Verifying Keen's Law Of Gravity
At risk of being slandered as a space scientist, I decided to find out what the local gravity was on and around my asteroid at 35km above the Earth-like planet.
There was a formula somewhere on the forums for calculating what gravity should be:
g(local) = b x (MaxR/r )^7
MaxR = planet max radius, r = astronaut's distance from centre of planet, b = base g, 9.81 m/s in this case
For 35km altitude (ie 95km from planet centre) this gives 0.39 m/s - pretty low. But I felt like I was falling faster than that.
So in open space I switched off the ol' jet pack and dropped for 10 seconds. At end of 10s I reached about 17m/s
v = a x t
so acceleration = 1.7m/s ... hmmm. Four times higher than expected. Whatever would Sir Isaac Newton have to say?
Any explanations, KSH? Is the gravity equation not really what's happening? maybe I read such an old post and now the equation's mutated?
btw, one of my biggest PLEEZs is that one day we will be able to ORBIT planets at a reasonably low altitude - above the atmosphere, say 20km. I know this requires MUCH higher velocities and there's the need to check for collisions. Maybe when our CPUs are running 10x faster than they are now?
I like this feedback
It's for practicality, like most of the changes to planet scale. If there were realistic gravity, it would be weaker and take longer to escape, neither of which are particularly good. While realism is necessary, quantitative disparities such as these aren't quite as important as making the trip to space not take an impractically large amount of time.
It's for practicality, like most of the changes to planet scale. If there were realistic gravity, it would be weaker and take longer to escape, neither of which are particularly good. While realism is necessary, quantitative disparities such as these aren't quite as important as making the trip to space not take an impractically large amount of time.
It's a bit more complicated. The radius of EarthLike is 60000 m, but it's elevations are +12%, giving an effective radius of 67200 m:
9.81 ms⁻² ✕ (67200 m ÷ 95000 m)⁷ ≈ 0.869 ms⁻² ≈ 0.0886 g
That said, if you do the same experiment in a cockpit, you'll reach a velocity of ~8.70 ms⁻¹ after the 600 (10 s ✕ 60 Hz) discrete physics steps. That part works as expected. What's off is the much higher player character acceleration in free fall as you have noticed. Was that intended? Is it a bug?
It's a bit more complicated. The radius of EarthLike is 60000 m, but it's elevations are +12%, giving an effective radius of 67200 m:
9.81 ms⁻² ✕ (67200 m ÷ 95000 m)⁷ ≈ 0.869 ms⁻² ≈ 0.0886 g
That said, if you do the same experiment in a cockpit, you'll reach a velocity of ~8.70 ms⁻¹ after the 600 (10 s ✕ 60 Hz) discrete physics steps. That part works as expected. What's off is the much higher player character acceleration in free fall as you have noticed. Was that intended? Is it a bug?
After a little more research I found the game is using a gravity multiplier for characters, which explains our observations.
After a little more research I found the game is using a gravity multiplier for characters, which explains our observations.
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