Wingsuit base jumpers are human flying squirrels -- video

Here's a longer, even more breathtaking version of the wingsuit videos that went around a couple years ago. If you want to see daredevils turning themselves into flying squirrels and soaring through the air, look no further.

Wingsuit base jumping (via William Gibson)

Previously:

Wingsuit flight video - Boing Boing

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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virgil

Can someone explain how they achieve and maintain their forward momentum, rather than plummeting after their initial jump outward?
Antinous / Moderator

Fortune favors the bold.

So do undertakers.
AGF

Watched the clip last night before bed – and then had some cool dreams!
imhotep

Udderly mind-blowing!! I can’t believe he said it was getting boring! Of course, I get excited watching squirrels do it. (flying, that is.)
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Community Manager

Wanna.
Nasty

Base jumpers are insane.
arkizzle

Amused: ugh. (I can’t be bothered to raise any better argument than that, sorry).

It is so obviously not fake.
Takuan

I fot I tucked you in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLTFJiN8o-A
Marsha Keeffer

Looked real enough to make me very nervous…whew!
ivan256

At least the people who have (and will) die base jumping *lived* their lives.

Well, that first part of their lives, anyway. It’s convenient for your assertion that when you die this way you don’t have additional lifetime to factor in. But if you die doing this, you certainly don’t get to enjoy all the rest of your lifetime that you would have been alive for. Yeah “at least”… But your mere will to live should make that a small consolation.

I’m all for taking (calculated) risks, and I understand that sometimes the risk is its own reward, but this is the kind of thing you do in one of two situations:

1. You have concluded your life isn’t worth living unless you’re frequently in a situation where you’re at high risk of death.
2. You’re completely incapable of enjoying the prospect of future activities.

I’m guessing (hoping) that there aren’t very many of these guys in category 1, as that’s essentially the same as being suicidal.
alisong76

Top Gear had a great segment a few seasons ago where Ricchard Hammond tried to outrace one of Britain’s elite Red Devil parachute jumpers with a 4×4 Porsche. It’s not a base jump, but it’s still pretty effing cool.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=McHViMSzQdI
Antinous / Moderator

I know someone who could kick their asses.
Anonymous

how can i do that stuff for a living!??

thats amazing,

thats FLYING!
Moriarty

Bunch of Bruce Wayne wannabes.
soupisgoodfood

As a photographer and someone who as done some 3D modeling and effects, it always amuses me when someone calls something fake. I’ve seen it many times and a lot of the time it’s just a case of odd perspectives. Odd perspectives and optical tricks happen all the time, especially in the real world. Keep in mind they are probably using a very wide angle lens for the on-board shots.
Ned613

AMUSED@#58 I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be easy to put shadows in but would they be smart enough to consider it. Would it take away from the realism if they were missing? But I agree with you that those parts you mention look like they could be enhanced.
doplgangr

wait, what?

aren’t those skis kind of expensive? do they ever get them back?

it looks like they are coming mighty close to them rocks… do they ever smack into them? if not, how do they avoid doing so?

i imagine there must be a weight limit for something like this…
Patrick Dodds

Amused, I’m sorry to say I’m with you, unless they’ve oversharpened (can you do that with video?).
jedeye

Could anyone tell me the name of the music used in this clip?

It would be greatly appreciated.

I really really want to try this out myself.
Anonymous

Do they ever hit the rocks? Unfortunately yes: the base jumping fatality list at http://www.splatula.com/bfl/ has some notes about what happened, where it’s known.
13strong

“aren’t those skis kind of expensive? do they ever get them back?”

I might be wrong, but I suspect these guys aren’t short of cash. I mean, what kind of socioeconomic background do you have to come from to first become proficient at, and then regularly indulge in this kind of batshit crazy activity?

Still, I’m super-jealous. I’ll never experience that kind of sensation, and it makes me a little sad.
mrsomuch

That is soooo awesome.

I’m with 13STRONG, I want to do it alot alot alot, but have to acknowledge it’s not really likely, time and money not being what they used to be…

wowsers. anyone know of any dvd’s available about such things? or ‘cough’ torrents?
mrsomuch

teh songs used in the clip are;

1st song: Contact – Violence
2nd: Diz Organ & Sackcloth Fashion – Under Man

yr welcome.
KthulhuKultist

Hooray! I saw this over on Coilhouse earlier in the week, along with some other wingsuit clips: http://coilhouse.net/2009/01/12/better-than-coffee-wingsuit-base-jumpers-in-norway/ Incredible footage.
robulus

OK, that really is amazing footage. Did the guys in the video coin the term “human flying squirrels”, or was that thrust upon them? They kind of seem like they might choose something a bit more “extreme” for a label.

Totally awesome shit though.
arkizzle

Amused & Ned

I disagree completely, that “those parts you mention look like they could be enhanced”.

They could be enhanced. But I don’t agree that they look like they could.

Still only one opinion, I know, but valid. I’m happy to admit I can’t tell from the pixels. But from all the other pointers.. it seems decidedly unlikely.

It costs a lot of money to get that level of believability from a composite – every man and his dog has Shake or AfterEffects these days, but not the talent or access to Hi-Def aquisition equipment needed for such a clean comp.

And the footage-synced motion-control rig, (to make the ‘actor’ move correctly with the landscape and camera moves) would be prohibitively expensive for someone who wasn’t making serious bread off something that is essentially an aside to a DVD otherwise all about skiing.

This part of the DVD didn’t sell it any more than the skiing on the rest of it. But the operation involved in faking it, to the level we see, would almost dwarf the rest of the project financially.. and for what? 5 cool minutes buried in the rest of the content?

I don’t think so.
dunkyboy

absolutely mindbowing. however, i notice there’s no footage of anyone “landing”. Is that because landing involves smashing yourself to a bloody pulp on the rocks?
reginald

#8

i am sewing a suit with a diaper bag built in, immediately

i’ll go first!
Ugly Canuck

The old theme from the Rocky & Bullwinkle show would be good music for this vid.
spiderman0521

crazy

want
arkizzle

High Quality version of the clip above (101 MB). Watch it fullscreen.. WOW.

As other have mentioned, it’s from Seven Sunny Days.

Get it.
GregLondon

Bunch of Bruce Wayne wannabes.

heh

Can someone explain how they achieve and maintain their forward momentum, rather than plummeting after their initial jump outward?

Their suits are basically gliders. Very poor glide-ratio gliders. a nice glider might have a 20-to-1 ratio. meaning for every 20 feet forward, it will drop 1 foot. Helicopters have about a 4:1 glide ratio without an engine, meaning for every 4 feet forward, they drop 1 foot.

These guys look like they have at most a 1:1 ratio, maybe even 1:2. For every foot forward, they drop a foot or two.

Basically, they trade potential energy of altitude for kinetic energy of forward motion.

I did a tandem jump from 13,000 feet way back when. about a minute of free fall. Once we hit terminal velocity, the instructor moved my hands and we turned and moved through the sky to maneuvar so we could fall through a cloud. It was pretty wild.

Base jumping? I can see why it’s got such a high fatality rate. You’ve got a “stall speed” of a hundred miles an hour and a glide ratio of a brick. If you built a recreational airplane like that, you’d get sued before the first one came off the assembly line, just on principle.
obeyken

Sweet merciful Jesus on a dirtbike that is truly amazing.

Until they figure out how to put a human in a space suit in a highly elliptical orbit around the moon so that they whiz by 6 inches from the surface at several thousand miles per hour, this may be The Most Fun Thing To Do.
Anonymous

I hope none of these guys have wives or mothers.
mdh

Back in college a friend wote and ran a Superhero RPG. I was “the Flying Squirrel”, and I had forgotten until just now. Thx BB!
Wingo

Someone just sent me this video the other day. Pure awesomeness. The part where the three guys flip off the edge at the same time makes my knees get all tingly.

@Amused/Patrick Dodds: Can you see the pixels??
franko

you’d have to have total faith in that outfit to do this, that’s for sure. how many people have injured themselves or died getting to this point, i wonder?
Jugglepunk

http://www.ministryofmanipulation.com/blog/category/uncategorized/
Lots more footage of flying loons minus all the talking from the quite wonderful Ministry of Manipulation site, who currently have a dude dancing with a ladder as their most recent post, which sounds rubbish, but is actually rather cool and entrancing.
duelago

Learn to fly from the master. Loic Jean-Albert.
He is responible for some of the footage shown in the Vimeo video.

There is a video on his website about the wingsuit.

http://www.loicjeanalbert.com/#/en/140/210/
minTphresh

i must join the chorus: WANT!!!
Anonymous

As a friend of mine likes to say: “if at first you don’t succeed, don’t try base jumping…”
Ned613

It also helps if you have the IQ of a flying squirrel to attempt this stunt.
technogeek

“That isn’t flying — that’s falling with style.”

A lot of style, I must admit.
amused

Other than the initial takeoff and the very last scene at the end when they open parachutes, I think most of this is computer generated and overlays. Especially the part where they “fly” past the canyon walls, the overlay becomes very apparent because the perspectives don’t match up.
arkizzle

Ivan, that’s your assertion.

The assertion bbonyx made, and I agreed with, was that to experience this kind of thing at all (+ the inherent risk) would be worth a whole shitty, normal life.

There is no “convenient for your assertion … you don’t have additional lifetime to factor in”. The point was: the shortlived-experience is worth the longlived-inexperience.

Agree or disagree, but don’t pick the assertion apart like it isn’t a valid opinion. Lots of people live their life by a very similar motto.
arkizzle

In fact.. I’m gonna go out on a limb here, and call myself out.

At the risk of coming across as cocky instead of honest, I will state that I am studying Computer Visualisation & Animation at the NCCA, and if this is faked it is the single greatest piece of aquisition/compositing I have ever seen!

For any budget, for any studio. Better than anything Weta, or ILM or Framestore, or anybody has ever achieved. Ever.

The variable lighting conditions, motion-controlled camera moving independently of the separately motion-controlled ‘actor’, perfect synch between footage and action, the physical modelling of the movement in fluid at speed, lack of frame layer clashes, consistent motion blurring over the layers of the comp, shadows convincingly cast across variable landscape (requiring match-moved mesh environment), multi-angles, perfect colour-matching/film-grading.

There are always ‘tells’. No matter how small, especially in an example as movement-heavy and varied as this.

The best example, in any context, for any budget I have ever seen. I stake my considerably-small reputation on it.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Aw, dude, you told me that you were majoring in the history of the merkin.
Deleet

@ #12

The folks with the skis are professional skiers I doubt they used their best equipment for this probably more like some thrift store skis but its not like they have any shortage of skis anyway…
noahpoah

As usual with this sort of thing (see also Rock Climbing), while the person in the video is doing some amazing stuff, the person filming the video is doing roughly the same thing while skillfully operating a camera.
noen

from Wiki on Base Jumpers

“Between 1981 and 2008 there have been at least 124 fatalities related to the sport.”

The clip is from the from the skimovie “Seven Sunny Days” by Matchstick Productions. I don’t know how many base jumpers there are but I bet 124 is an uncomfortably large percentage.
arkizzle

That’s a night course :)
bbonyx

@ #25 (et al) – Yeah, but they died f’ing *base jumping*, as opposed to the rest of us who will die in lame car crashes on our way to work, or from heart disease from all the delicious Big Macs, or old age in nursing homes, etc etc.

At least the people who have (and will) die base jumping *lived* their lives.

/goes back to writing code from his cubicle
Jack Crosby

That description is not accurate. My flying squirrels are nowhere near that talented. But possibly just as ballsy.
Grisly

-Takuan, for someone who’s not a shooter, your skeet idea is fantastic.

-How do you think that outfit would look with a dinner jacket?

-Does it come in black?

-Why skis instead of a snowboard?
nanuq

Now all they need is a moose…
yourboyfriendsbestfriend

My mom actually brought this to my attention a few months ago… she was so excited! Had she been able to get into the suit right there and then… she would have.
amused

I think the stuff from 1:29 through 1:52 is very faked. Some of the rest of it, might be real. And yes, it’s easy to put in shadows. Not to take away from the feat of jumping off a cliff with just a parachute, but I think they are enhancing things a bit.
magicbean

in the film “Twenty Second of Joy” (about one of the few female base jumpers) the filmmaker says that lifespan of a base jumper is….6 years. Excellent film. Trailer is on youtube.
arkizzle

This is just puke-makingly amazing. The mid-flight tumbles are just fabulous.

This is IT. I wish I could do this. Like BBonyx said, I’d rather die doing this than most anything else.. Not on my first go though.
Wes Kim

What ever happened to the quest for a wingsuit-assisted parachute-less skydive? There was some noise about it a while ago, but nothing lately.

And where are all the outtakes from these videos?
Santa’s Knee

Nobody’s mentioned yet that the Spartan king did this with Laura Croft in Tomb Raider 2?
dom277

@ #46 Ned613

I think you need some good quality brains and mental/physical coordination to control flight like this with such skill and precision. That yellow suited guy skimming by the road is controlling it perfectly time after time. He tracks the same line twice in the video. First time without any traffic on the bend, second time with a silver wagon turning the corner.
arkizzle

JEDEYE @11

1st song: Contact – Violence
2nd: Diz Organ & Sackcloth Fashion – Under Man
arkizzle

Amused, did you watch the high-quality version I linked?
arkizzle

Fullscreen it.
Machinehead

Apart from the introduction of the video, with the guys jumping during winter with their skis on, this same video had already been posted by Pesco in 2007. Alas, youtube had taken it down, so its great to have this one on vimeo. Thanks Cory.
Ned613

AMUSED@#25: They faked the shadows too? Look at 2 minutes 50 seconds and there after and you will see the jumper’s shadows cast on the terrain below.
designian

Why do they bother to wear helmets?
But seriously, That shot at 2:25 where three jump in tandem and fourth films is nuts.
robulus

@BBONX
Awesome post, you are right. Now get back to work.

@Obeyken
Way to imagine the most awesomest thing to do in Earth’s general vicinity.

@Amused
Wow yeah, you can tell by the pixels.
Takuan

could this be combined with skeet shooting?