Titanic Game: Binoculars or Spotlight [INTERACTIVE GAME] 

Wow... the last line "Fleet&Lee on Titanic had only one chance" gave me genuine chill on my back. Rest in peace Mr Lee and Mr Fleet. You did your best on that night.

I’d be fired because I didn’t find any icebergs at all XD

It's seriously tough seeing an iceberg in the dead of night, even when your eyes are adjusted in the dark. There's also to consider a cold-water mirage taking effect. Binoculars and spotlight makes it still tough. I only get 2 right: one on binoculars 1 and one on bare eyesight 3. Yeah I make a terrible lookout.

RU-vid compression sadly breaks the game for me, no matter how many times i try to force high quality, it always become huge square chunk's. Even when highlighted there is no way to see anything on my screen but huge pixelated blocks ☹️ I think the concept is super cool... I would like to see a computer game like that in real-time, with nothing dangerous to spot 80% of the times you are on a 4 hour watch!

Little story: at School the teachers where talking about the Iceberg collision, the moment they said "If they had Binoculars they would`ve seen the Ice Berg" i just went ` :/ ` surely people should know better?

“Did you spot it?” *Screen goes to 480p*

Just one Iceberg I spoted! The one without binoculars or spotlight... the one that was right ahead of the ship. The others eight... forget! It went unnoticed before my eyes. Congratulation for your job! You gave us a rough idea how it was like, that night. How sad it is!

Much better lighting. Feels less dead, though the decks were probably brighter due to survivor accounts... you know... being able to describe anything at all, otherwise it would be: “it was very dark... and something moved somewhere”

"Iceberg right ahead!" Thanks boys, you did your best. God rest your souls.

I literally spotted none of them. Now I see why it took them being nearly on top of it before the actually spotted it

I spotted the Iceberg easily man, i spotted it as it flew past.

Cant see nothing with the digital artifacts. Says 1080p. Gives me 360p -.-

I spoted easier with Eye sight.

The searchlight wouldn't need to pan, it would only need to point dead ahead as the only iceberg you'd hit is one that is dead ahead. You do need to also scan left and right for ships as they're moving fast enough to be on a collision course if not dead ahead but they'd have lights on so stand out a lot on such a dark night.

Wow that was a lot harder than it appears to be!! I really got a sense of what it was like looking out at the sea at night like that and they had to put up with being cold too!!

Could we get a version of this video uploaded as a raw .mp4 file or some other uncompressed format to make it more fair?

Very interesting and educational, thank you. I wish RU-vid didn't compress the video so much though. So much crushed black, not that its your fault!

Murdoch saw it first. He was on the starboard wing. His lower POV allowed him to see lack of stars sooner than the lookouts. Frederick fleet did say during the inquiry that the ship was already turning as he called the bridge and that he heard a polite "thank you" on the phone. On an other note, Titanic would not have survived a heads on collision. It would have broken up and sank much faster. Think Britannic, a mine was enough to twist the keel, snapping the Marconi wire and jamming the watertight doors open. In Titanic's case, the bow would have split open, the stern would continue to move in forward compressing the ship, causing the hull to break up. Everyone in the bow would be crushed, everything and everyone not secured would be thrown forward at about 25 mph. Just look at the bow's damage as it slammed into the ocean's floor.

interesting, I always believed that the binoculars factor could make the difference, but I have to change my mind, even if it doesn't change much, in the end Smith and Ismay remain the direct managers of the disaster, above all for the weather conditions and for the absence of the moon go to about 20 knots where there was an ice field reported remains an irresponsible gesture. Thanks for the video.

I remember that last year I traveled by ferry to an island relatively near my city, across a small part of the Atlantic, it was at night, and there was a stone wall a few kilometers away, I could see it during the day but I couldn't see it at night, i realized that from a few meters you couldn’t clearly see what was in the water, and looking towards the open sea it was pitch black, all you could see from afar was a small strip lit by the moon. The waters were really calm just like the day the Titanic sank

I managed to spot the last two, but I don't know why the animations seemed grainy. Definitely better without binoculars or a spotlight.

This was an extremely creative way to prove your point. Kudos, my friend

I only saw it 2 times in the bare eyesight and 0 times in everything else, this prooves that the lack of lighting from the moon and overall smoothness of the sea made it impossible to see the iceberg until it was too late.

Ooh new video

I only got ONE right, Bare Eyesight 1. The other two I assumed there was nothing there, and when it was pointed out where they were, I couldn't believe it. They looked like a tiny wisp of shadow against the starlight. Conclusion: I'd make a HORRIBLE Lookout.

I got 2 of the 9 with the spotlight. I think it varies from person to person, honestly. The problem with the binoculars specifically was youre testricted to a small hole that youre looking for, rather than an entire area with bare eyesight. The thing is, with a spotlight, even if its over the ship, the objects become sort of visual as the Spotlight passes. Its why I was able to get 2 of the 3.

Got all 3 with the bare eyesight but none with the others guess I would make a good lookout. I actually was thinking of why there wasn't a spotlight yesterday but I can now see why.

Not sure if you'll catch this on a year old video but have you put much thought into the theory that the conditions that night created a "reverse mirage" essentially obscuring the starlight on the horizon. Without the stars as a backdrop on the horizon it would have made it even more difficult to see the iceberg. Since the conditions that night were perfect for that kind of phenomenon I believe it very well could have been a contributing factor.

Out of all 9, I only spotted 1, and that was the first one of the bare eyes segment.

2:20 I actually experience this very effect every time when I drive into a dark forest with my bike and it's hopelessly weak headlights. Only good when driving faster, having a twistier road, but when the moon shines, screw em

Interesting how it’s so much easier to see with bare eyesight! I only saw two.

One thing about a searchlight. The beam reflects on the water. If something was in the water the waves would not show up correctly. A diffuse searchlight would be useless. However a focused searchlight works better at slower speeds not 22+ knots.

Got only 2 of them correct, and that was with the bare eyesight scenario. I got none correct with the binoculars and the spotlight.

It's called "light pollution" because the lights around diffuse the darkness around you even if you don't realize it. This is because the light from the city is closer to you and the stars become convoluted as they aren't as bright as the light around you from city street lamps.

No wonder the Titanic sank that night, they hired the only guy in the world who sees in 144p.

I always get 20/20 vision in medical exams and I got 0/9 here. Oh my god. 🤣

I only spotted twice one with spotlight on the right side.(Before the spotlight actually touched it)and bare sighted in the middle.Bare eyesight is easier.

If only they had those night vision goggles like the military wear back then.

I was not able to see any of them, I was 0/9. Still, Captain should have slowed way down or stopped for the night. Common sense told me the first time I saw the movie, that when the captain read that many ice warnings, at night, I would of slowed down to a crawl or stopped all together and resumed at first light. Arrogance got those people killed.

6 out of 9. The milky way joining the horizon made it much harder to see

I spotted 4/9. I had to look very closely at my screen to spot it.

Imagine going back and still not being able to see them. What kind of idiot would do that? Right? Right guys?

How would the lookout see a mime or a torpedo? Would thay need binoculars to see torpedoes? Or would the ship just hit the mime or torpedo

The only one I saw was the bare eyesight where the berg is directly in front of the ship, so basically the actual scenario of what happened. I was just barely able to make out the blotting out of stars on the horizon.

the compression made this unbelievably difficult

Put yourself in this situation, you're the commander of an army. You're up against someone with superior technology but you have them slightly outnumbered.

idd be hired with Eyesight. TITANIC II here i come!

I found 4 icebergs but I was find them with the binoculars all the time and 1 with bare eyesight and the other 1 with the lights xD . It's very hard to look at ^^

Ok, now add mirage effects

So basically the best way to spot and or avoid a giant iceberg and the death of 3/4 of the souls on board you should slow the hell down.

Here in the Pacific northwest, only people with no regard for their own lives will sail at night without a FLIR system on board. Locally term deadhead for a log in the water, hanging vertically so you only have a small 3 foot diameter circle sticking 3 or 4 inches above the water. They do not show on radar, to small and low in the water. almost impossible to spot in daylight with the naked eye. an iceberg could be as low so it wouldn't show on radar. They often barely show on radar even when they are sticking 80 feet into the air. even modern technologies might not have saved the Titanic, if they didn't have a FLIR system. I spotted 2/3 of the naked eye in the sims, none of the others, but I know I have extremely good night vision which gives me a slight advantage in finding them.

Ok, I had one dead on with each the binoculars and bare eyesight - and two that were significantly off but still reasonably close with the spotlight. That being said, I spotted both of these guesstimates when the light was pretty far away from the object...

2:00-Agh! Can’t see shit captain! EDIT: I managed to get all bare eyesight choices!

After watching this, the spotlight on SS Vaterland's crow's nest seems particularly silly. I have to wonder if HAPAG put it on to shut up the media and passengers but never actually intended to use it.

The binoculars probably wouldn't have done much, but I still don't really see why a headlight would be a bad idea. I guess if I were up in that crow's nest with a big headlight mounted on the prow, I would assume if an object _isn't_ in the cone of my headlight, then I have no reason to worry about it. Hard to run into something that's not directly in front of you when you're travelling straight ahead, isn't it? It's not like they're doing 60mph in a narrow canal, where something could drop right into the middle of their path from out of nowhere-they're doing at most 25mph on open water. If something's going to cross their path, and it's illuminated, they should be able to see it easily enough with a forward-facing beacon and Fresnel lense, shouldn't they? And if some idiot who never learned the difference between red and green decides he's going to ram you from the side, there isn't really any evasive action you can take.

can we get like 1 minuted before the Iceberg is seen,and then you still dont see the Iceberg but its there and you see it white as ice at the last moment, lets say who sees the Iceberg it fasts actarnos or fredrick, who will win?? ::::btw let the Iceberg come in a random moment::::

I only saw it once, during bare eyesight. I guess not having binoculars made no difference at all. Thank you TA.

Actually titanic animations depending on the size of the objective lense it’s entirely feasible that they may have seen the iceberg because the objective lense is almost always bigger than your eye allowing in more light thus allowing you to see objects better. This video didn’t take this into account but overall it was a very well detailed video and it still is also very possible that even with more light the iceberg may have been missed because after 4 hours Bordem causes you to loose attention.

Oh wow I suck at being a lookout

So unfortunate how much RU-vid compresses dark scenes. I couldn’t see an iceberg even when I knew where it was

Only saw it twice. One bare, one with spotlight, none with binoculars.

The TITANIC only needed to slow down at night …

Me: just turns up brightness on my MacBook

In that test to see if you could spot the iceberg, I didn't see anything in any of them. But I think that's just cause my screen looked like it was running a moving Minecraft image.

Sure, and I also saw the periscope of the German U-boat.

You’re being a bit unfair with the binoculars, you probably wouldn’t be using them the whole time, rather just periodically looking into the distance with them.

I love this attempt. However, you are ignoring the testimony from the other ships in the same ice field. The bergs could easily be spotted at 1 MILE! The bridge usually saw the bergs before the crowsnest. The crowsnest was REDUNDANCY. How could a berg just appear with only 30 seconds to impact @500 yds. and it was as TALL AS THE TITANIC ITSELF. Answer -the ship was already in a turn to avoid something else. No one wants to admit they turned into a berg so they all said it was a phantom "black" ice berg. We know that isn't true it was photographed a week later with red paint across its bottom. It was white. Again the bridge usually made turns without input from the crowsnest. They were in an ice field -there were bergs "EVERYWHERE" they made a turn to avoid something in the distance and ran right into it.

Can your program accurately compute the amount of reflected light? How about a narrower cone (bergs are slow)? How about dark red light that doesn't mess with your night vision? How about dark red light/binoculars combo?

then there is the problem of bit rate, that makes even more difficult to spot a berg truly a fatal dificulty.

I spotted 2/9, all with bare eyes and including the one right ahead. I guess I can be proud of me. xD

I spotted it like 3 or 4 times and 2 of those times were with bare vision. If you did one with the forward lights on I wouldn't be able to see it for sure.

RU-vid compression messes it all. All i see is black blocks on the screen.

Light pollution is kinda wrong described here. One thing is your eyesight adjust to low light conditions (which I Tottaly agree) but other thing is light pollution itself. Take camera with you and take long exposure photo of night sky in the city, nearby the city and 30-40km out of the city lights. Results? Photos will be badly polluted by night light even out of the city if you are in city proximity because nightlight reflects from streets and reflect back from earth atmosphere causing low star visibility. You need not only to get your eyesight adjusted but also run away from city lights by great distance. What I'm trying to say with my bad English - Star visibility is not only your eyes problem but also sky condition. Camera do not adjust like human eyes, you can use the same parameters in those 3 locations and see contrast getting low in light polluted area. There are websites with light pollution maps for night sky photographers. To be specific - ships lights are not near as close to create light pollution (even passengers testimony states that there was a lot of stars that night) but enough for sure to impact human eye sensitivity (even flashlight do that, that's why astronomers are using red light for sky watching).

I can't see anything because of compression on the video. The horizon is hard to discern when RU-vid is trying to compress it all down, making it near impossible to see anything

What if there was a spotlight at the very front of the ship would it be any different

It sounds like you got this information from Parks Stephenson, but that's a good thing because he is a man of reason, facts and thanks to his Naval background, knows the sea.

Did Titanic have electric spotlights? Didn't think they were invented till WW I.

Got binoculars 2

If only they didn’t have a tiny freaking rudder

I only saw stars below the horizont ....oh no, wait, it was dust on my screen

Go down the beach and use binoculars and try even finding the horizon haha You cant. Its for identifying an object once seen with the eyes. Ive tried this myself, ive also asked David Haismen, edith haismens son, or grandson i forget now....he said they are of no use for looking for things and he was a lookout. Also i was on the 2012 memorial cruise and nearly every night travelling out to see even on clear nights, you couldnt see the horizon, its completely black in all directions....some nights gave you a light haze towards the west ahead of us.

you should try to render the vid next time in a higher bitrate cuz in the animations the picture was very "blurry" and "blocky" :/ but anway a very nice vid!!!

I only got 1 in bare eyesight ._.

Zero for me. Lookout is a job that requires training. Thanks for the video, that explains lots of things !

I only saw 1 with the bare eyesight

maybe if they had found the binoculars, they would have run into the iceberg without spotting it, but head on.

If they put a giant heat ray on the front of the ship they could have vaporized the iceberg and save the day.

I literally didn’t spot it even once. Out of All 9 times I saw absolutely nothing

The only one I saw was the the directly in front of the ship, on the false horizon, about a mile or two away.

I couldn't have worked in the Crow's Nest, I already wear glasses for farsightedness. I failed every one of those tests.

It's a shame, youtube has compressed this video so much that even on HD all you see are artifacts. :(

Yeaaah at 1080 all i see are pixelated shadows. Dont think that was an issue they encountered. Its a computer simulation, not sure why it was simulated at only 1080, or if you chose to only upload it at that, but youtubes compression algorithm was not kind.

I only spot one but thankfully it was the one in front of the ship

The thing they hadn't had Is 240p res though hahah, anyway I can Imagine how difficult It was with cold Wind in your eyes

i like this test. it shows how difficult visibility can be. but a computer screen can only show so much detail. i see the point you are trying to make but someone watching this on a 4k screen with good color calibration can spot the iceberg much earlier then someone watching this on lower resolutions. different brightness options on different monitors dilude this test result further.thats why computer screens and any other screen for that matter are not reliable when it comes to simulating actual human eyesight.still very nice video.

This is also why one’s parents tell the kids to turn off the car lights inside

I spotted the first and the last one with bare eyesight. With the binoculars and the spotlight I spotted one, but both times I wasn't sure about it and I couldn't look longer, because the binocular/spotlight was already moving on. The ones with the bare eyesight were much easier to spot.

Bare eyesight gave the best overall view, indeed. Binocs were somewhere in the ok range, but the extremely narrowed field of view makes it a lot harder. And spotlight is straightup horrendous. Can't see anything outside the light. Doesn't matter in my case tho. Didn't spot jack in any scenario, even after rerunning it with max resolution. If even rested eyes knowing where to look can't see anything, one sure can't expect better from someone who had their eyes exposed to freezing temperatures for hours looking in a general direction.

What if one of the lookouts had binos and the other with just normal vision without binos?

I can spot it only 1 time without binoculars or spotlights.