A Sight For Sore Eyes

So you're sitting there in a flat scrub desert, trying to make yourself invisible behind the only cover there is anywhere around, some straggly excuse for a plant.

You feel so exposed you wonder if being naked would be more comfortable, you have no idea who's around you, where the bad guys are, where the good guys are - there's just you and the rest of your brick, stuck in the middle of the badlands.

Then a shadow falls over you, accompanied by dust dervishes that get sand right up your nose. You're squinting wondering where the sandstorm came from and then you can hear it, the rhythmic drone of carbon-fiber slicing through the air, the thrum of powerful engines begins to vibrate in your bones, and you look up through eyes slitted against the flying grit to see the most beautiful sight you ever saw.

Your pickup, flaring to dump velocity, banking around to come in right in the middle of your brick's formation, silhouetted against a dawn-red sky more fitting to hell than earth.

A sight for sore eyes.

(With gratitude to the crew of a certain -53 in 1991)

(And yes, I know this is a -60 not a -53, I don't have a -53 else I'd have used that )

Whether you agree with how the politicians have employed these warriors or not, please remember that these people make it possible for you all to do what you do here.

And yes, this is something personal for me.

-60 model from Poser, terrain & sky all created using Vue.

Fans on both the main and tail rotors were added, to affect the scrub and sand below.

The whole thing was put into an animation with the helo coming in and banking for the frame that produced the image.

The sky color came from the sand effects at that point in the simulation, the whole thing ended up eerily accurate to recollections.

Total render time ~60 hours.