From: Jasper
Remote User:
Date: 11 Mar 2005
Time: 05:33:41 AM -0500
Brian, ….The animation is not the drawing I used to set up the turn. I just tried to make it close enough to show what I did. I saw where the leading edge of the gate protruded into the driveway when I tried to make sense out of the triangular pattern of blood drops straddling the bricks that cross the driveway at the gate. It was critical in determining where O.J. had to have come from if he left the first two blood drops I indicated in the Blood Drops animation. I have the gate opening all the way there, too, because I didn’t know how far it opened and I didn’t want it to appear that I was biasing the animation to support a conjecture. You can see what I did in my perspective drawing in the book. ……I didn’t know at the time that there was a box close to the dumpster where O.J. pushed a button to open the gate. I assumed that there was one but I couldn’t see it in any of the photos and the diagrams were crap. So I went with the testimony in the civil trial transcripts and designed to the worst condition. Even if you assumed that O.J. went all the way to the gate post to push the button, he had to back up when the gate opened and he would have been in the position you see him in when you stop the animation at the farthest point that we see it in all of the photos. It protrudes a little farther in the animation only because that’s that the way the animation program works (it is not an enginering program). …….The only problem I got when I put the gate in the position of the photos is the angle of approach from where O.J. said he unloaded some things at the entrance of his house closest to Ashford and drove it around to Rockingham. The SAAB wasn’t there so he had much more room to play with than I show in the Parked Cars animation. This is where the turning radius could get you in trouble. I ran over the curb of the driveway too – at first. And when I added the mirror things get even tighter. You get two funny “slides” on the turn in the animation just because it was a pain in the ass to show what really happens. The program would not follow my line, it kept locking up and nobody was paying attention to it anyway. The actual study cut the corner of the curb damn close. ………In the real world a driver would make that turn as tight as possible without running over the curb and if it is possible he would know how to do it. If it isn’t as tight as it can be it is probably wrong. Therefore (as I know you know) every inch of the driveway length from the leading edge of the open gate to the street and the width matters. Every angle matters. I had to redo the proportions of the entire estate bounded by the driveway Rockingham and Ashford at lest fifteen times to feel comfortable with the proportions. I am not comfortable with the distance I have from the gate line to the street but what I had only made it harder so I kept it. I feel your pain. Good luck. –Jasper