Enterprise-D Construction Project
September 22, 2015 7:58 AM   Subscribe

The Enterprise-D Construction Project is an ambitious one-man project to recreate the Enterprise-D in its entirety using the Unreal engine, drawing from a variety of sources including both the official blueprints by Rick Sternbach and the earlier Ed Whitefire blueprints. It's not yet publicly available, but you can take a virtual tour showing off decks 1–4, including the bridge and main shuttle bay.
posted by Mr. Pokeylope (66 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wait, I was on Expedia ready to buy a ticket to this thing and its just a virtual recreation.

My heart has never swelled and deflated thus much or this quickly ever.

I mean I'm sure its great, but after thinking it was real, nothing else could possibly be anything other than a disappointment.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:10 AM on September 22, 2015


Cool, but good luck finding the head.
posted by Smedleyman at 8:11 AM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Oh, unreal engine is done kind of VR creation thing? I thought they were using an unreal engine cause we haven't invented warp drive yet.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 8:12 AM on September 22, 2015


I just about lost it at the three seashells. :)

Seriously though, this is amazing. I had a grin on my face the entire second half of the video. Truly amazing.
posted by evilangela at 8:18 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is so awesome. I have no doubt that at some point in the far future our starships will actually be replicas of the Enterprise.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:29 AM on September 22, 2015


Cool, but good luck finding the head.
There wasn't one. They beam the shit out of your intestines and back into the food replicator stock.

Perhaps I've said too much.
posted by plinth at 8:30 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Cool. I want to see Cetacean Ops. (According to the ST:TNG Techincal Manual, guidance and navigation research on the Enterprise-D is conducted by a cetacean crew of twelve Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus gilli), overseen by two Takaya's Whales (Orcinus orca takayai).)

And after I see the dolphins and whales, I want to see the Battle Bridge!
posted by Rob Rockets at 8:30 AM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


In related news, the National Air and Space Museum wants help restoring their 11 foot long studio model of the Enterprise.
posted by exogenous at 8:45 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Observation lounge and Ten Forward doors need work.
posted by Tanizaki at 8:46 AM on September 22, 2015


Looking at the virtual tour, was there a sports team called the "Starboard Sharks" in the show? Also, I get that animating people is difficult, but the disembodied voices were a bit creepy, after awhile.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:02 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Even the roving, 80's era house plants are there! Too bad they never got around to that episode where they attained sentience and tried to take over the ship to send it to Loam 7 in the Humus system.
posted by Poldo at 9:06 AM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


So much space... so much wasted space.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:07 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Dreams do come true!

Looks really well done so far. I would definitely enjoy "playing" this.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:17 AM on September 22, 2015


Always amused that according to the blue prints, Kirk's Enterprise had a bowling alley. Bet that was fun during red alerts.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:33 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Smedleyman: "Cool, but good luck finding the head."

You have obviously never seen the blueprints. They are everywhere. From memory, I believe there was one behind the viewscreen on the bridge.

/nerd
posted by Splunge at 9:35 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Not only do they have bathrooms on the Enterprise, they've even been seen on screen.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:40 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oh, unreal engine is done kind of VR creation thing?

The Unreal Engine is a major game engine originally developed for Unreal, and used in many games since.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:46 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Freakin' A. They really captured the lighting and the salmon-and-beige verisimilitude. The stated goal on the website is to eventually turn it into a MMRPG (with Unreal Engine this should be more-or-less an incremental process). Add VR goggles and nerdvana ensues.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:50 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think I still have a copy of the Quake (or was it Quake II?) level of the Enterprise D. Not mapped in its entirety like they are trying to do here, but still pretty neat.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 9:52 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Always amused that according to the blue prints, Kirk's Enterprise had a bowling alley.

Those were the good old days. The Enterprise-C just had an air hockey table, a reissue Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga and a busted Golden Tee.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:52 AM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


Although I guess if you're raised there you try not to make a thing of it, like those harvard people

Wesley Crusher is a legacy! That explains so much about the Academy admissions process.
posted by RogerB at 9:54 AM on September 22, 2015


Although I guess if you're raised there you try not to make a thing of it, like those harvard people who say that went to school just outside of Boston. "Oh, I was just a military brat, lol! Definitely didn't take oil painting classes with human civilization's most advanced android"

"A young girl living aboard the USS Enterprise-D around the time of its destruction in 2371 carried a teddy bear. Along with several other children, she was separated from her parents, requiring Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge to carry her to a safer part of the saucer section. The teddy bear was dropped in the scramble. (Star Trek Generations)"—memoryalpha

"Yeah I lost my favorite stuffed toy to a warp core breach."
posted by polymodus at 10:04 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Not only do they have bathrooms on the Enterprise, they've even been seen on screen

Would that make them "head" canon?
posted by nathan_teske at 10:06 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


He's going to include the duck, right?
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:25 AM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Anyone do a Google Cardboard app yet?
posted by miyabo at 10:45 AM on September 22, 2015


I feel silly, like I'm missing something really obvious here, but...the main shuttle bay never looked like that at all, did it? I mean this recreation is HUGE and has all these nooks and stuff.

I love it all the same. This is a geek dream come true.
posted by The Hyacinth Girl at 10:50 AM on September 22, 2015


For a place that doesn't serve alcohol, that starship sure has a lot of bars.
posted by ckape at 10:51 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


"Less talk, more synthehol!"
posted by Mogur at 10:53 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


"Conference Room"? I'm pretty sure that place was known as One Backward.
posted by rlk at 10:56 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anyone do a Google Cardboard app yet?

The linked version will be occulus ready when complete.
posted by synthetik at 10:56 AM on September 22, 2015


I don't recall them ever showing flights of stairs on the show (which doesn't of course mean they aren't there in the "design" of the Enterprise). Also was the hallway connecting the bridge to the conference room every shown on tv? I want to say yes but I don't recall it being a ramp.
posted by mmascolino at 11:01 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


As I recall on the show the models of previous Enterprises were in the conference room and not in the hallway.
posted by ckape at 11:04 AM on September 22, 2015


Observation lounge and Ten Forward doors need work.

The video showed us Two Forward, not Ten Forward.


but...the main shuttle bay never looked like that at all, did it? I mean this recreation is HUGE and has all these nooks and stuff.

I don't recall them ever doing the Main Shuttlebay as a practical set (maybe in the movies?), in the show they usually used Shuttlebay 2 or 3. They did show Main Shuttlebay from the outside in the episode Cause and Effect (the one with the time loop that kept ending when Frasier crashes his ship into the Enterprise and blowing it up).


"Conference Room"? I'm pretty sure that place was known as One Backward.

One AFT.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:10 AM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


Always amused that according to the blue prints, Kirk's Enterprise had a bowling alley.

Interesting equipment abounds on naval ships.
posted by squorch at 11:20 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Really? I am barely in top half of half of Trek geekdom in my circle of friends and I found ambitious but a little disappointing; there are the never-before seen ramps and staircases (possibly just offscreen in perpetuity, but it seems odd), and --on preview, as ckape says -- the historical sculptures relocated out the door of the conference room and around the corner. It seems quixotic to go to all the trouble to create one of the most distinctive features of the sets but then put it in the wrong place and slap some vague glowy vertical bars where we expect it.

And jeezus but there are a lot of lounges.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:20 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Shouldn't there be like 10,000 random cabins for all the non-speaking characters? Or are they all identical?
posted by miyabo at 11:28 AM on September 22, 2015


Slightly disappointed that the runabout on the shuttle deck is the Rio Grande, which is assigned to Deep Space Nine, unless they're implying that someone from DS9 is visiting the E-D. The Enterprise had a runabout in "Timescape"; maybe they can change it to something like the Thames or Atchafalaya.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:40 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


The beauty of this is the artists and authors responsible for the technical manual were primarily concerned with how their ideas would look as blueprints, and the set designers were primarily concerned with how they could get the most out of the handful of minor sets they had to depict the random locations the script demanded. So when you stick slavishly to the official materials at hand you get weirdness like the never-seen ladderwells and connecting hallways plus an endless stream of lounges and family quarters and daycares and dolphin tanks and laboratories and potted plants to eat up what turns out to be the significant volume this ship turns out to have once it's fully modeled.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:44 AM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


As I recall on the show the models of previous Enterprises were in the conference room and not in the hallway.

In the last season (or perhaps Generations) the wall was re-designed and the models removed.

I just about lost it at the three seashells. :)


I had to rewind that bit. "Wait, were there...?"
posted by dances with hamsters at 11:45 AM on September 22, 2015


The escape pods look unsettlingly too much like Cube.

And the tractor beam colour is blue, not teal. Come on.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:45 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Pretty disappointed you can't shrink-down and go inside the models in the conference room and explore them in perfect scale accuracy.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:46 AM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


maybe they can change it to something like the Thames or Atchafalaya

Slightly embarrassed to reveal my no doubt substantial ignorance of Starfleet naming conventions, but: mightn't the Enterprise runabout(s?) be named like the Enterprise's other shuttlecraft, after scientists and natural philosophers, rather than like DS9 runabouts, after rivers? Has it been established whether the naming convention goes with each class of ship rather than being elected by its home station?
posted by RogerB at 11:47 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


IRL, usually the names all follow a category depending on the class of ship, but it's just a convention and there can always be exceptions. Take the USS Henry M. Jackson, which is the only Ohio-class sub not named after a State.

I would assume it's the same in the Federation.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 11:53 AM on September 22, 2015


Mmmmaybe. I like the idea of it either being the Thames or the Seine because of Picard.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:54 AM on September 22, 2015


I don't know if this is covered in the canonical material, but in the novels it is the captain's prerogative to name the shuttles. I would assume this would include the runabouts.

Riker names the shuttles on the U.S.S. Titan after jazz musicians.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 11:57 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


Of course he does.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:09 PM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


"Sir, the Solo You Still Can't Play After Practicing for a Decade is having trouble docking… shall we send Thomas out to pilot it in?"
posted by RogerB at 12:13 PM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


They should have a virtual recreation of the Enterprise on the holodeck.
posted by D.C. at 12:23 PM on September 22, 2015


They should have a virtual recreation of the Enterprise on the holodeck.

N. C. C. One. Seven. Oh. One. No bloody A, B, C, or D.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:30 PM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


I love Star Trek, but there's no getting away from the fact that the inside of the Enterprise basically looks like a flying mid-90s conference centre / mall / hotel.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:31 PM on September 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


I love Star Trek, but there's no getting away from the fact that the inside of the Enterprise basically looks like a flying mid-90s conference centre / mall / hotel.

I, for one, will never stop dreaming of exploring the far reaches of the galaxy aboard USS Airport Radisson.
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:36 PM on September 22, 2015 [21 favorites]


They should have a virtual recreation of the Enterprise on the holodeck.

The map is not the territory.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:46 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


there's no getting away from the fact that the inside of the Enterprise basically looks like a flying mid-90s conference centre / mall / hotel.

Once this thing is finished, they should allow the option to fill it with Sailor Moon and Deadpool cosplayers.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:48 PM on September 22, 2015


It seems quixotic to go to all the trouble to create one of the most distinctive features of the sets but then put it in the wrong place and slap some vague glowy vertical bars where we expect it.

The answer when it comes to fandom geekery is that you should always assume there is someone about 1000x more obsessive than you, and they're undoubtedly working on the project. A lot of the set was changed through the run of the show (and movie), the bridge and conference room in particular. So the question is really, which version of the Enterprise are they constructing. I'm pretty sure they spent like 8 months just arguing this.

I would fully expect someone to eventually make add-on mods that switch the ship to a particular season.
posted by danny the boy at 12:52 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Like which carpet do you want. Season 1 or Season 2 ?
posted by danny the boy at 12:54 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


Riker names the shuttles on the U.S.S. Titan after jazz musicians.

You know that they would all be named Betty McGillicutty and Laureline Wierzbowski and Yuki Larssen and Xpppppplt and sure probably Holographic Or Cloned Tom Jones and nobody else you'd ever heard of and when you asked him about it he'd just get a sly grin and ask if you want one named after you too. Because, reader, he banged them.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:39 PM on September 22, 2015 [9 favorites]


I love Star Trek, but there's no getting away from the fact that the inside of the Enterprise basically looks like a flying mid-90s conference centre / mall / hotel.

Or a cruise ship. Really, the closest experience to being a junior officer in Starfleet right now is going on a mid-90s boat like the Carnival Destiny and touring the various indoor lounges -- at night, of course. I mean, if you chartered a boat and got everyone to dress up and invited some celebrities, you could really ...

... shit, it exists.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:00 PM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


"Oh, unreal engine is done kind of VR creation thing?"

As escape from the potato planet has mentioned, it's one of the main game engines -- but the other bit of context is that this new version, Unreal Engine 4, is state-of-the-art, available for free (but with licensing terms for pro projects -- "Pay a 5% royalty on games and applications you release"), and so in the last six months there have been many people building extraordinarily realistic archiecture demos -- the first I recall was an aparment in Paris.

You can create impressive, highly-realistic environments by pre-rendering everything the way that, for example, CGI in movies are done. But game engines have to deal with dynamic environments. What's notable about UE4 and this generation of game engines is that they're approaching the levels of realism that we expect from the pre-rendered CGI stuff, but within a dynamic, immersive game engine.

This particular example could be much more realistic seeming than it already is, though it's a bit hampered by the very plastic-y materials of the source. But we're quickly approaching the time when you could have a game with lots of computer characters, player characters, and an interactive environment that is at a level of realism that we associate with movie CGI.

Personally, I was amazed and a little thrilled with this demo when I imagined actually playing a game within it.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:06 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]



... shit, it exists.



aaaaaaahhh that starts on my birthday aaaaaaah
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:20 PM on September 22, 2015


RobotVoodooPower: "I love Star Trek, but there's no getting away from the fact that the inside of the Enterprise basically looks like a flying mid-90s conference centre / mall / hotel.

Or a cruise ship. Really, the closest experience to being a junior officer in Starfleet right now is going on a mid-90s boat like the Carnival Destiny and touring the various indoor lounges -- at night, of course. I mean, if you chartered a boat and got everyone to dress up and invited some celebrities, you could really ...

... shit, it exists.
"

Why did... How could... I can't afford...

::sigh::
posted by Splunge at 3:34 PM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


It seems hilariously appropriate that the same ship also offers your choice of:

The Jazz Cruise
The Smooth Jazz Cruise
The Signature Jazz Cruise
posted by AndrewInDC at 3:41 PM on September 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


Anybody want to buy a kidney? Slight wear and tear.
posted by Splunge at 3:47 PM on September 22, 2015


That Paris apartment is everything the enterprise model is not. Not that the ship is bad, it's impressive. But it's like they need a team or teams of people to go through it...one group does the roughing out and makes sure the spaces are technically accurate. Another comes through and adds what the generic textures, colors, furniture, etc. are. A final team comes through and makes every space looked lived in. Surely some tables have nicks? Some unmade beds. Photos, notes. Cushions worn in certain ways. How are the floors cleaned, show up the space-roombas. Do Enterprise closets get dust bunnies?

A starship which looked "nice" but lived in (as opposed to another drippy grunge ship) would be amazing.
posted by maxwelton at 4:05 PM on September 22, 2015 [4 favorites]


It's the future. They're called 'dust tribbles'.
posted by Splunge at 4:09 PM on September 22, 2015 [6 favorites]


I know it's just a function of my age, but TOS's primary colors and mid-century swivel chairs still look future-y to me, whilst Enterprise-D really just is the Glendale Galleria, ca. 1988, in space.
posted by allthinky at 6:38 PM on September 22, 2015


mightn't the Enterprise runabout(s?) be named like the Enterprise's other shuttlecraft, after scientists and natural philosophers, rather than like DS9 runabouts, after rivers?

Time to shore up my geek cred.

The runabouts are Danube-class starships. (Yes, they're considered full starships in their own right rather than shuttlecraft.) Hence, all the Earth river names.
posted by bryon at 11:04 PM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]


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