[sldev] Centrifugal Gravity (was: What is the point...)

[ordinal.malaprop at fastmail.fm]

On 11 Apr 2008, at 13:22, Jason Giglio wrote:
> Anna Gulaev wrote:
>> Yes! Off-topic, but I've wanted to build a large drum-shaped station.
>> See the jogging scene of 2001 if you don't know what I mean. Can  
>> Havok4
>> do that?
>>
>
> It doesn't work without spinning air.  When a space station starts
> spinning, if there is no air to accelerate the occupants along with  
> it,
> then it's just spinning around them floating in the center.
>
> You could partition the drum and slam the occupants against an  
> interior
> wall to accelerate them, but havok has fake "drag" (in effect, static
> air) that would constantly decelerate them.  So yeah, this isn't going
> to work into the foreseeable future.

Boooooo.

Configurable, ideally scriptable gravity would be terrific though,  
just with point masses (and a cut-off in the attraction between  
smaller masses I would assume).

A lot of the effect of that, though, would depend on avatars being  
able to rotate properly in all axes, which won't happen at the moment.  
Walking halfway around your asteroid and ending up standing on your  
head would be a little underwhelming.