real engineering

Home video from 1993 showing Future Crew members at Mika Tuomi's home finishing the PC demo Second Reality shortly before release.

The ADVChina hosts tour a villa neighborhood in southern China that was built only three years earlier and is already empty and deteriorating. They use it to discuss ghost cities, building quality and the real estate bubble.

NASA JPL engineers explain the final minutes of the Curiosity rover's entry, descent and landing on Mars, which combined aerobraking, a parachute and a skycrane. It lays out the tight sequence of events that all had to work automatically.

Vsauce's Michael Stevens stages a realistic version of the trolley problem with unsuspecting subjects who believe they must decide a life-or-death outcome. The Mind Field episode compares what people say they would do with what they actually do.

A feature-length film by the Makani team chronicling their thirteen-year effort to build energy kites that harvest wind power, with footage from test sites in Hawaii, California and Norway. It shows the engineering, the team and the eventual shutdown.

NCommander investigates why Space Cadet Pinball disappeared from Windows Vista, building on Raymond Chen's explanation about 64-bit incompatibility. He tests it on 64-bit Windows including Itanium and walks through the debugging.

The Tokyo Llama channel details how the creators found and bought an abandoned akiya minka house in Japan. It covers process, costs, taxes, financing and risks of renovation.

A look inside Dr Abrasive's lab as he engineers a flash-card replacement for the Sega Saturn optical drive after cracking its CD protection 20 years on.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day tours a Kodak factory to show how photographic film is manufactured. This is part one of a three-part series covering the large-scale coating and production process.

People Make Games interviewed 16 current and former Valve employees to examine how the company's no-bosses, no-titles structure works in practice, and where it falls short.

The Verge's documentary on Handspring and its Treo, a smartphone that came a decade before the iPhone. It tells how a small team tried to build the modern smartphone and was held back by carriers and timing.

The first episode of the 1996 PBS documentary series on the creation of the Boeing 777. It follows the design, build and certification process, including meetings with subcontractors.

A two-hour episode of Fall of Civilizations on the Nabataeans, from humble desert traders to masters of Petra, and what finally brought down their empire.

The first episode of CuriousMarc's series restoring a real Apollo Guidance Computer, led by AGC expert Mike Stewart. They set up a makeshift lab in a Houston hotel room to open up a rare machine owned by a private collector.

Tim Hunkin's 1987 TV series episode on how vacuum cleaners and related household machines work, remastered and upscaled in 2021. It is part of the six-episode 'Secret Life of Machines' series with hands-on demonstrations of everyday technology.

A very long, detailed look at the A4/V2 rocket turbopump, the steam-turbine-driven twin propellant pump system. It covers the peroxide and permanganate catalysis that drives the turbine. This is part 1 of a series on V2 components.

Part 1 of an episode of the British educational TV series The Secret Life of Machines, about how vacuum cleaners work and their history. It mixes humor with explanation of household technology.

An episode of Tim Hunkin's The Secret Life of Machines that explains how a washing machine works, using models, cut-aways and animations. It was first aired in 1988.

People Make Games explores VRChat, the social virtual world that many consider the metaverse people actually like, interviewing users and covering its communities and uncertain future.

ILM shows how The Mandalorian season one used a large curved LED wall to display interactive 3D environments in camera. The video covers the virtual production setup replacing location shoots.

Jim Browning reverses a scammer's remote connection and discovers CCTV in a Delhi call centre. He gives a detailed look at how a tech support scam operation runs, and he shared the footage with the BBC.

A half-hour television special on the 2007 fiery collapse of a connector in the Bay Area's MacArthur Maze and its rebuilding in 26 days. It was produced for the Professional Engineers in California Government.

ADVChina tours Chinese ghost cities and discusses the housing bubble, with speculative buyers purchasing empty apartments as investments.

A documentary on Clive Wearing, a renowned musician whose brain was damaged by a virus in 1985, leaving him with a memory spanning only about seven seconds. It follows his life and condition.

Adam Curtis' multi-part documentary on how Freud's ideas and Edward Bernays' public relations shaped consumer culture and political control. It argues that business and government learned to manufacture desires.

Dominion is a two-hour documentary using drones and hidden cameras to expose conditions in animal agriculture, including food, clothing, entertainment and research. It questions humanity's dominion over animals.

Moleman 2 is a feature-length documentary about the demoscene, tracing its rise from 1980s Commodore 64 culture to modern real-time art. It explains the algorithms and creative process behind demos and intros.

In an Ars Technica War Stories episode, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner describes how he made the game on the Apple II, fighting hardware memory limits and the platform's decline. It covers the rotoscoped animation and the engineering tricks involved.

A Gamers Nexus investigative documentary on the black market for Nvidia AI GPUs, following smugglers, middlemen, and buyers, including reporting from China. It examines how export-restricted chips reach their users.

The trailer for Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old, a WWI documentary built from restored, colorized archival footage and BBC interviews with British soldiers.

A one-hour documentary on XBAND, the 1994 modem network for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. It covers matchmaking, chat, email, leaderboards and how games were patched at runtime to cope with lag.

A 1995 episode of The Computer Chronicles devoted to Gary Kildall, creator of CP/M. It works as a retrospective and tribute to the personal computer pioneer.

A short BBC Earth clip from David Attenborough's Life of Birds showing a lyrebird imitating sounds, including a chainsaw and camera shutter, so accurately it is hard to tell from the real thing.

Tod's Workshop fires full-weight medieval arrows from a 160lb English warbow at reproduced medieval armour. Armour curator Dr Tobias Capwell, an archer and bowyer give historical context and discuss the results.

Brian Springer's documentary Spin, built entirely from unauthorized satellite feeds of politicians and newscasters before they went on air during the 1992 US presidential election. It exposes the behind-the-scenes construction of media reality.

A Wendover Productions documentary-style video on how Zipline delivers blood and medical supplies by drone in Rwanda. It covers the catapult launch, parachute drop and the logistics behind it.

A long rebuttal arguing that the Wright Brothers truly invented the airplane, responding to other YouTubers who credit others. It walks through the engineering breakthroughs the Wrights achieved, such as control and wind tunnel work.

Kirsten Dirksen tours the underground ferro-cement dome home of Paula and Bill Lishman, the family behind the geese-led flight story. The skylit earth-sheltered house stays warm below the frost line.

Tom Scott visits Onkalo in Finland, the planned deep geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste intended to be sealed for 100,000 years.

An Engineering Giants documentary episode following a British Airways Boeing 747-400 through a D-check, the heaviest maintenance inspection, in Cardiff. The aircraft is stripped down and inspected nearly everywhere.