“One of the problems you might think about later, but not in the heat of action during the film, is that since it is set sometime in the future, displays will be so much more sophisticated that you will not be able to tell a synthesized image from one captured with a camera. That is a problem in the real world too, and it is time we had a regulation that all simulations be clearly marked so. But not in space movies.”
The article itself begins on page 48 for those not wanting to squint at the magazine’s own TOC.
“One of the problems you might think about later, but not in the heat of action during the film, is that since it is set sometime in the future, displays will be so much more sophisticated that you will not be able to tell a synthesized image from one captured with a camera. That is a problem in the real world too, and it is time we had a regulation that all simulations be clearly marked so. But not in space movies.”
Pretty prescient for 1981.
Here’s the video sequence of the landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzcje9gDtgw&t=49s
The graphics first appear at 19s, in the lower left.
Then they are shown full screen at 49s.
Then twice more.
Wow. £250m computer in 1978, 14 pages worth of Fortran, and the animation output was printed directly to film. Impressive.
1/4m gbp = 250k, still a lot of money ^^
Oops! I meant for that to be a k