Pretty sure most of this could be filmed with a camera drone and preprogrammed flight path...

Did the Gaussian splatting actually make it any cheaper? Especially considering that it needed 50+ fixed camera angles to splat properly, and extensive post-processing work both computationally and human labour, a camera drone just seems easier.

> Pretty sure most of this could be filmed with a camera drone and preprogrammed flight path

This is a “Dropbox is just ftp and rsync” level comment. There’s a shot in there where Rocky is sitting on top of the spinning blades of a helicopter and the camera smoothly transitions from flying around the room to solidly rotating along with the blades, so it’s fixed relative to rocky. Not only would programming a camera drone to follow this path be extremely difficult (and wouldn’t look as good), but just setting up the stunt would be cost prohibitive.

This is just one example of the hundreds you could come up with.

If it was achievable, cheaper, and of equal quality then it would have been done that way. Surely it would’ve been done that way a long time ago too. Drone paths have been around a lot longer than this technology.

There’s no proof of your claim and this video is proof of the opposite.

A drone path would not allow for such seamless transitions, never mind the planning required to nail all that choreography, effects, etc.

This approach is 100% flexible, and I'm sure at least part of the magic came from the process of play and experimentation in post.

Flying a camera drone with such proximity and acceleration would be a safety nightmare.

I think you’re missing the point

Volumetric capture like this allows you to decide on the camera angles in post-production

it gives you flexibility, options

This might be the first time I'm stumbling on Dunning Kruger on HN, no offense.

It's fucking cool. That's why.

This tech is moving along at breakneck pace and now we're all talking about it. A drone video wouldn't have done that.