Tuesday, April 09, 2019

How to improve the NYC skyline

Recently I've been working on an artistic visualization of data project so my mom showed me this incredible video advertisement meant to be played on Samsung TV's to show off how 4K they are.



Towards the end they show a shot of a beautiful city skyline at sunset... beautiful except that something felt wrong with the main building - what kind of architect wouldn't put a spire on top of a building like that?


Checking Google Earth we can see the photo was probably taken from the top of Rockefeller center in NYC. A very instagram famous spot which you can recognize immediately in the still from the Samsung movie.

Borrowing a photo from jenonajetplane and ezgif.com we can do the split frame and see everything they changed. This one is taken from a slightly lower angle - probably the instagram window as apposed to the rooftop view.


The Bank of America Tower lost its antenna along with the savagely mutilated Empire State Building and freedom tower off in the distance. The Jersey City skyline remains unchanged including 30 Hudson St. but the Statue of Liberty is gone. Finally, the sun should be setting much further to the right (West).

Now that we've established that these Samsung animators are simply taking instagram famous locations and adding super-saturated colors ... I'd really like to go visit those flying forestbacked turtles.