Gravity Manipulation
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Lusus Saule
I think it would open up a huge new dimension of creativity in Second Life if gravity could be manipulated. Presently gravity only applies in a downward direction, but imagine the possibilities if gravity could be applied to various selected surfaces, such as walls etc.
The link below is to something I built in Second Life a few years ago, and as you can see not all floor surfaces are downward facing. Whilst visitors exploring this build could use a wall walker script to walk on different surfaces this had many limitations. For example, if someone sat on a chair in certain rooms then stood up, they would fall downwards because the wall walker could not be active whilst the sit script was active. Also its not possible to limit what a wall walker script allows an avatar to walk on.
There are many games that use this manipulation of gravity. Examples include Manifold Garden, Nomori, and Etherborn, (the image is from the latter game). All of these and more demonstrate gravity manipulation is possible and can lead to some very imaginative and innovative creations.
This link is to the Etherborn promo video that shows just one example of a what manipulating gravity feature could do:
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Nexii Malthus
I'd already been experimenting with custom gravity for 15 years, even before llCastRay came out, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv-5UbUAi0s
You can visit my region Vertical Sim where I am experimenting with games that can be played which take advantage of the height of a sim.
Gravity in engines like Havok are really just a uniform force in a direction. If you disable that and apply a custom force you can pretty much have artificial gravity in any direction at any amount. I've experimented with giant ramps, cylinders, tubes and spheres before, either with physical objects or even vehicles that changed their local gravity to match the surface they were on.
Currently the implementation is done through LSL, just scripts and attachments scripted to change the force on an object or avatar respectively. Then it is up to the creator to control how much and where gravity needs to be.
Issues that need resolving are:
* Subtle issue around friction and allowing objects to come to "rest" when artificially gravitating onto a flat surface or with a small inclination -- Currently friction of a force against a wall does not seem to be handled by Havok / sim implementation correctly, causing a physical object or vehicle to continuously slide very slowly off a sideways ramp
* Being able to set gravity direction on objects as a vector without having to use a script would be great
* Being able to modify the up-vector for the avatar capsule controllers so that avatars can walk normally on an artificial gravity surface -- while maintaining the extreme rotational axis lock at that up vector angle that SL avatars have for stability
* Viewer camera changes for following the avatar from behind normally that has a different up-vector, so it feels natural
ST33LDI9ITAL Resident
As long as it's only available on private regions/sims. The issue would be with mainland builds because if you could control gravity direction people would be building sideways parcels extending all the way up to the sky limit... you think skyboxes are bad... just imagine entire parcel landscape extending sideways all the way up.
Jabadahut50 Resident
a bit of scripting ingenuity including either a bit of RLV or Experience and we can mimic this pretty well as is. It would be cool to not need to use scripting to do this though. Upvoted.
Spidey Linden
tracked
Issue accepted. We have no estimate when it may be implemented. Please see future release notes for this fix.
Sailor Vasiliev
i have wanted this for years, i hope they do it, it i achievable in the SL physics engine too Havoc i believe, some other games using that utilize exactly what your saying well. it could be radiating from a surface outward, so you could jump with in reason and still land, and if set so you jump and go outside of the gravity and get caught by another gravity field. i have wanted to build a large cylinder walk-able town type area for ever.
Xaviens Mizin
While this is a novel concept, it isn't feasible with SL's physics engine. While you mention other games that do such things, they were developed from the ground up with the intent of having variable gravitation, and their entire mapping system revolves around such things. This would also have various negative interactions with existing scripted objects, projectiles, and even the SL camera system. It might be doable, but would require an extensive rewrite of the entire engine, and isn't likely to happen.
Lusus Saule
Xaviens Mizin: This may or may not interest you. NASA and Elon Musk et al have plans to send people to Mars. At the moment all the tech does not exist to do that. There are also huge problems to overcome, not least the radiation of space, the lack of a breathable atmosphere on Mars, and the fact that the surface of the planet itself is deadly to humans.
However, no one is saying it cannot be done. Generally speaking though, whilst some people like to think beyond what is presently possible, sadly there are those who choose to focus on why something is not possible.
Don't you think in view of the above its small minded to quibble about developing gravity manipulation within Second Life? Think big and enjoy those big ideas, because thats essentially what my suggestion is about.
Crush Cutie
Xaviens Mizin: SL uses an off the shelf physics system. The strength of gravity is a setting, it can be changed.
Xaviens Mizin
Crush Cutie: First and foremost, you're talking about strength of gravity, not directionality.
Secondly, even if you were to able change the directionality, you're still not talking about doing it on a granular level that would allow for literal gravity wells on specific objects or areas, where the strength, direction, and curvature of gravity are subject to the whims of the configuring individual.
This would not be just a minor tweak to an existing engine that has such features built in, this would require a ground-up rewritten system designed SPECIFICALLY to allow this sort of thing, and would take years of development work, just for that.
Xaviens Mizin
Lusus Saule: That's completely irrelevant. There's a difference between being 'small minded' and being realistic in expectations regarding the staff and priorities of Linden Labs. They don't have an endless army of software engineers ready to spend literally years of their lives writing an entire bespoke physics engine that can handle arbitrary gravitation, and seamless movement between radically different gravity wells. They didn't even write the physics engine for SL, it's literally just running Havok, which doesn't have any of those capabilities. Havok just has a gravitational constant, which for SL is 9.81 m/s² IIRC. This is the rate at which all objects are accelerated towards the direction the engine has set as 'down'. For the record, that's a single direction, and is not something that can be changed on-the-fly, or applied arbitrarily, it's universal for the entire simulation.
Lusus Saule
Xaviens Mizin: If you think its irrelevant, then thats your mindset, nothing more. Read through the other comments here instead of focusing on your own as your points have already been covered.
Also, you might remember a physicist called Richard Feynman. He used to tell his post grad students to explain things so a 5 year old could understand. When people don't do that it comes across and pompous, self satisfied and arrogant. Posting things such as 'Havok just has a gravitational constant, which for SL is 9.81 m/s² IIRC' means nothing to most people.
Crush Cutie
Allowing region owners full control over how their region operates, including all aspects of the physics system is essential to bringing wider ranges of content and experience to SL.
Darling Brody
I can see this causing chaos for scripted vehicles with many creators getting bad reviews after a customer messes with gravity and breaks legacy products. It might be easier to implement using an Experience to attach a script to control the gravity on the avatar when they enter an area.
I can also see this would be a lot of fun too.
I think the problem will be that the havok physics engine SL uses probably doesn't support it, and all the avatar animations often break when rotated.
Lusus Saule
Darling Brody: Lets focus on how it can be done, and let LL work out the technicalities.
Vincent Nacon
Lusus Saule: Sorry but Darling is right. It's gonna be impossible to make it work with any existing vehicles and scripted contents.
Lusus Saule
Vincent Nacon: It doesn't matter what is or is not possible just yet. Those of us who have been around SL a while know that uploading mesh to SL was once impossible. The will was there to do something about it though, so the impossible became possible.
Besides which, no one would be forcing manipulated gravity scenarios on every single SL resident and every sim or every parcel of land. It would be a tool available for people to use if they wanted to - on the land they owned or rented. As such the impact on anyone else's vehicle and scripted content would be minimal or nonexistent.
In the final analysis, the workability of my suggestion does not distil down to what is or is not possible right now, or whether it will break someone's vehicle or script. If you look at how SL has developed over the years, that development has been very linear, as it tries to move towards an ever more convincing realism. This in itself is fine especially as most SL residents seem happy to go along with it.
However, Second Life does not need to restrict itself entirely to that direction. There is absolutely no reason why it cannot provide residents with much greater creative freedom, and even, as my suggestion implies, break the rules of this realism that so many seem to crave. Second Life does not need to be solely about designing and buying nice avatars along with clothes to go with them. It also does not need to be entirely about having a nicely built house, or a shiny new vehicle etc so that your time in SL increasingly mirrors your time in RL, (or at least a glossy version of it).
What is at the core of my suggestion is that Second Life should also be, as its original ethos allowed, about originality, innovation and creativity. It does not have to just follow the simplistic, linear path towards greater realism. Second Life should also and equally be persuing a path towards greater creativity, and as such my suggestion of gravity manipulation is just one step towards that goal.
Vincent Nacon
Lusus Saule: I like that you're very optimistic and hopeful for SL's development... but you can't just encourage people to "think outside of the box" without understanding how the system work in the first place. Anyone who want to make it happen need to script it for themselves for their own product... and I've done that already. I've made my own physical planetary system that orbits around larger bodies, which anyone could interact with it by bumping them around... and didn't need to change SL's gravity. In fact, I need SL not to change it at all, so I can "know" which force to cancel out. Vehicles are a much bigger problem, and LL can't change it to make it adapt to this new flexible gravity change. People's setting in those old vehicle functions are going to break. Some vehicles do rely on global position/rotation to do what they need to do. It's not simple as "rotating the global vector". It's a dead-end from a technical standpoint view. If anything, we need a better llPushObject function without the damned "energy" thing and remove the constraint on avatar's rotation, it's hardcoded to keep avatar upright.
Lusus Saule
Vincent Nacon: As I've said before I've been in Second Life for quite some time. Every time LL has rolled out a new development there were people who complained about it, everything from flexi prims to sculpty maps and beyond, (in fact there is at least one person complaining about PBRs in their own feedback suggestion here). This was so prevailant that the phrase, 'the sky is falling' became a common trope in response to such people.
In view of this the most telling thing you have said is that you need Second Life NOT to change. That is probably a more revealing statement than you realise.
I'm sorry to say however, I have some bad news for you: Second Life will continue to evolve whether you like it or not. The golden rule with SL is evolve with it or be left behind.
If you read between the lines of what I've said you'll see that I doubt very much if LL will take up my suggestion. The fact is they are very unlikely to take on board anything that will cost them a lot of time and resources, (unless its a truely genius idea).
The underlying point is however, that Second Life does not have to develop in such a linear way, and giving residents the tools to be as creative and as imaginative a possible should be as important as anything else. This was after all within the original ethos of Second Life.
In view of this whether you like it or not, Second Life should always incorporate thinking outside of the box, and no one should be constricted by some petty minded naysayer who wants things to stay the same.
Take another look at the video included here, then dare to imagine a virtual world that encapsulates such a level of creativity.
Vincent Nacon
Lusus Saule: Alright, good luck with that.