NASA’s original video of the Curiosity rover’s descent was amazing, fascinating, incredible, awe-inspiring, and worthy of every other superlative you can think of. But the video was on rendered at 4 FPS. Last month, one YouTube user uploaded an amazing 25 FPS version of the video using interpolation.
Now, another guy has upped the ante. Using “true motion-flow interpolation,” Bard Canning has created the best Curiosity descent video yet, coming to you at 30 FPS.
“The video is true motion-flow interpolated from the original 4 frames per second to 30 frames per second. (To my knowledge, no one has used this method for the Curiosity footage yet.) It plays real-time at the speed that Curiosity descended onto the surface of Mars,” he says.
Check out the ultra-resolution, smooth-motion, detail-enhanced, color-corrected video below:
According to Canning, the project was a “labor of love” that took him a month to complete. As you watch the video (over and over again, I’d imagine), remember that due to interpolation, most (87%) of what you’re seeing is created footage. But wow, is it impressive.