texture maps

The All-Digital Air Taxi

Several futuristic aircraft in this issue look not only real but well used. It's all a matter of canny computer rendering.

Boeing and others are working on the canard rotor/wing VTOL concept. The rotor spins for vertical takeoff, then converts to a fixed wing for forward flight, ideal for the air taxi systems predicted to launch in the 21st century. To render photo-quality illustrations of aviation concepts for this issue, we turned to The Embassy, a video-effects firm. Here's how visions of the future are engineered.

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