Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall. Udall found its prose to be so profound, he read it at the seventh Wilderness Conference in 1961 in San Francisco, a speech broadcast by KCBS, the local FM radio station. The Sierra Club published the letter in the record of the conference’s proceedings later that year. But it was not until its publication in The Washington Post on June 17, 1962, that the letter reached a national audience and captured the imagination of generations of Americans. Wallace Stegner, right, knew the power of American wilderness landscapes. In this photo, probably from the 1950s, he pauses with his son Page and wife, Mary, on a Yosemite National Park hiking trail. [Photo: Multimedia Archives, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah] An eloquent appeal In the letter, Stegner connected the idea of wilderness to a fundamental part of American identity. He called wilderness “something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people . . . the challenge against which our character as a people was formed . . . (and) the thing that has helped to make an American different from and, until we forget it in the roar of our industrial cities, more fortunate than other men.” Without wild places, he argued, the U.S. would be just like every other overindustrialized place in the world. In the letter, Stegner expressed little concern with how wilderness might support outdoor recreation on public lands. He didn’t care whether wilderness areas had once featured roads, trails, homesteads or even natural resource extraction. What he cared about was Americans’ freedom to protect and enjoy these places. Stegner recognized that the freedom to protect, to restrain ourselves from consuming, was just as important as the freedom to consume. Perhaps most importantly, he wrote, wilderness was “an intangible and spiritual resource,” a place that gave the nation “our hope and our excitement,” landscapes that were “good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.” Without it, Stegner lamented, “never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste.” To him, the nation’s natural cathedrals and the vaulted ceiling of the pure blue sky are Americans’ sacred spaces as much as the structures in which they worship on the weekends. Stegner penned the letter during a national debate about the value of preserving wild places in the face of future development. “Something will have gone out of us as a people,” he wrote, “if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.” If not protected, Stegner believed these wildlands that had helped shape American identity would fall to what he viewed as the same exploitative forces of unrestrained capitalism that had industrialized the nation for the past century. Every generation since has an obligation to protect these wild places. Stegner’s Wilderness Letter became a rallying cry to pass the Wilderness Act. The closing sentences of the letter are Stegner’s best: “We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.” This phrase, “the geography of hope,” is Stegner’s most famous line. It has become shorthand for what wilderness means: the wildlands that defined American character on the Western frontier, the wild spaces that Americans have had the freedom to protect, and the natural places that give Americans hope for the future of this planet. Death Valley National Park in California contains one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States. [Photo: National Park Service/E. Letterman] America’s ‘best idea’ Stegner returned to themes outlined in the Wilderness Letter again two decades later in his essay “The Best Idea We Ever Had: An Overview,” published in Wilderness magazine in spring 1983. Writing in response to the Reagan administration’s efforts to reduce protection of the National Park System, Stegner declared that the parks were “Absolutely American, absolutely democratic.” He said they reflect us as a nation, at our best rather than our worst, and without them, millions of Americans’ lives, his included, would have been poorer. Public lands are more than just wilderness or national parks. They are places for work and play. They provide natural resources, wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water and recreational opportunities to small towns and sprawling metro areas alike. They are, as Stegner said, cures for cynicism and places of shared hope. Stegner’s words still resonate as Americans head for their public lands and enjoy the beauty of the wild places protected by wilderness legislation this summer. With visitor numbers increasing annually and agency budgets at historic lows, we believe it is useful to remember how precious these places are for all Americans. And we agree with Stegner that wilderness, public lands writ large, are more valuable to Americans’ collective identity and expression of freedom than they are as real estate that can be sold or commodities that can be extracted. Leisl Carr Childers is an associate professor of history at Colorado State University. Michael Childers is an associate professor of history at Colorado State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We’ve all fumbled with a phone while driving, dodging a pothole with one hand, swiping at navigation with the other, hoping the charging cable doesn’t yank the whole phone onto the floor. It’s chaos. And it’s exactly the kind of day-to-day tech dysfunction that the CQ2 Qi2 Magnetic Charging Car Mount tries to eliminate. Designed by ADAM elements, the mount becomes the headquarters for your phone while you’re in the car. Not just a hub. Sounds hyperbolic? Well, there’s merit to having your phone docked beside you while driving. You could be navigating, listening to music, or hearing the news. Rather than precariously place your phone on the dashboard and hope it stays while you drive around, the CQ2 gives your phone a secure spot, always within glancing distance – moreover, it also keeps your phone charged thanks to its MagSafe wireless charging abilities… at 15W no less. Designer: ADAM elements Click Here to Buy Now: $45 $60 ($15 off, use coupon code “25YANKOCQ2”). Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours! First things first: 15 watts of Qi2 wireless charging. That’s no small boost, especially when you’re burning battery through GPS and Bluetooth. Qi2 is the newer magnetic charging standard that aligns perfectly with Apple’s MagSafe system, meaning your iPhone 12 or later clicks into place like it was designed for it—because it was. No wiggling, no guesswork. It snaps on and gets charging at 15W – that’s double the 7.5W output of older Qi chargers. Precisely aligns with iPhone’s MagSafe for effortless snap-and-charge convenience. The magnet isn’t weak either. We’re talking zinc alloy construction paired with reinforced magnetic stability that keeps your device mounted securely through hard turns and sudden stops… because there’s nothing more frustrating (and dangerous) than having your phone drop down to where your feet are while you’re driving. Needless to say, the secure hold of the CQ2 ensures that it never happens. What makes the CQ2 stand out even further is its compatibility. The Y-shaped clamp isn’t just design fluff, it’s engineered for varied air vent styles, including the ever-annoying circular vents that most mounts treat like forbidden territory. Combine that with a 360-degree rotation joint, and you’ve got a mount that can pivot from portrait for maps to landscape for media with zero fuss. It’s surprisingly smooth too, like a gimbal built into your dash. It has 3 silicone anti-slip points for improved stability and to prevent movement. Aesthetically, ADAM elements has done something rare: they made a charger that doesn’t look like an awkward bolt-on. The brushed zinc alloy has a cool, muted sophistication. It doesn’t scream “aftermarket accessory.” It just exists as if it belongs. There’s even an LED charging ring that glows subtly to let you know alignment is perfect – no more discovering your phone wasn’t charging halfway through your drive. The device also takes its tech security seriously. Overcharge protection, temperature regulation, and foreign object detection are all onboard, and they work without any obvious power cycling or strange behaviors. And the 3-year warranty seals the deal, especially considering that Apple’s own MagSafe charger only has a 1-year ‘limited’ warranty. But the real story here isn’t the mount or the magnets, it’s what it fixes. The CQ2 is a direct response to a familiar set of problems that rarely get an elegant solution. Phones falling off the dashboard. Mounts that don’t rotate. Chargers that only work if the cable is bent just right. The CQ2 wipes all of that off the board and replaces it with something that works. No ifs and buts. Would I call it essential? If you drive often and depend on your iPhone for navigation or music, absolutely. It’s rare that a charging mount becomes part of the vehicle experience itself – an invisible ally instead of an annoying compromise. That’s what CQ2 pulls off, and it does so without asking for any of your attention. Which, ironically, might be the smartest thing about it. Click Here to Buy Now: $45 $60 ($15 off, use coupon code “25YANKOCQ2”). Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours!The post iPhone keeps falling while driving? This $45 car mount locks it down first appeared on Yanko Design.

It looks super realistic on a paper texture.

An unusual solution to increase cabin headroom has resulted in a singular EV design, but is it solving a problem no one needed fixing?

Macworld In a world dominated by subscriptions, Microsoft 365’s recent price hike has left many looking for a more cost-effective alternative. Instead of shelling out dollars monthly, get lifetime access to all the essential Microsoft apps—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Teams for just $69.97 (reg. $219.99) with Microsoft Office Home & Business for Mac. This one-time purchase ensures you’ll worry less about rising software fees and more about what you can do with that software. Unlike subscription models, this lifetime license grants you full access to the software without monthly charges or renewals. It’s ideal for professionals, students, and anyone who needs reliable tools for work, school, or personal projects. Whether you need offline access while traveling or want the confidence of having all your documents stored directly on your device, this Office suite has you covered. With no internet required for use, you can stay productive anywhere. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev The convenience of owning your software outright means you can focus on your work, not on future pricing changes. Take advantage of this limited-time offer and make a smart investment in your productivity. Don’t miss out — this price won’t last forever. Grab Microsoft Office Home & Business for Mac 2021 at $69.97 (reg. $219.99), available only until June 1 at 11:59 PM PST. Microsoft Office Home & Business for Mac 2021: Lifetime LicenseSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change.

With specs that include 32GB of RAM and a 30-core GPU, this closeout Mac Studio is over $500 off exclusively for AppleInsider readers.This blowout Mac Studio has dropped to $1,487.To snap up the blowout special, shop through this special pricing link and look for the reduced $1,487.07 price at Apple Premier Partner Expercom.Buy for $1,487.07 Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Capcom seemingly teased the next Resident Evil in a celebration video for Resident Evil 4 remake but has yet to confirm a reveal date or launch. According to known leaker AestheticGamer, aka Dusk Golem, on Twitter, the survival horror title is still set to be revealed this year. They doubt it will be delayed further, but it’s unknown if it will be unveiled at the upcoming Summer Game Fest showcase in June or The Game Awards in December. It’s still allegedly launching next year, though once again, whether within the current fiscal year ending March 31st, 2026, or in late 2026 is unknown. Time will tell, so stay tuned for updates. Aside from Resident Evil 7: biohazard director Kosha Nakanishi leading the sequel, very little is officially known about it. AestheticGamer previously reported that it would try new things and “100 percent” star Leon S. Kennedy as the protagonist. Jill Valentine was allegedly slated to have a “prominent role,” but plans seemingly changed. It's almost 100% for sure being revealed this year and releasing next year. Doubt they'll delay more. The question comes if its being revealed this summer or at TGA for example this year, & if its releasing this fiscal year (ending March 31st, 2026) or next fiscal year late 2026. https://t.co/NO9FOtoZ7Z— AestheticGamer aka Dusk Golem (@AestheticGamer1) May 13, 2025

El Tatio is a geothermal field with many geysers located in the Andes Mountains of northern Chile at 4,320 metres (14,170 ft) above mean sea level. It is the third-largest geyser field in the world and the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The geothermal field has many geysers, hot springs, and associated sinter deposits. These hot springs eventually form the Rio Salado, a major tributary of the Rio Loa, and are a major source of arsenic pollution in the river. The vents are sites of populations of extremophile microorganisms such as hyperthermophiles, and El Tatio has been studied as an analogue for the early Earth and possible past life on Mars. Photograph credit: Diego Delso Recently featured: Short-beaked echidna Margaret Hamilton Kiwifruit Archive More featured pictures