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The 'birdman' is FAKE: Filmmaker behind wing suit flight video admits footage was a hoax and says it was 'online storytelling'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz1q0Lqp4MJ

By Rob Waugh and Hugo Gye

PUBLISHED: 00:45 GMT, 23 March 2012 | UPDATED: 07:53 GMT, 23 March 2012

The Dutch 'bird man' who posted a video showing a successful 'test flight' of a wing suit contraption has admitted that the amazing feat was a hoax all along.
Viewers became sceptical after it emerged that no scientists actually knew 'Jarno Smeets', who claimed to have created the technology.
Now Smeets has confessed that he is actually a 'filmmaker and animator' named Floris Kaayk, and has described the faked footage as 'online storytelling'.

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Smeets lifts off - powered only by a run up and the flapping of the wings, without a rocket or a rotor in sight



The engineer's suit is made from a 200 square foot 'kite', powered by motorised wings which 'amplify' Smeets's arm movements.But Mr Kaayk shot down rumours that the footage, which shows him soaring into the air, was intended to be publicity for a company. The mystery of 'Jarno Smeets' began when the institutions he claimed to belong to revealed they had never heard of the 'engineer'.

Smeets takes a run-up for his test flight. The 31-year-old engineer claims that he 'flew' 300 feet and stayed in the air for a minute.

His LinkedIn biography links to Pailton Engineering Limited, a workplace which has no record of him - and there is also no record of Smeets at Coventry University, which also appears on his CV.

Smeets' video provoked controversy online, with many viewers claiming that it must be faked. The video shows a flight in a park in the Hague, which lasted about a minute. Smeets runs through a park in the Hague flapping enormous, kite-like wings - and suddenly 'lifts off', flying 300 feet through the air. He claims to be the first human being to fly like a bird, without a jet or rotors - instead, he says he uses wings which 'amplify' his muscles, with the motion sensors from Nintendo's Wii transferring motions into motors in the wings. The engineer claimed that wireless engines in the wings work as 'amplifiers' for Smeets's own arms, allowing him to flap wings that would otherwise be far too large for a single human.

The technology is plausible - in theory.

But effects experts quickly called into question whether Smeets' attempt is authentic.
‘They’re able to afford to build this thing, but can’t invest in proper video equipment, or a tripod,’ Ryan Martin, technical director at George Lucas's Industrial Lights and Magic effects house said in an interview with Gizmodo.

‘If I were to make a fake video with the intention of going viral, I would make certain that the quality was as poor as possible to disguise any flaws in poor animation work.
‘I am suspicious because there is not much detail shown of the actual machine,’ he says.

‘The device is also something that is only possible in recent times, given proliferation of these types of high torque, high power density brushless motors, high voltage speed controllers and lithium batteries, off the shelf carbon fiber components and so on.'

Smeets pretended that the 'suit' is driven by Wii motion sensors in the arms which 'sense' the pilot's movements, helped by an accelerometer from an HTC Wildfire S smartphone.
The movements are transferred into Turnigy motors which give Smeets the power to move the 200 square foot wing, according to his claims.

'Ever since I was a little boy I have been inspired by pioneers like Otto Lilienthal, Leonardo da Vinci,' said Smeets in a press release along with the video.

Smeets 'lifts off' in a bird suit built from 200 square foot kite wings with motors in the wings that 'amplify' his flapping


Smeets in triumph after his successful 'test flight' - the engineer is sharing his techniques openly online so others can build their own 'wing suits'

YouTube: jarnosmeets80 (www.humanbirdwings.net)