from Hacker News

Sortie en mer – A trip out to sea

by 32faction on 2/16/15, 2:58 PM with 79 comments

• by ekidd on 2/16/15, 4:51 PM

  Very nicely done, technically. And the marketing message is both true and useful: Swimming at sea is surprisingly hard, and life jackets make a huge difference.

  I was once a very strong swimmer, and back then, I tried swimming 60 feet to shore in water with choppy, 6-inch waves. I wound up repeatedly inhaling water and choking. To combat this, I tried to keep my head high above the water, which was exhausting. After 30 feet, it was clear I was in real trouble, so I called to the rowboat shadowing me 5 feet away and they towed me to shore.

  Similarly, cold water will shut me down frighteningly fast—even with a wetsuit and lifejacket, I've been stunned into near immobility after less than a minute of swimming. And I'm somebody who grew up swimming in the Gulf of Maine, which can be frigid (because Cape Cod deflects the warmer Gulf Stream eastward). The actual risk here is cold shock, not hypothermia—rapid vasoconstriction in your limbs will flood your core with blood, causing your heart to work much harder to maintain circulation. It's incredibly draining.

  A life-jacket will keep your head above water with minimal exertion. This means that (a) you keep breathing and (b) you remain visible to rescuers. It turns survival from an incredibly strenuous and terrifying athletic event into largely passive floating.

• by joshontheweb on 2/16/15, 6:32 PM

  When I was a boy scout we were taught to take off our pants, tie knots in them and fill them with air either by blowing or by throwing them over and down on the water. You can create a makshift life jacket this way. Wet fabric can hold air. It isn't perfect, you have to keep refilling air as it leaks but it does work. I was in a swimming pool and not high seas so not sure how effective it would be in that situation. Definitely better than just treading water though.

• by sirwolfgang on 2/16/15, 3:44 PM

  Develop as part of an interactive experience by the agency CLM BBDO for yachtwear manufacturer Guy Cotten and released on Apr 24, 2014. The goal is to remind people to buy and wear lifejackets.

• by saganus on 2/16/15, 3:43 PM

  This looks very interesting. However for those of us with a slow internet connection, the fact that I can't pause and let it load means my experience is cut every few seconds.

• by mjlee on 2/16/15, 6:54 PM

  Having a competent crew helps too.

  I'm in the Royal Navy. We practice a man overboard every time we sail and we critique each one. We even restrict movement on the upper deck after dark. We're professional sailors who live at sea - if you take a yacht out with a friend and you haven't been to sea since last summer you need to practice your man overboard drills.

• by fit2rule on 2/16/15, 5:20 PM

  That made me very, very uncomfortable. Probably one of the worst things I've ever felt while comfortably sitting in front of my computer, browsing the web.

  Well done! :)

• by bigbugbag on 2/16/15, 10:01 PM

  It seems appropriate to plug this article "Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning" : http://gcaptain.com/drowning/?10981

• by ruggeri on 2/17/15, 7:18 AM

  I want to watch, but can't transfer fast enough. Therefore:

  wget https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/guy-cotten/videos/guy_cot...

  Hope that helps someone.

• by Animats on 2/16/15, 7:05 PM

  All I get is a black screen with an intro logo, and an endless loop of ocean sounds.

  Won't play in a reasonably secured Firefox 35 on Linux. "This operation is insecure" - main.js:6 Because a huge function is on one line, it's hard to diagnose the problem.

• by PeterWhittaker on 2/16/15, 4:40 PM

  Please - include an "autoplay" notice in headlines.

• by mintplant on 2/16/15, 7:45 PM

  I made it to 4:30. Is there more to the story (more flashbacks?) if you survive for longer? I got the impression that Charles was deliberately trying to kill Julien. Maybe I'm reading too much into this.

  Also, there's a nice double-meaning in the French version of the title. "Sortie en mer" means "sea trip", but taken word-for-word, it could also mean "trip in the sea".

• by acjohnson55 on 2/16/15, 4:04 PM

  I just get the splash page, and then nothing. I assume I'm missing something?

• by driverdan on 2/16/15, 9:55 PM

  No pause button and not fully preloading made this unusable on a "slow" (<10Mb) connection.

• by froo on 2/17/15, 12:49 AM

  This is exactly why my girlfriend and I always use our PFD's with harnesses when passagemaking and alternating watches. It's a simple thing to strap into the jacklines and all but eliminates our fears about this sort of thing happening.

• by swamp40 on 2/16/15, 5:58 PM

  I was doing good until he tore his fingernail off. Yuck!

  Is that something that really happens?

• by cbd1984 on 2/16/15, 11:47 PM

  This works for a while, then freezes.

• by tabrischen on 2/16/15, 7:27 PM

  It would be interesting to see full length feature films developed in this technique.

• by pgrote on 2/16/15, 3:41 PM

  Very well done. At one point I thought I could bob on the surface. Nope.

• by kybernetyk on 2/16/15, 8:53 PM

  So why didn't the other guy turn back?

• by confiscate on 2/17/15, 10:26 AM

  i can't get past 5 min. Is 5 min the hard upper limit of how long you can play this game?

• by gie on 2/17/15, 9:26 AM

  Who else here waiting for sharks?

• by rememberlenny on 2/16/15, 3:34 PM

  Was this a Oculus production?

• by lkurtz on 2/16/15, 4:19 PM

  Whenever you go out to sea... well... just don't go out to sea.

• by joncp on 2/16/15, 6:07 PM

  So, let's see... autoplay, splash screen, a video with no navigation controls. That site's UX sucks in a big way, so why is it #2 on HN?