Technology Aviation Airbus wants to build world's first hydrogen fuel jet engine Commercial hydrogen planes could take off by 2035. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Unlike jet fuel, hydrogen fuel's primary byproduct is water vapor. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

Why are airplanes so cold? From combating fainting to helping aircraft work efficiently, planes are chilly for a reason. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

French start-up VELA claims its massive sailboat can move 415 metric tons across the Atlantic, using only the wind. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The three-hulled design increases stability and helps it cut through open ocean swells. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

Recent advances in radiance fields and novel view synthesis enable creation of realistic digital twins from photographs. However, current methods struggle with flat, texture-less surfaces, creating uneven and semi-transparent reconstructions, due to an ill-conditioned photometric reconstruction objective. Surface reconstruction methods solve this issue but sacrifice visual quality. We propose a novel hybrid 2D/3D representation that jointly optimizes constrained planar (2D) Gaussians for modeling flat surfaces and freeform (3D) Gaussians for the rest of the scene.

Tri-plane-like representations have been widely adopted in 3D-aware GANs for head image synthesis and other 3D object/scene modeling tasks due to their efficiency. However, querying features via Cartesian coordinate projection often leads to feature entanglement, which results in mirroring artifacts. A recent work, SphereHead, attempted to address this issue by introducing spherical tri-planes based on a spherical coordinate system. While it successfully mitigates feature entanglement, SphereHead suffers from uneven mapping between the square feature maps and the spherical planes, leading to inefficient feature map utilization during rendering and difficulties in generating fine image details. Moreover, both tri-plane and spherical tri-plane representations share a subtle yet persistent issue: feature penetration across convolutional channels can cause interference between planes, particularly when one plane dominates the others (see Figure 1). These challenges collectively prevent tri-plane-based methods from reaching their full potential. In this paper, we systematically analyze these problems for the first time and propose innovative solutions to address them. Specifically, we introduce a novel hybrid-plane (hy-plane for short) representation that combines the strengths of both planar and spherical planes while avoiding their respective drawbacks. We further enhance the spherical plane by replacing the conventional theta-phi warping with a novel near-equal-area warping strategy, which maximizes the effective utilization of the square feature map.

Tri-plane-like representations have been widely adopted in 3D-aware GANs for head image synthesis and other 3D object/scene modeling tasks due to their efficiency. However, querying features via Cartesian coordinate projection often leads to feature entanglement, which results in mirroring artifacts. A recent work, SphereHead, attempted to address this issue by introducing spherical tri-planes based on a spherical coordinate system. While it successfully mitigates feature entanglement, SphereHead suffers from uneven mapping between the square feature maps and the spherical planes, leading to inefficient feature map utilization during rendering and difficulties in generating fine image details.Moreover, both tri-plane and spherical tri-plane representations share a subtle yet persistent issue: feature penetration across convolutional channels can cause interference between planes, particularly when one plane dominates the others (see Figure 1). These challenges collectively prevent tri-plane-based methods from reaching their full potential. In this paper, we systematically analyze these problems for the first time and propose innovative solutions to address them. Specifically, we introduce a novel hybrid-plane (hy-plane for short) representation that combines the strengths of both planar and spherical planes while avoiding their respective drawbacks. We further enhance the spherical plane by replacing the conventional theta-phi warping with a novel near-equal-area warping strategy, which maximizes the effective utilization of the square feature map.

A year ago, Air India flight 171 crashed less than a minute after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in the western Indian state of Gujarat, en route for London. The official investigation that followed has sparked intense controversy, in India and beyond, with some questioning its integrity amid claims of conflicts of interest. It is not the first time such an investigation has proved contentious. So is it time for a different approach when investigating air crashes? It was a hot and dry afternoon on 12 June last year, when Flight 171 left the terminal at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport in Ahmedabad. Settling into their seats for the nine-and-a-half-hour journey to London were 230 passengers, 53 of them British citizens. Looking after them were 10 cabin crew.

Technology Aviation The world's largest RC Boeing 777-9X takes flight Filmmaker Tyler Perry piloted the remote-controlled behemoth, which weighs 630 pounds with a 33-foot wingspan. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The remote-controlled aircraft is roughly the same size as a human-piloted Cessna 150. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

A Ukrainian flying ace is leveraging his aerobatics skills to protect his countrymen from nightly attacks. The most challenging part of an international aerobatics contest is the Free Unknown. Pilots arrive at a competition after having polished sequences of loops, stall turns, and barrel rolls. But for the Free Unknown section they learn which assortment of tricks they must perform only a day in advance. Contestants plan out how they will string together the stipulated moves in the most pleasing fashion, but they cannot rehearse the routine, except in their minds. It's a test of imagination and airmanship that often decides the competition. In 2019, the World Intermediate Aerobatics Championship, which was held on an airfield in the Czech town of Břeclav, contained three Free Unknowns. The winner of the first was a twenty-five-year-old Ukrainian pilot named Timur Fatkullin. At the controls of his red-and-silver Extra 330LX--a nimble German sports plane--he made the unusual move of starting his sequence upside down. He then executed a complicated routine as if he'd practiced it for months. The Ukrainian team, boosted by Fatkullin's performance, won gold. Trevor Dugan, who served as a navigator with the R.A.F. in Afghanistan and Iraq, was on the British team, which took bronze. Fatkullin, he said, was "absolutely phenomenal." Not long after that championship, Fatkullin stopped entering aerobatics competitions: first came the pandemic, then the war with Russia. He moves through life impatiently. Now thirty-two, he has five children. He is tall, with a tight beard, pale-green eyes, and a square jaw. Even in casual situations, he stands ramrod straight, as though about to give or receive an order. He often wears a shirt with three buttons undone, a beige leather flying jacket with the collar turned up, combat pants, and Nike high-tops. He plays the guitar, a little piano. He often carries a thick fold of high-value bills. He speaks several languages, including English (almost perfectly) and Spanish (conversationally). He once spent thirty days in jail after breaking the ribs of a man who'd threatened his wife. He can dance the tango. When Fatkullin was in his mid-twenties, he started doing stunts with a group of other extreme athletes: parachutists, motorcyclists, a free diver.

Air France and Airbus have been found guilty of manslaughter over a 2009 plane crash which killed 228 people. The Paris Appeals Court found the airline and aircraft manufacturer guilty of corporate manslaughter over the incident, in which flight AF447 between Rio de Janeiro and Paris crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. The passenger jet stalled during a storm and plunged into the water, killing all on board. A court had previously cleared the companies in April 2023 but they were found guilty after this appeal. The Airbus A330 vanished from radars during a storm, with its wreckage found after a long search of 10,000 sq km (3,860 sq miles) of sea floor.