Interesting LoTR tidbit (no spoiler)

[T Roosevelt]

Smart soldiers decided to flee the Rings battle
Digital warriors thought for themselves - and their first thought was to run away

[Exultant Democracy]

1. It proves that was isn't logical

[THUNDER HANDS]

2. that's cool

That'd be me if I was an ork in LOTR. :D

[sexybomber]

3. "Actually it was the human defenders that were running away"

when faced with the unstoppable might of Sauron's armies.

I'm practically out of my mind with anticipation. I'm going to the midnight show in like 14 hours!! AHHHHH greatest movie ever!! hehehe :D

[XNASA]

4. 200,000??????

I just finished reading the chapter about the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and I don't seem to recall that there were 200,000 involved.

More like 10,000 vs. 60,000 is about right.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

5. Dramatic Licence, fella!

If you want a breakdown, there's about 2,000 soldiers in Minas Tirith, plus the 'short of three thousands that come in', perhaps 1,000 that Faramir returns with, so that's 6,000 Gondorians, plus 6,000 Rohirrim.

[Zero Gravitas]

6. Run Away! Run Away!

on the Two Towers Extended Edition DVD there is a piece on MASSIVE and the intelligent agents they used for the battle scenes (the docos on discs 3 & 4 are excellent BTW). They showed a clip of one of the early runs of the prgram and you can see abunch of soldiers running away in the background, but they said it was because they were facing the wrong way when the simulation started and couldn't see the other troops, so they are programmed to sun until they find something to fight.

[DS1]

7. There's an amazing amount of disinformation in these articles

about the soldiers running away. Every iteration of this article repeats the same bullshit, it's proof that nobody does their own research any more. Sad, really.

The agents were facing the wrong way to start with, didn't see anyone, and started running until they did. They worked precisely as programmed, there was no built-in human self-preservation or desire for peace.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

8. The massive program allows a certain independence of action

within the bounds of programming, purely to make large scale events more realistic. Jackson and his team were themselves surprised by the reactions of some CGI characters as they were designed to be unpredictable.

[DS1]

9. The doesn't change anything I said.

:-)

[Screaming Lord Byron]

10. because I was backing up your argument.

[zbdent]

11. Similar to the techie info in "Finding Nemo" - while creating the "Tuna

in a net" sequence, they had to "kill" a bunch of digital fish because they were outside the net trying to get in.

GIGO, if you will.

A computer will, unless there's a programming glitch, do exactly what you tell it to do. Mind you, you made most of the glitches, and you really have to be specific on what you tell it to do.

[Liberal Classic]

12. Finished RotK last week

There is some retreating in it, particularly as the Witch King of Angmar advances past Osgiliath. I'm no AI expert but it sounds like they weighted something wrong in their decision tree. All the same, I hope they include this on the extended edition's appendices.