The spaceman salutes you (from Netease)

In preparation for the Shenzhou 7 mission, which will include China's first-ever space walk, major web portals have released their own CG animations of the launch, orbit, EVA, and re-entry.

According to Zhang Rui, a journalist with Netease, they were all rendered by Crystal CG at costs ranging from 80,000 yuan (for Netease) to upwards of 300,000.

Liftoff (QQ)

QQ
QQ's version gets off to a rough start with some pretty fake-looking rocket exhaust clouds, but things pick up after that. The site also provides a movie version if you don't want to load up all that Flash cruft.

Inside the capsule (Sina)

Sina
Sina starts with a menu of options. Click on the left-most item, 全程观看, to view the whole sequence, or the right-most item to try out a few space-related Flash games.

Shenzhou in orbit (Sohu)

Sohu
Sohu begins with a view of the spaceport. Select individual buildings to see brief descriptions, or click on the launch tower to start the countdown. The show is interactive in the worst sense of the word: there's a pause at the end of each stage to allow you to explore the rocket or module, and it requires you to click to continue. Watch a movie version here.

Reentry (Netease)

Netease
Netease has a spiffy view window with an altitude meter on the right-hand side. The music is pretty well-done (but really loud - beware). Download a WMV movie version by clicking beneath the bars on the right.

So why spend all that money on projects that are barely distinguishable from each other? Because everyone else is doing it, and no one wants to be left out, writes Zhang Rui:

Competition among us is always like this. Many times, it's not because we need to do anything, but because we can't avoid doing it. The Olympics, for example. From the perspective of media competition, no matter what anyone boasts, the Olympic battle was a failure for everyone: input and output were seriously out of alignment. But you had to do it. First, the great agenda of the party meant that there was nothing else going on except for the Olympics, so the people wouldn't accept it if you did nothing. Second, there were political factors: if you didn't do anything, wouldn't you be deliberately making things difficult for the party?

If circumstances allowed, the option I would choose would be to not do the Olympics. Not only that, but to openly declare: I'm avoiding the Olympics! From the standpoint of media competition, this differentiating strategy would not be a mistake.

This year's 3D began with a conversation with the army. They wanted to have it both ways: they wanted to sell 3D for an enormous sum, but they were afraid that something would go wrong. They went back and forth, tormenting our guys to no end, and in the end nothing came of it. With no other options, we had to do it ourselves, which ran us ragged. The outcome is linked above, not all that different from the other companies. One small bit of comfort is that we spent a little less. We weren't the biggest losers; at most, we lost a litte.

Next year I predict that we won't do 3D. We'll lift it from CCTV and save that little bit of money in the process.

If you're looking for something a little different, Netease has come out with a three part parody of the space program in classic online egao style.