Rotation

[Crazyfist]

I've played the game a little bit, and it is truly remarkable. I plan on buying it within a week.

Now this mechanic I'm proposing is both scientifically true, and probably hard to implement.

Rotation in the Universe Sandbox doesn't affect anything, and isnt affected by anything. For instance, if I decrease the diameter of a sun by half, its rotation should increase drastically due to the law or preserving angular momentum or whatever. Now, this alone would not pose of much of a problem but if we look at the effects of rotation it will.

As we all know rings around planets form due to the planets gravitational field, which is hugely affected by its rotation, so the rings always form a disc around the  planets rotational axis. This mechanic is not in effect in the game at the moment, and would add significant realism to it.

If you, the great Dan Dixon, manage to implement this, I suggest you make this feature a checkbox option, for it might be pretty CPU intensive.

Anyone else agree?

[Teh_Saccade]

Ye can affect the rotation in an objects Dynamic Properties tab.
Running the sim in a window with calc and a browser open helps reference equations and apply them to in-game mechanics. At least, that's what I've been doing

Er... I think that spin is: L=m*w*r² (m=mass; w=angular velocity [radians p/s]; r=radius of orbital circle)

Going by that, you could easily - with a few extra minutes and miles extra satisfaction - calculate the increase in rotation.

1 degree is pi/180 radians, so you'd have to work backwards from (or start from a clean slate) in order to figure out the rotation in Universe 2's language of minutes/hours/etc...

Probably take a while to figure out, thinking about it, though I'm sure that a decent CPU (with its 2 thousand million+ transistors) could do it pretty quick given the right numbers and letters to work with.

I guess it'd be a lot easier to simply work with yer average divisions, even if its not mathematically accurate, so 1/2 size = 2x rotation speed [eg, 1/2 time] until (if ever) something like that is implemented.
Since Universe 2 is an edu-tainment game, I'm skeptical that things will get so heavy - Your local university might be able to point you to some sim software that can already do what you're asking, I reckon.


I have no idea how you would make it so the rotational velocity affected the perceived mass and gravity-force of a panetary object, however - I never was very good at rollercoasters

Not saying that features like this - and an UNDO BUTTON - wouldn't be nice
Definitely get the game, man! There's so much to mess with and explore! Can't imagine how limiting the demo must be... :/

[Crazyfist]

I'm just saying, since people are paying for this the guys in charge might aswell try making it as good as possible (which they are!)

Also, I'm not on the demo, I'm borrowing a friends laptop who has it for a week, sweet deal huh?


It might not be CPU intensive alone, but in solar systems with more and more objects it might get pretty hard

[Darvince]

Since when was Dan a they?

[Crazyfist]

Since he alone creates something with the efficiency of 10 men, it makes him a multitude of people

[Dan Dixon]

Conserving angular moment when you change the mass or radius could be really cool. I'll consider it in a future update. That's a cool idea I hadn't considered before.

(And undo... yeah, Universe Sandbox needs an undo button.)