dangerous decompression

also this should work the opposite way for water, incoming water should pull people and objects next to the hull into the ship/station/pipe

...Given the size of the opening and the proximity of the bodies to it, the first clip wasn't unreasonable. At 14psi the air rushing out a hole that size would push quite hard on something immediately adjacent to it, though it wouldn't push for very long without a huge space to feed it.

The second clip... I suppose if you had one of those football-field internal hangers I occasionally see built with a bunch of debris floating around right next to where the hole is then it would be possible, but the pressure differential would drop off quickly as you got further from the hole.

its a video game.

also the speed setting was turned up in those videos for effect, i've used the mod before and the actual force it applies by default is significantly less

i don't think you understand at all what i wrote when i referred to water, because i am not saying that objects should go out when water comes in. i literally said "this should work the opposite way for water"

if this wasn't a reading mistake then im not quite sure what your argument is for water since that all seems to prove my point

many people have been sucked into things because of underwater Delta-P without an implosion also occuring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Caribbean_diving_disaster

also the reason air pressure is commonly thrown around when people argue against explosive decompression is because they don't know the Venturi effect or Bernoulli's principle. the air pressure is always going to be low, even at the hole since the air is moving VERY FAST. this means you can easily plug the hole, and tiny holes on craft like the ISS hardly cause any devastation and can be sealed easily. this is why it is better to look at the actual force generated by the mass of the air and its velocity rather than the air pressure itself.

in regards to clip 2:

AI prompt (im too lazy to do the math myself): "a cubic compartment containing 11390.625 cubic meters of oxygen pressurized at 14 psi is pushing air through a 6.5 square meter aperture into the open vacuum (0 psi) of space. what is the speed the air travels through the aperture? what is the volumetric flow rate of the air? what is the force and acceleration, in Newtons, acting on a 15.625 cubic meter cube with a mass of 500kg? how quickly will the compartment be completely evacuated of air?"

i assumed the room in that video was 9x9x9 light armor blocks, just eyeballing it. here are the results:

Speed of Air: 367.4 m/s

Volumetric Flow Rate: 2388.1 m^3/s

Force: 603291.5 N

Acceleration (at the start): 1206.583 m/s^2

Time until the compartment is completely empty of air: 4.26 seconds (also what space engineers calculated, based on the particle effect disappearing at ~4.3 seconds)

these are all simple calculations so if you feel that the AI is unreliable feel free to do them yourself

and for reference, a large-grid small thruster generates 1,080,000 N of force. 2160 m/s^2 of acceleration on a single light armor block (not counting its own weight).

562.5 m/s^2 on itself AND a light armored block

to our minds, this scenario seems unrealistic but you have to remember that this change is happening instantly. the engineer is instantly deleting a block, a massive hole instantly appears on a room that is fully pressurized, there is no explosion inflicting its own pressure, etc.

Tael is right in saying that "the pressure differential would drop off quickly as you got further from the hole," realistically only the block right next to the hole should've gone flying so quickly. the others would still float out too, albeit much slower.

calculating a super realistic pressure gradient for this could be costly for the game engine but a simple fall-off equation that just decreases the newtons of force applied based on distance would still faithfully simulate this enough that the average person wouldn't care at all

i feel like the effects of seeing debris rapidly spew away from a ship after it takes its first hit and seeing debris spew into a submarine are definitely worth the price, but thats just me.

this doesn't apply to just airlocks, it provides greater visual feedback on pressurized compartment hits, provides Delta-P realism, and provides a minor punishment for bad compartment design.

it shouldn't be too bad for performance though, just apply an impulse to blocks/debris/items along a vector towards the first hole. this is all stuff that is already calculated everytime you fire a weapon, bump into something, walk, jump, etc.

the size and location of the hole and the direction of air travel is also already something SE1 calculcates and a simple spatial query to gather all the objects within a few meters of the hole is no worse than a damage radius calculation.

the effect does not need to be extremely realistic, and usually the first hole will be close enough to any other immediate holes that the realism of the effect wont be jeopardized by applying it to just 1-4 of those holes. even with this though, the cost of this calculation is so insignificant it wouldn't hurt to run it for every hole that appears, especially since these holes are highly unlikely to appear all within the same frame, and the room will likely be completely depressurized within 5 seconds.

thank you for your reply