Will there be T.I.E. Fighters in Star Wars VII? According to the trailer, yes. Now for the real questions: how fast are these TIE Fighters and how fast are their blaster bolts? Time for some video analysis using Tracker Video Analysis.
Before we get started, I should point out that this video isn't that easy to analyze. The best videos (the easiest) to analyze have the following features:
- A stationary camera view (non panning, non zooming).
- Objects in the frame of a known size.
- Objects moving perpendicular to the direction the camera is facing.
- Objects far enough away from the camera that perspective isn't a problem.
Based on these features, this is a terrible video. TERRIBLE. On top of that, there are only a few frames for me to look at with the objects moving. Of course, these limitations have never stopped me in the past and they won't stop me now.
Let me start with just a few assumptions.
- The T.I.E. Fighter has a width of 6.4 meters.
- The Millennium Falcon has a width of 25.6 meters (if that is indeed the Falcon).
Also, there is one physics thing we need to look at. Since the objects are mostly moving towards the "camera", we can get distance based on the angular size. Basically, the farther away something is the smaller it looks. If you know the actual size and the angular size, you can find the distance to the object. This is the diagram I like to use to describe angular size.
The circle on the left would be a camera. If you know any of the two (angular size, distance, object size) you can find the unknown with the following:
I can measure the apparent size of an object in the video, but that will only give me the angular size if I know the field of view for the camera - which I don't. I'm going to have to make some guesses in order to use this video. What I would like is to find the distance from the TIE Fighter to the Millennium Falcon. With the distance and time for the blaster bolt, I can get the speed.
Here is what I will do. I will just guess. Let's say that the Millennium Falcon is 25 meters in front of the "camera". In this case, I can find the actual angular size and then use this to find the distance to the two TIE Fighters. Here is a plot of the TIE Fighter distances as they fly past the Falcon.
That doesn't look too bad. The data suggests a constant velocity of the two TIE fighters at about 400 m/s. Actually, this is the speed relative to the camera. If I assume the Millennium Falcon is moving at about the same speed then the TIE Fighters would be traveling at 200 m/s (about 450 mph).